To prevent this for future breakups, I say the content and services sold by big tech should be made competitively compatible and interoperable via nullification of DRM laws; people buy music and movies and cloud storage; let them legally move their purchases to any competitor and big tech companies will break up naturally as local competitors emerge from people who dislike big tech for their own reasons. Monopolies cannot be trusted to lower prices for content and services. Legally nullifying DRM is like the FCC telling customers in 1968 that it was finally okay to ignore the “Bell equipment only” legal warning that had kept them locked into leasing their telephone sets for usurious amounts from AT&T for decades. A few years later, in 1982, AT&T was broken up. AT&T is almost a total monopoly again, but phones remain interoperable.
This was a great comment. You argue this so effectively that it will influence how I argue about monopolies in future — I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people who critique aspects of the world to know how to fix them, but it certainly does help if one has specific points for how things should be different.
Break them up. and then don’t let them slowly re-consolidate in the following 20 years.
ISPs/Telecom too!
I wish I could get ripped off by someone other than Comcast.
“Too big to fail” banks are much more important to split up.
I too remember how AT&T was broken up only for most of its Baby Bells to remerge back into Ma Bell.
To prevent this for future breakups, I say the content and services sold by big tech should be made competitively compatible and interoperable via nullification of DRM laws; people buy music and movies and cloud storage; let them legally move their purchases to any competitor and big tech companies will break up naturally as local competitors emerge from people who dislike big tech for their own reasons. Monopolies cannot be trusted to lower prices for content and services. Legally nullifying DRM is like the FCC telling customers in 1968 that it was finally okay to ignore the “Bell equipment only” legal warning that had kept them locked into leasing their telephone sets for usurious amounts from AT&T for decades. A few years later, in 1982, AT&T was broken up. AT&T is almost a total monopoly again, but phones remain interoperable.
This was a great comment. You argue this so effectively that it will influence how I argue about monopolies in future — I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people who critique aspects of the world to know how to fix them, but it certainly does help if one has specific points for how things should be different.