Innovation – and the technology that comes from it – has made all of our lives better in almost incalculable ways. Whether its access to clean water, transportation that can take us anywhere we want to go, or the information revolution, many of us would be lost without these technologies. Yet when it comes to technology advancements, government often gets in the way. Rules and regulations make it difficult for innovators to improve our lives. Louisiana often lags behind in embracing new technology stifling innovation and job creation while also hurting consumers in the process.
Last week, Christine Wilson, a commissioner at the FTC, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal announcing her resignation from the FTC. The reason: Lina Khan’s continual disregard for the rule of law, abuse of power, and the enablement of it by senior officials. We’ve written a lot about the dangerous direction of the...
Next week, the Supreme Court is set to hear cases involving the content moderation practices of social media platforms, including Gonzales v. Google. At the heart of the cases is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If you don’t know, Section 230 has governed online expression since it was enacted in 1996. In general,...
Last year, the Federal Communications Commission released its nationwide broadband availability map. If you don’t know, a broadband connection is anything faster than a 25 Mbps download speed and a 3 Mbps upload speed. Translation: that’s the speed you need to watch a 4K movie or conduct a Zoom meeting. The map’s release is part...
Epic Games is in trouble. The creator of the popular video game Fortnite has reached an agreement with the FTC to pay $520 million in relief over allegations that the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Allegedly, the company used underhanded tactics to cause players to make unintentional purchases. Epic will pay...
Yesterday, the DOJ–infused with the spirit of “hipster antitrust”–filed a lawsuit against Google, seeking to break up what they perceive to be Google’s “monopoly” in digital advertising. The suit claims that Google has “monopoly power in the ad-tech industry, hurting web publishers and advertisers that try to use competing products.” The suit has the same flavor...
Antitrust is now front and center in the national debate. Under the leadership of Lina Khan, the FTC has pursued an aggressive new “Neo-Brandeisian” philosophy of antitrust regulation—or, what you could call “hipster” antitrust. This philosophy believes antitrust should not be limited to the “consumer welfare standard” that has dominated antitrust legislation since the 1970s....
There are essentially two schools of thought when it comes to antitrust legislation: The Harvard School and the Chicago School. “The Harvard School is best summed up as: Big is Bad,” wrote Andy Kessler. This school of thought dominated antitrust legislation during the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. However, the Chicago school, emphasizing the consumer welfare...
The debate around whether government should regulate social media platforms centers on whether these companies are “common carriers”—that is, “a person or a commercial enterprise that transports passengers or goods for a fee and establishes that their service is open to the general public.” Historically, in American law, examples of this are railroads, airlines, ferries,...
For the past few months, we’ve written about a slew of bills that Congress was trying to ram through this lame-duck session, egregious government overreach from the head of the FTC, Lina Kahn, and poorly crafted regulatory bills from Florida and Texas that call for greater regulation of social media platforms. In the case of...
The Journalism Competition Preservation Act (JCPA) won’t go away. Now, there are reports that some are attempting to attach it to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), since it has failed to gain traction the last two years. The NDAA is a crucial bill for congress to pass, hence the hidden-not-hidden attempt to attach it....
Recently, I came across an article titled, “MySpace Is A Natural Monopoly,” written on January 17, 2007. The article is a great reminder that present concerns aren’t always justified and calls for government regulation shouldn’t be our first response. The author made the same arguments about MySpace that some are currently making regarding the tech platforms...
Last year, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the Open App Markets Act. The act is an attempt to prevent Apple and Google, who operate App Store and Google Play, from engaging in alleged “anti-competitive practices.” There are several concerns with the act, beginning with the fact that...