Road to hell, good intentions etc...
Does it need to be a regulation? Silly regulations is what made South Korea entirely dependent on Internet Explorer.
Does it need to be a regulation? Silly regulations is what made South Korea entirely dependent on Internet Explorer.
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/08/the...
South Korea chose to mandate a technology rather than the desired outcome and never to update that law. They could alternatively have mandated multi-factor authentication or even simply made banks liable for any fraudulent transaction without any discussion of technology at all. These are all regulations but would affect the market in very different ways.
I have no problem with regulations in general. From the start here I said "silly regulations". Trying to combat bloatware by simply banning them is, in my opinion, silly. Even if you establish that this problem is so big that the government needs to get involved, there are other tools at their disposal. Tax incentives is one such tool.
Come on...
The anti-bloatware law is more than welcome, because competition keeps failing to reach the desired outcome. Regulations are exactly the right thing to do when competition and market fundamentally fails to reach what constitutes sanity, and converges to a local minimum.
Needless to say, such regulations should certainly be revisited when the root cause vanishes.
Has the market really failed in this regard? Can the Koreans not buy Android or iOS devices that are free from uninstallable bloatware? What about upcoming Ubuntu or Mozilla handsets, will they too be filled with uninstallable bloatware?
I understand that some people see this bloatware as a huge problem, but people should think very hard before calling out for regulations.