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TL;DR The European Union has unveiled draft legislation that seeks to tame so-called “gatekeeper” Big Tech firms. If passed into law, this Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) would create a list of “dos and don’ts” by which the platforms must abide, such as allowing interoperability with third parties and sharing data with rivals.
The European Union has unveiled draft legislation that seeks to tame so-called “gatekeeper” Big Tech firms. If passed into law, this Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) would create a list of “dos and don’ts” by which the platforms must abide, such as allowing interoperability with third parties and sharing data with rivals. In short, the DMA would give the European Commission significant powers to tell tech companies how to run their businesses.
The DMA essentially shifts competition enforcement against gatekeeper platforms away from an “effects” analysis that weighs costs and benefits to a “blacklist” approach that proscribes all listed practices as harmful. This will constrain platforms’ ability to experiment with new products and make changes to existing ones, limiting their ability to innovate and compete.
Read the full explainer here.
Popular Media If passed into law, this Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) would fundamentally alter the way these platforms conduct business in Europe. But European Commission officials have been so . . .
If passed into law, this Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) would fundamentally alter the way these platforms conduct business in Europe. But European Commission officials have been so preoccupied with how to regulate Big Tech that they never stopped to consider whether they should. Indeed, these new rules could have unintended consequences that hamper digital markets in the EU.
Read the full piece here.
ICLE White Paper There is a danger that the UK is heading for a significant and potentially damaging overhaul of its competition policy on the basis of thin evidence, rushed analysis, and no attempt to measure the costs, benefits and risks of the approach being undertaken.
There is a danger that the UK is heading for a significant and potentially damaging overhaul of its competition policy on the basis of thin evidence, rushed analysis, and no attempt to measure the costs, benefits and risks of the approach being undertaken. The fact that the Digital Markets Taskforce consultation period was only one month is itself an example of this – one month is an unreasonably short period of time if the consultation was being taken seriously, and suggests that instead it is merely window-dressing to give procedural cover to whatever the government plans on doing anyway.
This would be a mistake. The two main documents that have led to the creation of the Digital Markets Taskforce, the Furman Report and the CMA’s digital advertising market study, do not provide strong justifications for the changes they propose, which are sweeping. Neither of them consider the trade-offs involved with the interventions they propose in any serious detail, let alone attempt to measure them quantitatively, yet these trade-offs and risks – lower investment, reduced competition, less innovation, fewer startups being founded in the UK, and worse productivity growth for the UK over the years ahead – are potentially enormous, and could weaken the UK’s technology sector.
Read the full paper here.
A growing number of companies operate on a global scale attracting the scrutiny of multiple competition law authorities around the world. As some of the . . .
A growing number of companies operate on a global scale attracting the scrutiny of multiple competition law authorities around the world. As some of the largest and most developed antitrust jurisdictions in the world, the US and the EU are often looked upon as influential authorities on competition law standards and approaches. They do not always agree, but they are not necessarily as divergent as it is sometime suggested in the literature. This conference will discuss the relationship between the two jurisdictions.
To examine these issues the conference will bring together academics, practitioners, and regulators from the EU and the US. It will consist of four panels, one of which will be structured as a moderated conversation among current and former enforcers from the US and Europe:
The conference will take place at the School of Law, University of Leeds from 9.15am until 5.15pm on 15 September 2017.
The conference is free but registration is required on Eventbrite.
This full-day conference is jointly organised and funded by the Centre for Business Law and Practice (CLBP) at the School of Law and the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE) in Portland, OR, USA.
The CPBL is a leading research centre based at the School of Law, University of Leeds. Its expertise includes corporate and financial law, commercial and consumer law and, competition/antitrust law. It is large and well-established, with over 20 academic members, half of which are professors. Its members have established international reputations in the broad field of business law, and in particular in corporate and financial law.
The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) is a nonprofit, non-partisan research center. Working with a roster of more than fifty academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe, ICLE develops and disseminates targeted academic output to build the intellectual foundation for rigorous, economically-grounded policy.
The conference will be preceded by Professor Pinar Akman’s Inaugural Lecture, which will take place at 5.00pm on 14 September 2017 at the School of Law, University of Leeds. Additional registration for the Inaugural Lecture is required; it can be done on a different Eventbrite page to that for the conference itself. To register for the Inaugural Lecture please click here.
The School of Law, University of Leeds is accredited by the Bar Standards Board to provide CPD for barristers at the Bar of England & Wales. The conference is accredited with 7 CPD hours for barristers at the Bar of England & Wales. We are willing to confirm the attendance of solicitors for CPD purposes on their individual CPD records.
Location Details
Moot Court Room, Liberty Building, School of Law, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT (download map).
There is limited car-parking available on campus on a first come, first serve basis.
If you require help with registration or finding us, please contact Ms Lucie Milner ([email protected]). For any other questions please contact Professor Peter Whelan ([email protected]).
Slides
Dr Hedvig Schmidt, University of Southampton – Fantastic Beasts and How to Deal with Them Under the Competition Rules
Professor Koren Wong-Ervin, Global Antitrust Institute – Standard-Essential Patent and FRAND: The International Landscape
Professor Salil Mehra, Temple University – Robo-Selling, Big Data and Antitrust’s Error-Cost Framework
Regulatory Comments The Commission’s interest in protecting the privacy of its citizens is commendable.
The Commission’s interest in protecting the privacy of its citizens is commendable. This concern, however, should be well tempered by humility, and the Commission’s ultimate decision should be guided by the understanding that contemporary technology and market innovations have afforded consumers a degree of choice unparallelled in the history of the European Union. While some firms may build their products with the requirement that consumers allow them to use personal information, others will not. And when consumers defect from products that do not meet their individual mix of privacy, price, and other preferences, firms will take notice and change their behavior accordingly.
This leads to another related point: innovation moves so quickly today that uniform prescriptive regulation intended to govern the behavior of many thousands of firms and millions of consumers is doomed to frustration if not outright failure. Moreover, broad regulations meant to bring industry to heel frequently work to the benefit of incumbents, driving out smaller competitors or making entry nearly impossible, only further narrowing consumer choices and guaranteeing less than optimal results for all of society.
With that said, there are certainly actions for the Commission to take that ensure a competitive environment in which consumer interests are adequately protected. Chief among these areas would be to enact regulations that control the damaging effects of costly data localization rules. Overall, however, the Commission would do best to leave much of the implementation of privacy regulations to the individual EU members who are most in touch with the challenges and desires of their own constituents.
TOTM Nearly all economists from across the political spectrum agree: free trade is good. Yet free trade agreements are not always the same thing as free . . .
Nearly all economists from across the political spectrum agree: free trade is good. Yet free trade agreements are not always the same thing as free trade. Whether we’re talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the European Union’s Digital Single Market (DSM) initiative, the question is always whether the agreement in question is reducing barriers to trade, or actually enacting barriers to trade into law.
