VERY EARLY DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE Regulating the Internet: The Strategy and Political Economy of Internet Intellectual Property Protection

This paper shows how jurisdictional disputes between congressional committees drives the regulation of the Internet. Committees fight over who will retain jurisdiction over Internet issues, and thus obtain a stream of current and future political rents from Internet interest groups. We show in this paper, that ideology and constituency makeup have relatively little bearing on strategies congressmen pursue in their Internet legislative activities. Rather, committee jurisdictional issues explain much of the behavior. We build a formal game theoretic model illustrating how legislators act, and test implications from the model on Internet bills before the 106 Congress, and an in-depth analysis of Internet intellectual property protection. We also illustrate how in high technology industries, where exogenous shocks are common, it is difficult to get legislation passed. I would like to thank the many people at many companies, universities, and associations who permitted to be interviewed for this paper. Daniel Braga provided excellent research assistance. A complete list can be found in the paper. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the kind financial support of the E-Business Center at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. DISCLAIMER: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has directly and indirectly lobbied against the proposed Coble bill. This has not, in any way, affected the theory or empirical work in this paper