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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.”

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.