I haven’t followed your whole debate with Prof. Pasquale, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that a market for a downloadable music website like iTunes would be characterized by network externalities, and therefore could give a company like Apple significant market power, protected by substantial barriers to entry.

Prof. Wright, I think this is really the essence of Frank’s problems — he’s “Encino Prof.” (at least combined with that other Brendan Fraser flick).

It is as if Frank were frozen back in the heyday when populist antitrust was the ill-conceived flavor of the day and anti-IP justices like Hugo Black ruled with an “I say it’s a monopoly so it’s a monopoly!” iron fist.

Frank’s arguments don’t seem to amount to much more than just pissing into the wind; he’s so excited about the novelty of tearing down L&E (without anything other than his own subjective policy preferences to take its place) that he ends up rejecting some very basic and fundamental positions that, even in the weak form of approximations, are widely accepted in both legal and non-legal academia (e.g., rationality, willingness to pay and value). I don’t think he realizes just how nutty he comes across.