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.

In their new book, Information Rules (Harvard Business School Press), Shapiro and Varian offer up a practical introduction to the economics of selling information. Shapiro and Varian explain how to maximize the value of intellectual property, differentiate products, lock in customers, negotiate standards alliances, and benefit from so-called "network effects"-the idea that the value of some goods depends on the number of people who use them. Telephones are the classic example of such a product, and in the Web age, network effects seem pervasive. It is network effects that stimulate the positive feedback that allows Microsoft's market share to grow and grow.