Felony Interference Of A Business Model Is Not A Crime (original) (raw)

from the it's-called-competition dept

Last week, in writing about how Viacom boss Philippe Dauman appeared to be wrong on almost every one of his assumptions about the trends and economics facing his business, someone challenged my thoughts in the comments, saying something to the effect of that it is “illegal interrupt a business model.” That’s a laughable statement — but it seems to be one that pervades many of the stories we write about on Techdirt. Rather than recognizing that markets change, many companies seem to think that there’s something illegal about changing the model a market works on, just because it makes it harder for them to make money — even if it actually improves things for everyone else. Reader tom mcmillan writes in to point to a blog post that does a great job making this point, sarcastically referring to the practice as claiming “felony interference with a business model.” The point, of course, is that there’s nothing illegal about interfering with a business model. It’s called competition and both history and economics has shown that it tends to not just lead to better products for consumers, but also opens up new markets for producers to make even more money. If interfering with a business model was illegal, any competition would be illegal.

Filed Under: business models, crime