At under 300 printed pages, this is a reasonably short and readable book. The author has real experience in music and film production and finance, and has considered the disruptions of the techologies of converting, copying and publishing artistic works online. The author discusses the shift in American legal (anti-trust) thinking on monopoly and regulating the tech giants, although not in the same detail as other writers (e.g. Timothy Wu, Shoshana Zuboff) on telecommunications monopolies and surveillance capitalism. ( )

The main thesis is that Libertarians who digested Ayn Rand invented the Internet. They've caused all sorts of problems that we really haven't dealt with. Because of Robert Bork, our anti-trust laws have essentially disappeared. The Internet killed the musician. Data is the reason why Hollywood can't do anything besides superhero and other sequels. There were some good tidbits in this book and I enjoyed the book, although I have to admit that I'm a bit tired of scattershot books. This book could have only focused on Google and that would have been enough. Although this book nicely explained and summed up who the Koch brothers are. That one section of the book made the purchase right there.
Anyone have any suggestions for books that focus on one business story and dig deep? ( )

Expected another book with I was part of this unicorn and this is why we are best. This book has a more critical view of how the societal effects of the monopolies building up around us. And some other perspectives. It widen my view in a good way. ( )

Seldom have I read such self-indulgent Boomer crap. ( )

I really appreciation the profiles of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Paypal—their monopolistic business practices, political strategies and ideologies of their founders.

Then there's the rest of the book. Taplin paints a picture of a world that was pretty great, right up until the internet got popular. Now, we have one great evil who have ruined it all: tech monopolies. Primarily hurt by this, he says, are popular musicians, but that ultimately everyone else is effected too.

Hey, I can take a book with good info wrapped into a bad narrative. What makes it really awful are his cherry-picked arguements that smell like bullshit a mile away. Sometimes they were for things I agreed with and still felt myself cringing. He could have made much better arguements, but this book reads like he is egotistically wedded to His Way of Explaining Things.

Also according to Taplin, Apple is not bad like the other companies, and Mark Zuckerberg is a Good Boy—there's still hope for him. ( )