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The Internet Conduct Rule Must Die
It’s fitting that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai recently compared his predecessor’s jettisoning of the FCC’s light touch framework for Internet access regulation without hard evidence to the Oklahoma City...
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Portugal Isn’t a Horseman of the Net Neutrality Apocalypse
Unexpectedly, on the day that the white copy of the upcoming repeal of the 2015 Open Internet Order was published, a mobile operator in Portugal with about 7.5 million subscribers is garnering a lot of...
View ArticleSoylent Analytica: The Graph is too Damn Open
The world discovered something this past weekend that the world had already known: that what you say on the Internet stays on the Internet, spread intractably and untraceably through the tendrils of...
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Weekend reads
Good government dies in the darkness. This article is getting a lot of attention on Wonk Twitter and what’s left of the blogosphere. From the abstract: We examine the effect of local newspaper closures...
View ArticleAOL/Time Warner merger conditions are a template for disastrous tech policy
Senator Mark Warner has proposed 20 policy prescriptions for bringing “big tech” to heel. The proposals — which run the gamut from policing foreign advertising on social networks to regulating feared...
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Why Restoring Internet Freedom Was a Landmark Accomplishment
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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How Chairman Pai Restored the FCC’s Independence
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Ajit Pai and Risk-Taking at the FCC
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
View ArticleWhy the Canadian Supreme Court’s Equustek decision is a good thing for...
I recently published a piece in the Hill welcoming the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision in Google v. Equustek. In this post I expand (at length) upon my assessment of the case. In its decision, the...
View ArticleThe Washington Post editorial board understands online competition better...
Last week the editorial board of the Washington Post penned an excellent editorial responding to the European Commission’s announcement of its decision in its Google Shopping investigation. Here’s the...
View ArticleICLE urges Supreme Court to review DC Circuit decision in Open Internet Order...
Today the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review the DC Circuit’s 2016 decision upholding the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order....
View ArticleThe destiny of telecom regulation is antitrust
This week the FCC will vote on Chairman Ajit Pai’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order. Once implemented, the Order will rescind the 2015 Open Internet Order and return antitrust and consumer protection...
View ArticleTrade Agreements and Restatements as End Runs Around the Rule of Law
The Internet is a modern miracle: from providing all varieties of entertainment, to facilitating life-saving technologies, to keeping us connected with distant loved ones, the scope of the Internet’s...
View ArticleA preliminary assessment of the relative antitrust risk of a Comcast vs...
As has been rumored in the press for a few weeks, today Comcast announced it is considering making a renewed bid for a large chunk of Twenty-First Century Fox’s (Fox) assets. Fox is in the process of a...
View ArticleThe ICANN Board’s Important Test of Independence: .Amazon
One of the main concerns I had during the IANA transition was the extent to which the newly independent organization would be able to behave impartially, implementing its own policies and bylaws in an...
View ArticleSection 230 principles for lawmakers and a note of caution as Trump convenes...
This morning a diverse group of more than 75 academics, scholars, and civil society organizations — including ICLE and several of its academic affiliates — published a set of seven “Principles for...
View ArticleThere’s nothing “conservative” about Trump’s views on free speech and the...
Yesterday was President Trump’s big “Social Media Summit” where he got together with a number of right-wing firebrands to decry the power of Big Tech to censor conservatives online. According to the...
View ArticleThe Third Circuit’s Oberdorf v. Amazon opinion offers a good approach to...
[Note: A group of 50 academics and 27 organizations, including both myself and ICLE, recently released a statement of principles for lawmakers to consider in discussions of Section 230.] In a...
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Debunking Elizabeth Warren’s Claim That “More Than 70% of All Internet...
In March of this year, Elizabeth Warren announced her proposal to break up Big Tech in a blog post on Medium. She tried to paint the tech giants as dominant players crushing their smaller competitors...
View ArticleThe Snobbery of Bashing Big Tech
This guest post is by Corbin K. Barthold, Senior Litigation Counsel at Washington Legal Foundation. In the spring of 1669 a “flying coach” transported six passengers from Oxford to London in a single...
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First Amendment Conflict of Visions Redux: The Case of Facebook’s Oversight...
In the wake of the launch of Facebook’s content oversight board, Republican Senator Josh Hawley and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, among others, have taken to Twitter to levy criticisms at the firm...
View ArticleThe Earn IT Act and the Institutional Limits of Congress
As the initial shock of the COVID quarantine wanes, the Techlash waxes again bringing with it a raft of renewed legislative proposals to take on Big Tech. Prominent among these is the EARN IT Act (the...
View ArticleSenator Hawley’s Unconstitutional, Unconservative Attack on the Internet
Twitter’s decision to begin fact-checking the President’s tweets caused a long-simmering distrust between conservatives and online platforms to boil over late last month. This has led some...
View ArticleConservatism and the Section 230 Debate: Applying First Principles
Over at the Federalist Society’s blog, there has been an ongoing debate about what to do about Section 230. While there has long-been variety in what we call conservatism in the United States, the...
View ArticleThe Dishonesty of Conservative Attacks on Section 230
President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for repeal of Section 230. But while Trump and fellow conservatives decry Big Tech companies for their alleged anti-conservative bias, including at yet...
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Introductory Post: The United States v. Google
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the antitrust lawsuits against Google. The entire series of posts is available...
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Google and Shifting Conceptions of What It Means to Improve a Product
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the antitrust lawsuits against Google. The entire series of posts is available...
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The Antitrust Prohibition of Favoritism, or the Imposition of Corporate...
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the antitrust lawsuits against Google. The entire series of posts is available...
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Trade Promotions in High Tech
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the antitrust lawsuits against Google. The entire series of posts is available...
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The (Conventional) 5G Chairman
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Chairman Pai’s FCC Followed a Sound Process in Approving L-Band Wireless...
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Pai Dedicated His Tenure to Improving US Broadband
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Pai’s Legacy of Progress in Closing the Rural Digital Divide
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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A Reflection on Commissioner Pai, Chairman Pai, and Public Service
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Chairman Pai’s Legacy of Transparency
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Chairman Pai Symposium: Wrap-Up and Thoughts for the Future FCC
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Investors and Regulators Can Both Fall for Platform Bubbles
In current discussions of technology markets, few words are heard more often than “platform.” Initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses use “platform” to describe a service that is bound to dominate...
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Platform Self-Preferencing Can Be Good for Consumers and Even Competitors
Critics of big tech companies like Google and Amazon are increasingly focused on the supposed evils of “self-preferencing.” This refers to when digital platforms like Amazon Marketplace or Google...
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Congress Should Not Legalize a News Media Cartel
Amazingly enough, at a time when legislative proposals for new antitrust restrictions are rapidly multiplying—see the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act (CALERA), for...
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Committee Prepares to Grill Tech CEOS, but It Is the First Amendment That...
In what has become regularly scheduled programming on Capitol Hill, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai will be subject to yet another round of...
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The FTC Did Not ‘Fumble the Future’ in Its Google Search Investigation
Politico has released a cache of confidential Federal Trade Commission (FTC) documents in connection with a series of articles on the commission’s antitrust probe into Google Search a decade ago. The...
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An L&E Defense of the First Amendment’s Protection of Private Ordering
In his recent concurrence in Biden v. Knight, Justice Clarence Thomas sketched a roadmap for how to regulate social-media platforms. The animating factor for Thomas, much like for other conservatives,...
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The Digital Markets Act Shouldn’t Mandate Radical Interoperability
Despite calls from some NGOs to mandate radical interoperability, the EU’s draft Digital Markets Act (DMA) adopted a more measured approach, requiring full interoperability only in “ancillary”...
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Breaking Down House Democrats’ Forthcoming Competition Bills
Democratic leadership of the House Judiciary Committee have leaked the approach they plan to take to revise U.S. antitrust law and enforcement, with a particular focus on digital platforms. Broadly...
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What Lina Khan’s appointment means for the House antitrust bills
PHOTO: C-Span Lina Khan’s appointment as chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a remarkable accomplishment. At 32 years old, she is the youngest chair ever. Her longstanding criticisms of the...
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Build Broadband Better: Focus on Competition, Not Competitors
President Joe Biden named his post-COVID-19 agenda “Build Back Better,” but his proposals to prioritize support for government-run broadband service “with less pressure to turn profits” and to “reduce...
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A First Glance at the Biden Executive Order on Competition: The Good and the...
The Biden Administration’s July 9 Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy is very much a mixed bag—some positive aspects, but many negative ones. It will have some positive...
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Breaking Down the American Choice and Innovation Online Act
The American Choice and Innovation Online Act (previously called the Platform Anti-Monopoly Act), introduced earlier this summer by U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), would significantly change the...
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Using the Hypothetical Monopolist Test to Define the Relevant Market for Ad Tech
Policymakers’ recent focus on how Big Tech should be treated under antitrust law has been accompanied by claims that companies like Facebook and Google hold dominant positions in various “markets.”...
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The BIF Offers a Good First Step for Broadband, but the Devil Will Be in the...
Capping months of inter-chamber legislative wrangling, President Joe Biden on Nov. 15 signed the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the bipartisan infrastructure...
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