Showing archive for: “Platforms”
Brussels Writes the Answer Key
Ask Brussels what ChatGPT is, and you get two answers. Under the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), the European Union regulates it as artificial intelligence. On Aug. 31, the European Commission supplied another answer when it designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Each classification comes with ... Brussels Writes the Answer Key
Rate Expectations: Apple and the New Price Regulators
Competition policy is supposed to protect the competitive process, not do double-duty as price regulation. Yet the line between the two appears to be blurring in both a U.S. antitrust case and the European Union’s enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). On Aug. 14, after years of litigation with Epic Games, Apple submitted a ... Rate Expectations: Apple and the New Price Regulators
Reserve Judgment: The FTC Takes on Amazon’s Ad Auctions
The price to beat in Amazon’s advertising auctions may not have come from another advertiser at all, according to a lawsuit filed Aug. 31 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In the complaint, the FTC alleges that Amazon quietly set the price itself, promising one pricing rule and using another. That allegation could support a ... Reserve Judgment: The FTC Takes on Amazon’s Ad Auctions
Google, the Unruh Act, and the Legal Risk of Knowing Your Audience
Advertising’s oldest rule is simple: Know your audience. In California, following it may get an online platform sued. Show retirement-home ads to seniors and student discounts to college students, and sensible targeting can suddenly look like unlawful discrimination. That question is now before California’s Sixth Appellate District. The dispute arises from a trial court ruling in ... Google, the Unruh Act, and the Legal Risk of Knowing Your Audience
Copy, Paste, Compensate: Nigeria’s Misguided Bid to Make Big Tech Pay for News
Nigeria has looked south and seen a $40 million payday for the press. The trouble is that it misread both the price tag and the fine print—and its attempt to collect may leave Nigerian publishers with fewer readers and no comparable payday. On July 6, Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) announced investigations ... Copy, Paste, Compensate: Nigeria’s Misguided Bid to Make Big Tech Pay for News
The FTC’s AI Accuracy Statement Needs a Fact Check
A policy statement about accuracy should, at minimum, be precise. The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Proposed Policy Statement Concerning the Suppression of Accuracy in Artificial Intelligence Systems (AI Policy Statement) struggles with that assignment. The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) submitted comments in response to the FTC’s request for input, and this post ... The FTC’s AI Accuracy Statement Needs a Fact Check
Android and the Art of Regulatory Self-Harm
Europe keeps asking where its technology champions are. In Google Android, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) offered part of the answer: build a successful platform, and Brussels may spend the next decade treating its architecture as evidence. The CJEU’s final judgment in Google Android, handed down last week, will be celebrated ... Android and the Art of Regulatory Self-Harm
The DMA’s Cloud-Cuckoo Land
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) was built to police digital gatekeepers. The European Commission now wants to test how far that metaphor can stretch—past app stores, social networks, and marketplaces, and into the server racks. The Commission has reached the preliminary view that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure should be designated as gatekeepers ... The DMA’s Cloud-Cuckoo Land
Texas Wants to Check Your App Store Papers
Smartphones are no longer just phones. For kids, they are libraries, newspapers, classrooms, cameras, maps, town squares, and, yes, bottomless distraction machines. Texas Senate Bill 2420 treats access to all of it as something that should first pass through a state-mandated checkpoint. Also known as the App Store Accountability Act, SB 2420 is currently facing ... Texas Wants to Check Your App Store Papers
Fit for Purpose, Unfit for Review: Why the DMA’s First Evaluation Could Never Find Failure
The first review of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) reads less like an evaluation than a wellness check performed by the patient’s proud parent. The pulse is strong. The color is good. Any lingering symptoms? Too early to tell. On April 28, 2026, the European Commission published the review required under Article 53 and declared ... Fit for Purpose, Unfit for Review: Why the DMA’s First Evaluation Could Never Find Failure
Government by Raised Eyebrow: The JAWBONE Act and the Problem of Censorship by Proxy
The easiest way for the government to censor speech is not always to ban it. Sometimes, it is to find someone else with a hand on the switch. That is the problem at the center of the current debate over free speech in the digital age. For years, the public argument focused on whether private ... Government by Raised Eyebrow: The JAWBONE Act and the Problem of Censorship by Proxy
The EU’s Facebook Marketplace Decision: The Gatekeeper That Wasn’t
Sometimes the most important thing about a gatekeeper case is that there was no gatekeeper after all. That is the quiet lesson of the European Union General Court’s judgment in Meta Platforms v. Commission, which annulled in part the European Commission’s decision to designate Meta as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The ... The EU’s Facebook Marketplace Decision: The Gatekeeper That Wasn’t
