News
Archive

ICLE comments on a Federal Communications Commission proposal to mandate consumer rebates for retransmission negotiation related video blackouts were cited in a story by Communications Daily. You can read the full piece here.

While blackouts are a consumer annoyance, the FCC’s framing of the issue oversimplifies retrans talks “and mischaracterizes consumers’ agency in subscribing to and using multichannel-video-programming distributors,” the International Center for Law & Economics said. The commission is proposing “unworkable and arbitrary rules.” With rebates potentially being as small as a few cents, the cost to the FCC, cable and DBS operators “would be many times greater than the amount of rebates provided to consumers,” it added.

ICLE Academic Affiliate David Teece was cited in an article by Competition Policy International about the history of compulsory licenses. You can read the full piece here.

Economists like Peter Grindley and David Teece have lauded this remedy, citing it as a catalyst for economic growth and innovation. Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore echoed this sentiment, recognizing the decree’s significance for the semiconductor industry. Notably, AT&T’s acceptance of the compulsory license remedy was a means to resolve the DOJ’s antitrust probe initiated in 1949—a testament to the collaborative nature of consent decrees, often shaped by input from investigated parties who have inadvertently shaped the market accused of monopolization.

ICLE Senior Scholar Lazar Radic was cited by Mobile Marketing magazine in a story about the rollout of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. You can read the full piece here.

Some, like Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, might argue that it’s not an ideal start for the EU legislation. But doesn’t it in fact show that the EC is taking things seriously? Even the DMA’s critics, such as Lazar Radic from Portland’s International Center for Law and Economics acknowledge that the law isn’t “self-executing.” So let’s not forget that the DMA is unprecedented. Like any new legislation, of course there are going to be teething problems in its execution. But we’ll only discover what they might be by testing it.

ICLE President Geoffrey A. Manne was cited by Meer.com in a story about the European Commission’s move to block Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot. You can read the full piece here.

Geoffrey Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law & Economics, argues the EC’s rationale is based on far-fetched hypotheticals about dramatic actions Amazon could take in the future, such as limiting or foreclosing competitors from selling on Amazon, rather than concrete evidence, ultimately undermining consumer interests.

ICLE Nonresident Scholar Joanna Shepherd was quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a story about recently passed Georgia legislation that would limit insurers’ liability for big-rig crashes. You can read the full piece here.

Georgia is one of four states that allow direct actions against the insurers of commercial vehicle operators, Emory University law professor Joanna Shepherd said. Evidence shows “insurance companies do charge higher prices when they expect to be involved in more litigation,” she said.

Potential downsides of the bill include that it might make it harder for some plaintiffs to get compensation and force some motor carriers to pay defense costs upfront, Shepherd said. She said she believes that “in the vast majority of cases, we won’t see a problem.”

…Shepherd and Eric Larson, a commercial litigation partner at Morris Manning, said lawmakers may soften the bill to get it approved in the next session.

“The way it’s written right now, it seems extremely difficult for a plaintiff to prevail,” Shepherd said. “I think it goes much too far.”

ICLE Director of Innovation Policy Kristian Stout was quoted by Communications Daily in a story about the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed 5G Fund order. You can read the full piece here.

Kristian Stout, director-innovation policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, said without text it’s difficult to form “strong opinions” on the 5G Fund. “When there are items like this under consideration there is no good reason not to release them to the public as they are being considered,” Stout said.

ICLE Academic Affiliate Christopher Yoo was cited in a post at The Volokh Conspiracy about his recent piece dissecting problems with the argument that social-media platforms should be treated as common carriers. You can read the full piece here.

University of Pennsylvania law Prof. Christopher Yoo recently published an article that is the most thorough takedown of the common carrier theory so far. Here is the abstract…

…I agree with almost all of Yoo’s analysis. In particular, I think he is right that social media firms don’t fit any of the traditional rationales for common carrier status, and that states cannot simply create such status by legislative fiat (or at least, if they do, it cannot override constitutional constraints on their regulatory authority).

ICLE Senior Scholar Eric Fruits was quoted by The Oregonian on Portland voters unwillingness to raise property taxes to support the public school system. You can read the full piece here.

Voters are acutely aware of a host of other local and regional taxes and levies that have won approval in the past five years, some of which have been slow to yield measurable results, said Eric Fruits, an economics professor at Portland State University who has sent four children to Portland’s public schools.

ICLE Senior Scholar Lazar Radic was quoted by ExchangeWire in a story about how other jurisdictions are looking to copy the EU’s Digital Markets Act. You can read the full piece here.

ICLE’s Lazar Radic calls what the DMA is trying to achieve ‘the Brussels effect’ – “a regulatory contagion from the EU to other places. This would turn it into something like what you have called “the world’s digital police,” at least within the boundaries of the conduct covered by the DMA,” he explains.

…For advertisers, adapting to managing additional silos can further complicate an already tricky task. With the fragmentation of tracking and profiling individuals at scale without relying on third-party data, which is frequently stored in third-party cookies, many marketers are already grappling with this challenge. Radic describes this as “…clearly designed to drive a wedge in gatekeepers’ ad tech model, preventing them from cross-using data between a core platform services and any other service provided by the gatekeeper – for example, between an online search engine, a messaging app, and a social networking app.”

…“Gatekeeper’s ad tech might become less effective, and their ads less relevant. This hurts gatekeepers. In turn, given gatekeepers’ loss of control of advertising on their own platforms, end-users might be exposed to more irrelevant, random advertising noise from third-parties,” explains Radic. “This hurts consumers. The DMA could also impact gatekeepers’ incentives to invest in their platform, seeing as how the regulation purposefully facilitates third parties from free-riding on those investments. This, in the end, hurts everyone.”