Information Rules is a 1999 book by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian

Hal Varian

Hal Ronald Varian is an economist specializing in microeconomics and information economics. He is the Chief Economist at Google and he holds the title of emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he was founding dean of the School of Information...

 applying traditional economic theories to modern information-based technologies

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

. The book examines commercial strategies appropriate to companies that deal in information, given the high "first copy" and low "subsequent copy" costs of information commodities, such as music CD

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

s or original texts.

Content

The book examines competing standards

De facto standard

A de facto standard is a custom, convention, product, or system that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces...

, and how a company might influence widespread consumer acceptance of one over another, such as VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

 versus Betamax

Betamax

Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...

, or HD DVD

HD DVD

HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...

 versus Blu-Ray. The book mentions possible business strategies of such publishers as Encyclopedia Britannica who have to confront how to stay viable as technology changes the value and availability of information.