The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. CONGRESS
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing on a proposed “cap-and-trade” program for greenhouse gas emissions.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: President Fred L. Smith, Jr. on what’s really behind the apparent business support for emissions regulation:
“Simply because some business leaders join with environmental pressure groups to promote a policy does not mean that the policy is good for the economy or the American people. In general, if a company’s stance on an issue appears to be too good to be true, it probably is. Strange alliances such as these—business allying with pressure groups to demand more regulation of those businesses—is actually all too common in history, and the motivation is rarely altruism.”
2. BUSINESS
A panel of federal judges reinstates a class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination against retail giant Wal-Mart.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the court’s flawed legal reasoning:
“At his own judicial confirmation hearing before the Senate, Judge [Harry] Pregerson openly boasted that if the law conflicted with his own values, he would choose to apply his own values instead of the law. Pregerson’s decision in the Wal-Mart case is a classic example of him ignoring the law when it conflicts with his ideological agenda of enriching trial lawyers and depicting corporate America as sexist.”
3. TECHNOLOGY
Social networking site MySpace launches a new program to prevent users from uploading copyrighted video clips to their accounts.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar James Plummer on how markets can help protect intellectual property:
“The rapid progression of technology and, concomitantly, consumer attitudes and behavior, poses problems for the content industries’ dominant paradigms and business models as configured today. Enforcement costs for protection of old models—encouraged and calcified by congressional expansion of the length of copyright terms—are mounting. Some rights holders are now developing promising new business models that recognize these realities. To encourage this trend, lawmakers should consider dismantling regulatory barriers—particularly antitrust—obstructing the development of potentially superior alternatives to legal copyright protection.”