Don’t be disappointed, but this post isn’t going to give you a complete history of the 1992 Cable Act. That law had a lot of great ideas — and led to some great results — but it also had some disappointments, as the law was either watered down or poorly implemented. However, one of its […]

On January 1, 2020, the nation’s strictest privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), will take effect. The law empowers consumers to (1) be informed about what personal information a company has collected about them; (2) delete that data; and (3) opt out of companies selling that data to third parties. On top of […]

In the current era of “big tech,” there have been various proposals on how to deal with the rise of dominant digital platforms. These range from no government regulation to breaking up monopolies and creating sector specific regulation. Another proposal calls for empowering workers by creating antitrust exemptions for small businesses and independent contractors to […]

Last year, Representative Suzan DelBene (D-WA) introduced a privacy bill, the Information Transparency & Personal Data Control Act (Data Control Act). Public Knowledge provided input to Rep. DelBene’s office on the development of its discussion draft. However, we were disappointed to see that, upon introduction, the substance of the bill had been watered down from […]

This was originally posted on the Yale School of Management’s Yale Insights blog.  The first antitrust laws and enforcement efforts in the United States were taken in response to the emergence of sprawling industrial conglomerations—the “trusts” in “antitrust”—that amassed inordinate power over the growing American economy. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, for instance, controlled as […]

Communications networks and other platforms are valuable in large part because of their users. One effect of this is that networks that already have the most users tend to grow even larger. Left unchecked, this can cause significant competition problems and leave individual private companies in charge of vital communications infrastructure. Even if antitrust law […]

The last few days have highlighted the complete inadequacy of our political advertising rules in an era when even the President of the United States has no hesitation in blasting the world with unproven conspiracy theories about political rivals using both traditional broadcast media and social media. We cannot ignore the urgency of this for […]

I have written about app stores at length before but it is worth reiterating a few points given the recent news about Apple removing access to the Hkmap.live app (which helps people track police activity) and Google removing access to The Revolution of Our Times (a protest game).  First, Apple’s (and Google’s) explanations don’t pass […]

Both Mozilla and Google are rolling out some version of DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) in their respective web browsers, Firefox and Chrome. Internet service providers and others are up in arms. This post will try to explain why at least two of the criticisms–on privacy and competition grounds–don’t make a lot of sense. The technical arguments, on […]

As you may have heard, the long-awaited decision in Mozilla v. FCC came out yesterday. First the bad news: The Federal Communications Commission won on the main issue, which is broadband reclassification. But there’s good news, too, in that the Court completely rejected the FCC’s attempts to prevent states from passing their own net neutrality […]