If it takes multiple billions of dollars to create a product that is useful for a niche group of pen and paper RPG players, that product is probably not going to succeed.

But, also, if Facebook didn’t have such an unassailable monopoly on social networking, small, focused social networks that targeted a niche group of people might have a chance of surviving.

And Google built a search engine. Everything else they’ve tried to build has failed, other than maybe Gmail which was just a Yahoo Mail / Hotmail clone. Everything else that has been successful has been an acquisition: Maps (Keyhole), YouTube, Android, Google Photos (Picasa), Doubleclick…

We really need robust antitrust. How many of these acquisitions would be thriving companies in their own right, competing with the big tech giants if the tech giants hadn’t been able to absorb them.

Google+ is an example of what happens when companies have to compete instead of acquiring other companies. Google poured billions into it and it flopped completely.

Government officials are really scared of changing the status quo. They’re really afraid that if they get rid of anti-circumvention laws, that they’ll become a pariah state. In the past that probably would have been true. The US would have thrown its weight around, and Europe would have fallen in line and boycotted whoever it was. Many countries also have a lot of Hollywood productions made there. The major Hollywood studios care about anti-circumvention because they think it guarantees their profits. So, if these countries scaled back anti-circumvention, Hollywood would probably throw a fit and cut them off too. Even if the economic impact of getting rid of anti-circumvention were a huge positive, Hollywood has a big cultural impact worldwide.

I’d like to see it happen, but I think the most likely scenario is that a country that already doesn’t fully respect US copyright laws, like Switzerland or Singapore, might take an additional step and stop respecting anti-circumvention.