The freewheeling economy of the World Wide Web may seem like a lawless place-a frontier town without rules. Not so fast, say economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian. While technologies come and go, they argue, the laws of economics persist. As a result, the new moguls of the Web can-and should-learn from the past. Content providers can learn from Hollywood's mistakes; e-commerce sites can take lessons from L.L. Bean; Bill Gates can discover that hundred-year-old antitrust laws apply even to him.

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