The Brookings Institute held a panel discussion
Wednesday on “Fostering Internet Competition” to highlight a new Brookings
paper “How to Maintain a Competitive Internet.” Darrell West, who moderated the
discussion, wrote that by 2016 analysts estimate the digital economy will
amount to $4.2 trillion among G-20 nations – nearly double the $2.3 trillion
for 2010.
The paper and panelists Susan Crawford, Spencer
Waller and Douglas Rushkoff said that robust competition policy is vital to the
continuing economic benefits of the Internet. They said consumers benefit from
competition and transparent, non-discriminatory market behavior and it helps
economies gain the full benefits of the Internet. The discussion covered
everything from past antitrust actions against AT&T and Microsoft, which
they praised, to broadband deployment and competition to the danger of patent
trolls.
Waller, who directs the Institute for Antitrust
Studies at the Chicago School of Law, said the Internet needs nondiscriminatory
access – “not free, just open.”
Crawford, a professor at Cardozo Law School,
said she just could not agree with an audience member that there is competition
now among wireless Internet providers, saying AT&T and Verizon were not
under pressure to improve service because of their dominance. “That’s why
T-Mobile and MetroPCS are proposing to merge – just to keep up,” she said.
Rushkoff, a technology and media commentator
for CNN, commented on the cost of patent trolls on innovation. He said he
shuddered to think what it would have been like in the early days of developing
the English language if someone appeared, claiming to have the patent for
vowels.
