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ICLE Director of Innovation Policy Kristian Stout was quoted by Racket about Minnesota’s new right-to-repair law. You can read the full piece here.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about right-to-repair legislation. Kristian Stout is a programmer and lawyer who is the director of innovation policy at the International Center for Law & Economics. Stout loves to tinker with computers, but he’s not convinced that the right to repair makes sense for people who aren’t as technically inclined.

According to Stout, restricting repair to shops that have a special deal with a manufacturer can mean more peace of mind for consumers, because not every shop will have the resources to protect consumer data. “There’s more incentive for smaller firms to actually not invest as much in cybersecurity and data privacy,” he says.

Stout uses the example of Apple, which keeps a tight lid on its repair network in order to protect their business. “They want to make sure that consumer devices and data, specifically, are protected.” He adds that this isn’t just out of the goodness of their hearts, either—big tech companies want to protect their own brand by preventing things from going wrong with their devices.

ICLE President Geoffrey A. Manne was cited in a column in Forbes about his proposal for a “choice-of-law” system for privacy law. You can read the full piece here.

A legislative alternative that could avoid difficult cost-benefit analysis while reducing the growing burden of proliferating state privacy regulation has been advanced by scholars Geoffrey Manne of the International Center for Law and Economics and Jim Harper of the American Enterprise Institute:

“[W]e propose a federal statute requiring states to recognize contractual choice-of-law provisions, so companies and consumers can choose what state privacy law to adopt. Privacy would continue to be regulated at the state level. However, the federal government would provide for jurisdictional competition among states, and companies operating nationally could comply with the privacy laws of any one state. Unlike a single federal privacy law, this approach would provide 50 competing privacy regimes for national firms. Protecting choice of law can trigger competition and innovation in privacy practices while preserving a role for meaningful state privacy regulation.”

ICLE President Geoffrey A. Manne was quoted by Legal Newsline in a story about the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust suits and the way that they gerrymander relevant markets. You can read the full piece here.

The slicing and dicing of relevant markets is an “unfortunate trend,” antitrust scholar Geoffrey Manne has said, although it also could signal the weakness of the FTC’s case.

“An artificially narrow and gerrymandered market definition is a double-edged sword,” Manne wrote. “If the court accepts it, it’s much easier to show market power. But the odder the construction, the more likely it is to strain the court’s credulity.”

ICLE Senior Scholar Mikolaj Barczentewicz was quoted by IAPP News on the European Data Protection Board’s ruling that so-called “pay-or-consent” models will in most cases not comply with General Data Protection Regulation. You can read the full piece here.

University of Surrey associate professor of Law Miko?aj Barczentewicz said that had the EDPB issued a stronger opinion against pay-or-consent models, it would have “contradicted what the CJEU said last July” in the Meta v. Bundeskartellamt case.

“The most important take-away is that the EDPB — however grudgingly — confirmed that ‘pay-or-consent’ models are, in principle, compatible with the GDPR,” Barczentewicz told The Privacy Advisor.

In the opinion, Barczentewicz said, “the EDPB does not provide much clarity, speaking only of what they think is or isn’t allowed for large online platforms in ‘most cases.’ This opinion will certainly be considered by national data protection authorities in their investigations of Meta, but the opinion doesn’t prejudge what will be the final decisions that, for example, the Irish DPC will take.”

ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited by IP Watchdog in a story about the Federal Trade Commission’s planned vote on rules to ban nearly all noncompete clauses in employment contracts. You can read the full piece here.

Brian Albrecht, Chief Economist of the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), said in an article for Truth on the Market that, while he recognizes the potential for abusive practices associated with noncompetes, he does not support a complete ban. “[T]here is a simple economic rationale for the contract: noncompetes encourage both parties to invest in the employee-employer relationship, just like marriage contracts encourage spouses to invest in each other,” Albrecht wrote. And in official comments submitted on the proposal, ICLE said the need for a complete ban is not supported by the evidence or the Commission’s experience.

ICLE Senior Scholar Lazar Radic was quoted in the French version of EurActiv in a story about the European Union’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. You can read the full piece here.

Les élections du Parlement européen de juin constituent une étape claire et définitive pour le DSA, incitant les décideurs politiques à agir rapidement, a expliqué à Euractiv Lazar Radic, chercheur principal en politique de la concurrence à l’International Center for Law & Economics et professeur adjoint de droit à l’IE University.

Il a toutefois prévenu que le DSA restait ambigu dans la définition de ce qui constitue de la désinformation.

« Il y a aussi la question de la censure et la menace que le DSA devienne un outil non pas pour éliminer […], mais pour perpétuer les préjugés ou la désinformation », a-t-il déclaré.

M. Radic a suggéré que les lignes directrices de la Commission sur les élections visent à clarifier ces définitions, notamment en ce qui concerne la désinformation avant les élections de juin.

…« Cela s’est produit immédiatement après l’atelier [qui] était censé favoriser la communication entre la Commission et les contrôleurs d’accès. D’autres personnes et moi-même nous sommes creusés la tête. Quel était le but de tout cela ? », a commenté M. Radic.

Selon lui, la Commission avait probablement planifié les enquêtes bien avant les ateliers. L’exécutif avait peut-être espéré que les contrôleurs d’accès aborderaient les problèmes identifiés lors des ateliers, mais les enquêtes ont pu être décidées indépendamment des résultats des ateliers.

M. Radic a ajouté qu’il pourrait également y avoir « un élément disciplinaire [dans les mesures]. La Commission veut montrer qu’elle est sérieuse ».

« La Commission ne cesse de répéter que le droit de la concurrence et le DMA sont deux choses totalement différentes. Mais nous avons ici un nouvel exemple de ce continuum entre les deux », a-t-il affirmé. « En effet, les deux sont déployés exactement au même moment».

M. Radic a ajouté que le DMA était présenté comme un règlement auto-applicatif, mais il a remis cela en question. « Comment est-il auto-applicatif si la Commission lance maintenant, [au] cours du premier mois, ces enquêtes ? »

Il s’est également interrogé sur la manière dont la Commission mesurerait l’adéquation des changements apportés par les contrôleurs d’accès pour atteindre les objectifs d’équité et de contestabilité du DMA.

Selon M. Radic, le « test final » de la réussite du DMA est de savoir si les parts de marché des concurrents augmenteront. C’est peut-être ce que la loi entend par « équité », a-t-il ajouté.

ICLE Senior Scholar Lazar Radic was quoted by MediaNama in a story about implementation of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. You can read the full piece here.

Lazar Radic, Senior Scholar for Competition Policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, Adjunct Professor of Law at IE University pointed to the delayed release of services like Threads and Google’s AI due to the lack of clarity about the obligations under the DMA. He also noted that consumers had taken affront to Google Search removing the link to Google Maps at the top of their Search page. Thus, he concluded “[The DMA is] focused on fairness and contestability. It’s not concerned with consumer welfare, efficiency, or consumer welfare considerations.” Jha agreed that there was a similar risk in India. Thus, to prevent this he believes an “in-depth broad study at a stakeholder level is necessary.”

…Radic said, “The Digital Markets Act was touted at the beginning as a self-enforcement tool. It was said that the Digital Markets Act would compel gatekeepers to act a certain way without much necessity of the Commission’s intervening to decide whether a certain product design complies with the obligations and prohibitions. And therefore, it wouldn’t require such a great increase in staffing.” However, Radic argued that the reality was a bit more complex. He noted that designated gatekeepers in a set of lengthy workshops had presented the various ways in which the the gatekeepers would be enacting obligations and prohibitions under the DMA. Yet, soon the EC opened investigations into these gatekeepers for not complying with their obligations. “So it’s not that self-executing, it seems”, he said.

…Radic also spoke about a similar challenge in the enforcement of the DMA. Speaking about regulators in the EU he said, “Nobody knows if there’s enough capacity. What I would say is that it seems that more capacity is going to be required than was initially envisioned.” He pointed out the issue saying, “The people that are qualified to enforce this and that understand this, are people that come from the competition law world. You have a limited pool of experts, you’re taking those people away from competition law enforcement…. and you’re putting them in this regulatory sandbox…..”

ICLE President Geoffrey A. Manne was quoted by StateScoop in a story about the proposed American Privacy Rights Act and how it could preempt state privacy laws. You can read the full piece here.

Geoffrey Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics, said there’s an advantage to having a diversity of law. In a paper published last month by the American Enterprise Institute, he proposes preserving that diversity through a federal “choice of law” statute.

The “choice of law” statute, if added to APRA, would allow states to keep their privacy laws and prevent the federal law from preempting state authority. Businesses would be allowed their choice of which state’s privacy law they must follow.

“The idea was very much modeled on the state incorporation law, where the corporation picks the state in which it’s going to be incorporated, and it’s internal governance is governed by the laws of that state, no matter where it’s doing business, around the country,” Geoffrey Manne, an author of the paper and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics, told StateScoop.

An added benefit of the statute, Manne said, would be its encouragement of competition among states over their privacy statutes and among businesses over their privacy practices. This would also allow the more tailored privacy laws — such as the Illinois BIPA or the Washington My Health My Data Act — to make operating within certain states more appealing to the covered businesses.

Manne said he’s not in favor of undoing state efforts to regulate data privacy, but he’s skeptical of a federal privacy law that isn’t flexible enough to meet the varying needs of states.

“Neither all consumers nor all businesses have the same kind of privacy risks and preferences,” Manne said. “As a practical matter, it’s very hard to to prescribe rules that are optimal for 330 million people. And that’s true with all law. Instead, you could end up with a lot of different sort of much more tailored privacy regimes, and the opportunity for companies to kind of match their needs with privacy regimes being offered.”

ICLE Senior Scholar Lazar Radic was quoted by EurActiv in a story about the European Union’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. You can read the full piece here.

The June European Parliament elections serve as a clear and definitive milestone for the DSA, prompting swift action from policymakers, said Lazar Radic, a senior scholar for competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics and adjunct professor of law at IE University, told Euractiv.

He warned, however, that there remains ambiguity in the DSA in defining what constitutes misinformation.

“There is also the question of censorship and the threat of the DSA becoming a tool for not suppressing misinformation but perpetuating biases or misinformation,” he said.

Radic suggested that the Commission’s guidelines on elections are intended to clarify these definitions, particularly regarding misinformation ahead of the June elections.

…“This was immediately after the workshop [which] was supposed to foster communication between the Commission and the gatekeepers. I and others have been scratching our heads. What was the point of this?” said Radic.

He said the Commission had likely had investigations planned way before the workshops. The Commission might have hoped the gatekeepers would address previously identified concerns during the workshops, but the probes may have been decided regardless of the workshop outcomes, the scholar said.

Radic added that there might also be “a disciplinary element to [the measures]. The Commission wants to signal that it’s serious.”

“The Commission keeps saying that competition law and DMA are completely different things. But here we have yet another example of that continuum between the two,” he said. “In fact, the two are deployed at the same exact time.”