have caused markets to fail are arrayed a large number of instances in which new technologies have displaced incumbent technologies that were firmly entrenched. For example, vinyl and cassette recordings have been displaced by compact disks, and the VHS video format has been displaced by the digital video disc (DVD) format, which in turn has given way to the Blu-Ray high-definition DVD format. In short, the empirical record provides little reason to believe that networks are in any way sufficiently prone to market failure to justify more intrusive regulation than any other type of industry. If anything, the history of technological change suggests the contrary. Particularly given that even the theoretical models on which this literature is based suggest that network economic effects can cause market failure only under certain limited circumstances, claims of market failures caused by network economic effects that are not backed by firm empirical support should be approached with considerable skepticism. Last, even proof of the existence of the necessary empirical preconditions for network-induced market failure would not necessarily support regulatory inter- vention. Consider, for example, the particular regulatory decisions associated with any state-sponsored attempt to solve the problems of technological lock-in. Such intervention would necessarily require the government to replace clear winners in the technology marketplace with what it believed represented the superior tech- nology. Moreover, in order to be effective, the government must do SO at an early stage in the technology's development, when making such determinations is the most difficult. Regulators would also typically have to make such determinations on extremely thin information that in most cases would be provided by parties with a direct interest in the outcome of the regulatory process. In addition, decisionmakers would have to insulate themselves from the types of systematic biases traditionally associated with political decisionmaking process