I... think this was answered in the article? The giant companies with state-granted monopolies and huge profits which they extract from certain markets are being told that in order for the gravy train to continue that they'll have to give something back to the community.

How was this not clear to you?

So Apple invented a time machine, sent engineers forward in time to copy the Amiga, then went back in time to create the Mac before the Amiga even existed? Wow, that's actually more impressive.

There's a significant difference, which is that blocks can have a life beyond the lexical scope that created them. By calling block_copy you get a block that you own. This is useful for things like GCD that keep queues of blocks to run.

You'll probably never see this reply, but... no

Ebay and Google both 'regulate' their markets. They have TOS agreements, Ebay only allows certain forms of payment, and of course all local, state, and federal laws (i.e. regulation) apply to listings. In other words you can't sell a bottle of wine made in California to a buyer in Virginia at any price.

Black markets are almost always dominated by mafia or crime rings who very much exert non-pricing controls over that market.

That's really the point, any truly 'free' market will rapidly devolve into some other form of exchange system without strong regulatory policing.

Can you name any real world markets that are 'regulated' solely by the 'price mechanism'?

They could've built their own syncing app like everyone else, and included support for iTunes. The iTunes library files are just XML. Lots of other apps support it.

None of those things (iTunes, iPod, iPhone) is a monopoly.

A device masquerading as another device by using the same USB manufacturer/device ID is not the way to build interoperability. It's just inviting all sorts of unintended consequences and bugs. How did this ever pass muster at Palm?

Then what's the problem? If the private sector can do it better, cheaper, and faster, why would they be worried about a little competition? Surely the market will sort it all out, right?

Capitalism needs regulation to exist. It's inherently unstable and in the absence of regulation would collapse into oligarchy/monopoly. The current problem is that the citizens aren't providing oversight of the government.

  The citizens aren't providing oversight because they're largely un/misinformed by the media. The media mis/disinforms the public because the media has been taken over/consolidated by corporations due to the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine and other media regulation during the Reagan era.