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With yet another net-neutrality order set to take effect (the link is to the draft version circulated before today’s Federal Communications Commission vote; the final version is expected to be published in a few weeks) and to impose common-carriage requirements on broadband internet-access service (BIAS) providers, it is worth considering how the question of whether online platforms (whether they be social media or internet service providers) have the right to editorial discretion keeps shifting.

Read the full piece here.

Go big or go home, they say. It’s not really an either-or choice: one can go big, and then go home. Not infrequently, an attempt to go big is what gets one sent home.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) swung for the fences in April 23’s open meeting. On purely partisan lines, the commission voted 3-2 to adopt a competition regulation that bans the use of noncompete agreements (NCAs) across much of the U.S. economy. With a few small wrinkles, it’s just what the FTC had proposed to do—also by a purely partisan vote—in its January 2023 notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM).

Read the full piece here.

ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited by The Dispatch in an item on the Federal Trade Commission’s vote to ban nearly all noncompete agreements in employment contracts. You can read the full piece here.

The Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that effectively bans all non-compete clauses. These contract provisions stop workers from working for competitors or starting a competing business after they leave a job. In response, economist Brian Albrecht explored the limits to the research the FTC cited.

ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was cited by the Huffington Post in a story about President Joe Biden signing legislation that seeks to force the divestment of TikTok. You can read the full piece here.

ICLE Senior Scholar Eric Fruits was quoted by Law360 in a story about the Federal Communications Commission’s vote to reimpose Title II regulation on broadband internet-access service providers. You can read the full piece here.

“I’m skeptical that Congress would actually act to do any sort of CRA reversal,” said Eric Fruits, a senior scholar at the International Center for Law and Economics, and a critic of the order. “And so that means you’re going to have the lawsuits. And the other big story of the year would be if no one filed a lawsuit. I bet you there’s someone, somewhere, who already has a lawsuit written.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (April 23, 2024) – The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) offers the following statement on today’s vote by the Federal Communications Commission (FTC) to adopt a rule classifying internet service providers (ISPs) under Title II of the Communications Act.

The following quote can be attributed to ICLE Senior Scholar Eric Fruits:

Title II is much more than net neutrality. It is the same type of expansive and heavy-handed regulation that governs public utilities. The FCC’s rule is a sharp reversal from decades of light-touch regulation that has fostered America’s leadership in broadband innovation and investment. The industry would face the yoke of onerous federal regulation and meddling that would stifle and slow future investment and experimentation.

For more on the topic, see ICLE’s issue spotlight laying out the history of Title II and net neutrality, as well as our comments to the FCC on their notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). To schedule an interview with Eric about the topic, contact ICLE Media and Communications Manager Elizabeth Lincicome at (919) 744-8087 or [email protected].

ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was quoted by the Associated Press in a story about President Joe Biden’s signing of a bill requiring Chinese firm ByteDance to sell its TikTok subsidiary. You can read the full piece here.

The battle could also string along for some time, with the potential for appeals that could go all the way to the Supreme Court, which would likely uphold the law due to its current composition, said Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School.

…“One of the unfortunate and really frustrating things about national-security legislation (is that) it tends to be a trump card,” Hurwitz said. “Once national-security issues come up, they’re going to carry the day either successfully or not.”

Hurwitz added that he thinks there are legitimate national-security arguments that could be brought up here. National security can be argued because it’s a federal measure, he added. That sets this scenario apart from previously unsuccessful state-level legislation seeking to ban TikTok, such as in Montana.

The Issue

Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data transmitted over the internet the same, and should not discriminate among consumers, entities that provide content, or applications that use the internet. Whether net neutrality should be mandated by rules and regulations—such as the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) latest net-neutrality regulations—has been a highly controversial topic since the early 2000s. In the years since 2010, the FCC has imposed net-neutrality rules (1,2), only to see them struck down by courts or repealed, as the commission’s partisan makeup changed.

ICLE Senior Scholar Miko?aj Barczentewicz was a guest on the Mobile Dev Memo podcast to discuss the European Data Protection Board’s recent ruling on the so-called “pay or okay” business model, and whether it complies with the requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Audio of the full interview is embedded below.