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E L E C T R O N I C   C O M M E R C E :   V E R S I O N  2.0

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NOTICES:	Congratulations to the Fall 2001 class for an excellent semester. eCommerce will return next year.

eCommerce Competition II:
The Standards Wars

 

Much of the hardware and software that enables the use of the Internet uses "standard" protocols -- and can thus interoperate with other equipment seamlessly. The existence of such standards (as well as the process by which they are created) may raise concerns along a variety of dimensions, especially with respect to competition policy.

Read the following:

Scott Bradner, The Internet Engineering Task Force, in Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (1999)

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC 2026 - The Internet Standards Process (edited: pp. 1-4 only)

Mark Lemley, Antitrust and the Internet Standardization Problem, 28 Conn. L. Rev. 1041 (1996) (edited: Section III-V only)

World Wide Web Consortium, About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (2001).

Margaret Kane, Will W3C mean dollar signs? CNET News.com, October 5, 2001.

Charles Vincent & Jean Camp, Setting Standards: Looking to the Internet for Models of Governance (Fall 1999). [pdf]

 

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Notes & Questions

 

1. What is the best way to deal with problems relating to Internet standard-setting? Would it be useful to abolish or curtail the standards-setting bodies, such as IETF or W3C?

 

2. If we decide to allow standards-setting bodies to operate, then is there anything we can do to try to preserve competition?

 

 

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C O P Y R I G H T   ©   2001   R.   P O L K   W A G N E R.