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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Computer Engineering
Network Effects In Action, Christopher S. Yoo
Network Effects In Action, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
This Chapter begins by examining and exploring the theoretical and empirical limits of the possible bases of network effects, paying particular attention to the most commonly cited framework known as Metcalfe’s Law. It continues by exploring the concept of network externalities, defined as the positive external consumption benefits that the decision to join a network creates for the other members of the network, which is more ambiguous than commonly realized. It then reviews the structural factors needed for models based on network effects to have anticompetitive effects and identifies other factors that can dissipate those effects. Finally, it identifies alternative …
Common Carriage’S Domain, Christopher S. Yoo
Common Carriage’S Domain, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
The judicial decision invalidating the Federal Communications Commission's first Open Internet Order has led advocates to embrace common carriage as the legal basis for network neutrality. In so doing, network neutrality proponents have overlooked the academic literature on common carriage as well as lessons from its implementation history. This Essay distills these learnings into five factors that play a key role in promoting common carriage's success: (1) commodity products, (2) simple interfaces, (3) stability and uniformity in the transmission technology, (4) full deployment of the transmission network, and (5) stable demand and market shares. Applying this framework to the Internet …
Cloud Computing, Contractibility, And Network Architecture, Christopher S. Yoo
Cloud Computing, Contractibility, And Network Architecture, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
The emergence of the cloud is heightening the demands on the network in terms of bandwidth, ubiquity, reliability, latency, and route control. Unfortunately, the current architecture was not designed to offer full support for all of these services or to permit money to flow through it. Instead of modifying or adding specific services, the architecture could redesigned to make Internet services contractible by making the relevant information associated with these services both observable and verifiable. Indeed, several on-going research programs are exploring such strategies, including the NSF’s NEBULA, eXpressive Internet Architecture (XIA), ChoiceNet, and the IEEE’s Intercloud projects.
Moore’S Law, Metcalfe’S Law, And The Theory Of Optimal Interoperability, Christopher S. Yoo
Moore’S Law, Metcalfe’S Law, And The Theory Of Optimal Interoperability, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Many observers attribute the Internet’s success to two principles: Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. These precepts are often cited to support claims that larger networks are inevitably more valuable and that costs in a digital environment always decrease. This Article offers both a systematic description of both laws and then challenges the conventional wisdom by exploring their conceptual limitations. It also explores how alternative mechanisms, such as gateways and competition, can permit the realization benefits typically attributed to Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law without requiring increases in network size.
Technological Determinism And Its Discontents, Christopher S. Yoo
Technological Determinism And Its Discontents, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
This book review takes a critical review of the claim advanced by Susan Crawford in Captive Audience that the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal would harm consumers and that policymakers should instead promote common carriage regulation and subsidize municipal symmetrical gigabit fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). First it evaluates the extent to which next-generation digital subscriber lines (DSL) and wireless broadband technologies can serve as effective substitutes for cable modem service, identifying FCC data showing that the market has become increasingly competitive and likely to continue to do so. Furthermore, the market is not structured in a way that would permit the …
Beyond Coase: Emerging Technologies And Property Theory, Christopher S. Yoo
Beyond Coase: Emerging Technologies And Property Theory, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
In addition to prompting the development of the Coase Theorem, Ronald Coase’s landmark 1959 article on the Federal Communications Commission touched off a revolution in spectrum policy. Although one of Coase’s proposed reforms (that spectrum should be allocated through markets) has now become the conventional wisdom, his other principal recommendation (that governments stop dedicating portions of the spectrum to particular uses) has yet to be fully embraced. Drawing on spectrum as well as Internet traffic and electric power as examples, this Article argues that emerging technologies often reflect qualities that make defining property rights particularly difficult. These include the cumulative …
Promoting The Buildout Of New Networks Vs. Compelling Access To The Monopoly Loop: A Clash Of Regulatory Paradigms, Christopher S. Yoo
Promoting The Buildout Of New Networks Vs. Compelling Access To The Monopoly Loop: A Clash Of Regulatory Paradigms, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Network Neutrality, Consumers, And Innovation, Christopher S. Yoo
Network Neutrality, Consumers, And Innovation, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Article, Professor Christopher Yoo directly engages claims that mandating network neutrality is essential to protect consumers and to promote innovation on the Internet. It begins by analyzing the forces that are placing pressure on the basic network architecture to evolve, such as the emergence of Internet video and peer-to-peer architectures and the increasing heterogeneity in business relationships and transmission technologies. It then draws on the insights of demand-side price discrimination (such as Ramsey pricing) and the two-sided markets, as well as the economics of product differentiation and congestion, to show how deviating from network neutrality can benefit consumers, …
Rethinking Broadband Internet Access, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
Rethinking Broadband Internet Access, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
The emergence of broadband Internet technologies, such as cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) systems, has reopened debates over how the Internet should be regulated. Advocates of network neutrality and open access to cable modem systems have proposed extending the regulatory regime developed to govern conventional telephone and narrowband Internet service to broadband. A critical analysis of the rationales traditionally invoked to justify the regulation of telecommunications networks--such as natural monopoly, network economic effects, vertical exclusion, and the dangers of ruinous competition--reveals that those rationales depend on empirical and theoretical preconditions that do not apply to broadband. In addition, …
Keeping The Internet Neutral?: Tim Wu And Christopher Yoo Debate, Tim Wu, Christopher S. Yoo
Keeping The Internet Neutral?: Tim Wu And Christopher Yoo Debate, Tim Wu, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
"Net neutrality" has been among the leading issues of telecommunications policy this decade. Is the neutrality of the Internet fundamental to its success, and worth regulating to protect, or simply a technical design subject to improvement? In this debate-form commentary, Tim Wu and Christopher Yoo make clear the connection between net neutrality and broader issues of national telecommunications policy.
Mandating Access To Telecom And The Internet: The Hidden Side Of Trinko, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
Mandating Access To Telecom And The Internet: The Hidden Side Of Trinko, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Antitrust has long played a major role in telecommunications policy, demonstrated most dramatically by the equal access mandate imposed during the breakup of AT&T. In this Article we explore the extent to which antitrust can continue to serve as a source of access mandates following the Supreme Court's 2004 Trinko decision. Although Trinko sharply criticized access remedies and antitrust courts' ability to enforce them, it is not yet clear whether future courts will interpret the opinion as barring all antitrust access claims. Even more importantly, the opinion contains language hinting at possible bases for differentiating among different types of access, …
Network Neutrality And The Economics Of Congestion, Christopher S. Yoo
Network Neutrality And The Economics Of Congestion, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
On The Regulation Of Networks As Complex Systems: A Graph Theory Approach, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
On The Regulation Of Networks As Complex Systems: A Graph Theory Approach, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
The dominant approach to regulating communications networks treats each network component as if it existed in isolation. In so doing, the current approach fails to capture one of the essential characteristics of networks, which is the complex manner in which components interact with one another when combined into an integrated system. In this Essay, Professors Daniel Spulber and Christopher Yoo propose a new regulatory framework based on the discipline of mathematics known as graph theory, which better captures the extent to which networks represent complex systems. They then apply the insights provided by this framework to a number of current …
Architectural Censorship And The Fcc, Christopher S. Yoo
Architectural Censorship And The Fcc, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Most First Amendment analyses of U.S. media policy have focused predominantly on “behavioral” regulation, which either prohibits the transmission of disfavored content (such as indecent programming) or mandates the dissemination of preferred content (such as children’s educational programming and political speech). In so doing, commentators have largely overlooked how program content is also affected by “structural” regulation, which focuses primarily on increasing the economic competitiveness of media industries. In this Article, Professor Christopher Yoo employs economic analysis to demonstrate how structural regulation can constitute a form of “architectural censorship” that has the unintended consequence of reducing the quantity, quality, and …
Beyond Network Neutrality, Christopher S. Yoo
Beyond Network Neutrality, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Article, Professor Yoo takes issue with the emerging scholarly consensus in favor of ""network neutrality,"" which would prohibit network owners from employing proprietary protocols or entering into exclusivity agreements with content providers that would reduce the transparency of the Internet. Economic theory suggests that network neutrality advocates are focusing on the wrong policy problem. Rather than directing attention on the market for Internet content and applications, the segments of the industry that are the most competitive and the most likely to remain that way, communications policy would be better served if the focus were placed on the segment …
Would Mandating Network Neutrality Help Or Hurt Broadband Competition? A Comment On The End-To-End Debate, Christopher S. Yoo
Would Mandating Network Neutrality Help Or Hurt Broadband Competition? A Comment On The End-To-End Debate, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Rise And Demise Of The Technology-Specific Approach To The First Amendment, Christopher S. Yoo
The Rise And Demise Of The Technology-Specific Approach To The First Amendment, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
This article examines how analytical, technological, and doctrinal developments are forcing the courts to reconsider their media-specific approach to assessing the constitutionality of media regulation. In particular, it offers a comprehensive reevaluation of the continuing validity of the Broadcast Model of regulation, which contains features, such as licensing and direct content regulation, that normally would be considered paradigmatic violations of the First Amendment. Specifically, the analysis assesses the theoretical coherence of the traditional justification for extending a lesser degree of First Amendment protection to broadcasting than to other media (i.e., the physical scarcity of the electromagnetic spectrum) as well as …
New Models Of Regulation And Interagency Governance, Christopher S. Yoo
New Models Of Regulation And Interagency Governance, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Access To Networks: Economic And Constitutional Connections, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
Access To Networks: Economic And Constitutional Connections, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
A fundamental transformation is taking place in the basic approach to regulating network industries. Policy makers are in the process of abandoning their century-old commitment to rate regulation in favor of a new regulatory approach known as access regulation. Rather than controlling the price of outputs, the new approach focuses on compelling access to and mandating the price of inputs. Unfortunately, this shift in regulatory policy has not been met with an accompanying shift in the manner in which regulatory authorities regulate prices. Specifically, policy makers have continued to base rates on either historical or replacement cost. We argue that …
Vertical Integration And Media Regulation In The New Economy, Christopher S. Yoo
Vertical Integration And Media Regulation In The New Economy, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent mergers and academic commentary have placed renewed focus on what has long been one of the central issues in media policy: whether media conglomerates can use vertical 'integration to harm competition. This Article seeks to move past previous studies, which have explored limited aspects of this issue, and apply the full sweep of modern economic theory to evaluate the regulation of vertical integration in media-related industries. It does so initially by applying the basic static efficiency analyses of vertical integration developed under the Chicago and post-Chicago Schools of antitrust law and economics to three industries: broadcasting, cable television, and …
The Myth Of Private Ordering: Rediscovering Legal Realism In Cyberspace, Margaret Jane Radin, R. Polk Wagner
The Myth Of Private Ordering: Rediscovering Legal Realism In Cyberspace, Margaret Jane Radin, R. Polk Wagner
All Faculty Scholarship
While Cyberspace is, by now, well-recognized as a social and commercial environment of great promise, there is considerable debate about the form of governance that will best meet the needs of this new medium. Much of the present discussion casts this debate in stark terms?"top-down" hierarchical rules versus spontaneous "bottom-up" coordination?with self-ordering based on contracts and private agreements rather than public laws appearing both preferable and more likely to evolve. Following up on arguments presented by Professors Fisher and Elkin-Koren in this symposium, Radin and Wagner point out that the dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up obscures that a self-ordering regime …