ceplaw

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• Commented on World Cup: engage Grinch mode now!
  "except for elephant polo on ice skates, which oughta be fun, as long as the elephants give their informed consent beforehand" Funny you should mention that with the NHL playoffs having concluded yesterday evening... which is not to say that...
• Commented on We need a pony. And the moon on a stick. By next Thursday.
  Our Gracious Host noted: "[W]hoever is POTUS, around 10% of the US population are convinced that they're a baby-eating lizard-alien in a fleshsuit who is plotting to bring about the downfall of civilization, rather than a middle-aged male politician in...
• Commented on A footnote about the publishing industry
  There is no publishing industry. There is only the bastard offspring of a three-century-long orgy among thirteen distinct publishing industries. And they really are distinct, from both the reader/market and author/supplier perspective... not to mention government relations, economic characteristics, etc....
• Commented on Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
  206: Retrospectively, this is indeed a conundrum. But it's not how finance-market-driven corporations think. They want predictions that work. That is, the problem is that they can't predict that the absence of an advance-order button at Vendor X will lead...
• Commented on Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
  Just a few comments, mostly tweaky things: 124 The law on what constitutes "predatory pricing" was not "drafted" in any way. It is, instead, a common-law interpretation (even EU law) based upon extending the rulings in particular circumstances to broader...
• Commented on Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
  84 Jay, I'm afraid that's not correct. Neither Google nor Amazon is a natural monopoly as that term is used in non-Austrian modern economics, in US law, or in European law. A natural monopoly is one that depends upon a...
• Commented on Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
  Antitrust doctrine isn't easy. In fact, it's needlessly difficult in practice; but even at the theoreticaly level, it's not easy. For example, the problem of failing to pay the economic rent associated with expression and culture has come up before,...
• Commented on Interstitial note
  Author sits in high-tech office armchair in front of computer with six to eight screens in front of him, all showing various word-processing files. A white cat jumps up on the arm of the chair; Author begins petting the cat....
• Commented on Rule 34, meet Kafka
  If "flesh tones" are that important as a screening device, I guess that GCHQ doesn't think there are any terrorists of note based in Abbottabad (or at least not any longer!). Or Jakarta. Or, more to the point, Brixton (when...