Eric Goldman on the role and importance of Section 230 immunity
For those who follow these things (and for those who don’t but should!), Eric Goldman just posted an excellent short essay on Section 230 immunity and account terminations. Here’s the abstract: An...
View ArticleHill Event on December 13: “CopyRIGHT: Can Free Marketeers Agree on Copyright...
What promises to be an interesting and lively panel discussion on copyright will occur on the Hill on December 13. Even better, it includes not one but two Truth on the Market bloggers–Geoff and me!...
View ArticleSenator Markey’s Do Not Track Kids Act of 2013 Raises the Question: What’s...
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) continues to be a hot button issue for many online businesses and privacy advocates. On November 14, Senator Markey, along with Senator Kirk and...
View ArticleA Takedown of Common Sense: The 9th Circuit Overturns the Supreme Court in a...
The Ninth Circuit made waves recently with its decision in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., in which it decided that a plaintiff in a copyright infringement case must first take potential fair use...
View ArticleTrade Agreements and Restatements as End Runs Around the Rule of Law
The Internet is a modern miracle: from providing all varieties of entertainment, to facilitating life-saving technologies, to keeping us connected with distant loved ones, the scope of the Internet’s...
View ArticleSection 230 principles for lawmakers and a note of caution as Trump convenes...
This morning a diverse group of more than 75 academics, scholars, and civil society organizations — including ICLE and several of its academic affiliates — published a set of seven “Principles for...
View ArticleThere’s nothing “conservative” about Trump’s views on free speech and the...
Yesterday was President Trump’s big “Social Media Summit” where he got together with a number of right-wing firebrands to decry the power of Big Tech to censor conservatives online. According to the...
View ArticleThe Third Circuit’s Oberdorf v. Amazon opinion offers a good approach to...
[Note: A group of 50 academics and 27 organizations, including both myself and ICLE, recently released a statement of principles for lawmakers to consider in discussions of Section 230.] In a...
View ArticleWhat’s the Harm of Targeted Ads on Children’s Content Anyway?
The FTC’s recent YouTube settlement and $170 million fine related to charges that YouTube violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has the issue of targeted advertising back in...
View ArticleICLE Files COPPA Review Comments Arguing the FTC Should Repeal the 2013...
Today, I filed a regulatory comment in the FTC’s COPPA Rule Review on behalf of the International Center for Law & Economics. Building on prior work, I argue the FTC’s 2013 amendments to the COPPA...
View ArticleThe Earn IT Act and the Institutional Limits of Congress
As the initial shock of the COVID quarantine wanes, the Techlash waxes again bringing with it a raft of renewed legislative proposals to take on Big Tech. Prominent among these is the EARN IT Act (the...
View ArticleSenator Hawley’s Unconstitutional, Unconservative Attack on the Internet
Twitter’s decision to begin fact-checking the President’s tweets caused a long-simmering distrust between conservatives and online platforms to boil over late last month. This has led some...
View ArticleHow does antitrust measure nonprice effects like political bias?
In the latest congressional hearing, purportedly analyzing Google’s “stacking the deck” in the online advertising marketplace, much of the opening statement and questioning by Senator Mike Lee and...
View ArticleConservatism and the Section 230 Debate: Applying First Principles
Over at the Federalist Society’s blog, there has been an ongoing debate about what to do about Section 230. While there has long-been variety in what we call conservatism in the United States, the...
View ArticleThe Dishonesty of Conservative Attacks on Section 230
President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for repeal of Section 230. But while Trump and fellow conservatives decry Big Tech companies for their alleged anti-conservative bias, including at yet...
View ArticleCommittee Prepares to Grill Tech CEOS, but It Is the First Amendment That...
In what has become regularly scheduled programming on Capitol Hill, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai will be subject to yet another round of...
View ArticleAn L&E Defense of the First Amendment’s Protection of Private Ordering
In his recent concurrence in Biden v. Knight, Justice Clarence Thomas sketched a roadmap for how to regulate social-media platforms. The animating factor for Thomas, much like for other conservatives,...
View ArticleHow Changing Section 230 Could Disrupt Insurance Markets
In recent years, a diverse cross-section of advocates and politicians have leveled criticisms at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and its grant of legal immunity to interactive computer...
View ArticleA Coasean Analysis of Offensive Speech
Words can wound. They can humiliate, anger, insult. University students—or, at least, a vociferous minority of them—are keen to prevent this injury by suppressing offensive speech. To ensure campuses...
View Article10 Years After SOPA/PIPA, Congress Still Needs to Address Online Piracy
Activists who railed against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) a decade ago today celebrate the 10th anniversary of their day of protest, which they credit with sending...
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