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Popular Media These days, there isn’t a lot of harmony in the world of technology policy. But there is a bright spot of bipartisanship in a section . . .
These days, there isn’t a lot of harmony in the world of technology policy. But there is a bright spot of bipartisanship in a section of our airwaves: the 5.9 GHz band. In 2020, the FCC voted unanimously to modernize the rules in this spectrum to allow both Wi-Fi and automotive safety tech to operate. This win-win was celebrated by proponents of car safety and broadband alike. But today the Department of Transportation (DOT) is working on a study that may purposely have been designed to undo this decision. At a time when broadband is more important than ever, we should not undo this popular and bipartisan policy.
Read the full piece here.
Presentations & Interviews ICLE Executive Director Ian Adams joined the Regulatory Transparency Project’s Fourth Branch Podcast to discuss proposed rules that would require mandatory switching on U.S. railroads. . . .
ICLE Executive Director Ian Adams joined the Regulatory Transparency Project’s Fourth Branch Podcast to discuss proposed rules that would require mandatory switching on U.S. railroads. The full episode is embedded below.
Presentations & Interviews ICLE Executive Director Ian Adams joined the Regulatory Transparency Project’s Fourth Branch Podcast to discuss a recent online tussle between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and . . .
ICLE Executive Director Ian Adams joined the Regulatory Transparency Project’s Fourth Branch Podcast to discuss a recent online tussle between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and what it could mean for the future of the state’s insurance regulatory regime. The full episode is embedded below.
Popular Media When an obscure provision of a state’s 1988 insurance law makes the news, it’s often confined to the pages of Insurance Journal. However, when the world’s . . .
When an obscure provision of a state’s 1988 insurance law makes the news, it’s often confined to the pages of Insurance Journal. However, when the world’s richest man tweets about that law in the course of a Twitter spat with a state insurance commissioner, it makes mainstream headlines.
Regulatory Comments Comments of the International Center for Law & Economics Before the Surface Transportation Board STB Ex Parte No. 711 (Sub-No. 1) Reciprocal Switching Submitted Feb. . . .
On behalf of the International Center for Law & Economics, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes the use of law & economics methodologies to inform public-policy debates, I offer the following comments to express concern about the potential finalization and promulgation of the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) 2016 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding the imposition of a reciprocal-switching requirement for U.S. freight-rail operations.
The STB’s renewed efforts on reciprocal switching have come as part of a push by the administration to spur competition in the U.S. economy.[1] This proceeding responds specifically to a call by President Joe Biden to: “strengthen regulations pertaining to reciprocal switching agreements.”[2] Unfortunately, like much of the administration’s broader effort, the regulatory solutions the STB offers are in search of competition problems, evidence of which remains conspicuously absent. Worse, the STB offers these new regulations on the basis of a docket that is now dated and that itself relied on even older data.[3] As a procedural and factual matter, the STB should use this proceeding to abandon consideration both of the 2016 NPRM, specifically, and of a reciprocal-switching mandate altogether.
Toward that end, these comments speak to the manifest infirmities of the proposal under consideration by examining how the STB has failed in its statutory duty to identify a problem suitable for regulatory redress; by identifying the proposed solution’s most likely outcomes and exploring how poorly they satisfy the Proposed Rule’s stated goal; and by detailing the inevitable costs associated with promulgating the Proposed Rule.
Competition within the freight-rail sector and the larger U.S. economy is vital to the nation’s economic health, and by the STB’s most recent assessment, is robust.[4] But the role of regulation is to make markets regular in a manner that fosters efficiency, not to reflect the whims or will of a regulator to the detriment of a disfavored party.
Read the full comments here.
[1] Executive Order 14036, 86 FR 36987-36999, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” July 9, 2021. https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2021-15069.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Docket No. EP 711, Docket No. EP 711 (Sub-No. 1), 81 FR 51149-51165,“Petition for Rulemaking To Adopt Revised Competitive Switching Rules; Reciprocal Switching.” Aug 3, 2016. (NPRM). https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2016-17980.
[4] Laurits Christensen Associates report to Surface Transportation Board, “A Study of Competition in the U.S. Freight Railroad Industry and Analysis of Proposals that might Enhance Competition.” November 2009. https://www.stb.gov/wpcontent/uploads/files/docs/competitionStudy/Executive%20Summary.pdf.
ICLE Issue Brief State legislatures are now tackling consumers’ digital privacy. Given the Internet’s inherently international character, a federal bill setting a national standard for digital privacy would . . .
State legislatures are now tackling consumers’ digital privacy. Given the Internet’s inherently international character, a federal bill setting a national standard for digital privacy would be ideal. Yet, in the absence of federal legislation, state governments are seeking to address consumer privacy. Unfortunately, overly broad and burdensome regulatory obligations pose a real and immediate risk to digital innovation. Ensuring a globally robust market requires balancing consumer privacy and legitimate information exchange between consumers and digital-services companies.
The attached guiding principles and legislative checklist from the Reason Foundation and the International Center for Law & Economics seeks to help legislators and stakeholders narrowly tailor state consumer-privacy policy to address concrete consumer harms while preventing disproportionately punitive responses that obstruct market performance.
Read the full checklist here.
Popular Media President Joe Biden’s July 2021 executive order offered a sneak preview of his administration’s priorities for the freight-rail sector, particularly where it calls on the Surface Transportation . . .
President Joe Biden’s July 2021 executive order offered a sneak preview of his administration’s priorities for the freight-rail sector, particularly where it calls on the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to “strengthen regulations pertaining to reciprocal switching agreements.”
TL;DR Since taking office, the Biden administration has moved aggressively to use enforcement actions and rulemakings—many of them outlined in the administration’s July 2021 executive order—ostensibly as a means to promote market competition.
Since taking office, the Biden administration has moved aggressively to use enforcement actions and rulemakings—many of them outlined in the administration’s July 2021 executive order—ostensibly as a means to promote market competition. Among the targets of this approach has been the freight-rail sector. The administration advocates for mandated reciprocal switching, a form of compelled network interoperability, on grounds that it would improve the rail industry’s competitive environment.
The Biden EO called on the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to “strengthen regulations pertaining to reciprocal switching agreements,” which the board is expected to do in early 2022. The regulations would be based on a six-year-old notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), which was, in turn, based on far older data.
Concerns about competition in the freight-rail industry, and particularly about consolidation among Class I railroads, have been both overblown and misdirected, driving officials to seek counterproductive regulatory remedies. A reciprocal-switching mandate would render rail networks both less efficient and less resilient, as it would undermine firms’ ability to schedule their operations precisely.
Such a mandate would be particularly counterproductive in the midst of the ongoing supply-chain crisis. Over the longer term, a switching mandate would undermine the very incentives that have yielded enormous private investment in the development and ongoing maintenance of rail infrastructure.
Read the full explainer here.
TOTM It’s a telecom tale as old as time: industry gets a prime slice of radio spectrum and falls in love with it, only to take . . .
It’s a telecom tale as old as time: industry gets a prime slice of radio spectrum and falls in love with it, only to take it for granted. Then, faced with the reapportionment of that spectrum, it proceeds to fight tooth and nail (and law firm) to maintain the status quo.
