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No Market Failure, No New Regulations
The U.S. Senate is about to consider federally regulating transportation network companies (TNCs) for the first time. But proof of market failure should always be…
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INFORM Me When It’s Over
Among other depressing developments, 2020 saw the introduction of the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers Act (INFORM) in both houses…
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Tech Antitrust Hearing as Political Theater
Large, innovative tech companies have been invaluable during the COVID-19 crisis, helping to ease the burden of millions of Americans and businesses under quarantine. But…
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Antitrust Tech Hearing Unlikely to Prove Useful
Monday’s upcoming House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing featuring CEOs from Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple may turn out to have very little to do with antitrust.
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Is Apple a Bad Antitrust Apple?
The European Union announced last week that it is pursuing two antitrust probes against the tech giant. EU authorities are investigating whether Apple violated European…
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Calls to “Reform” Section 230 of Communications Decency Act Are Misguided—and Thankfully Unlikely to Succeed
This week, four U.S. Senators asked the FCC to “take a fresh look at Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act .” Real changes…
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Executive Order on Social Media Threatens Property Rights and Free Speech
Today’s Executive Order on Section 230 liability protections for online platforms violates the First Amendment and property rights of social media companies, contradicts the most…
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Presidential Panel on Social Media Bias Misfires
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is considering forming a panel to investigate charges of discrimination against right-leaning users and…
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Antitrust Investigation of Amazon Won’t Benefit Consumers
Launching another antitrust investigation into Amazon won’t benefit consumers. The U.S. antitrust law standard is consumer harm. To stretch antitrust investigations to include data, privacy,…
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Market Dynamics Will Force Zoom to Reform Faster and More effectively than Government Regulation
The videoconferencing service Zoom recently ran into some privacy concerns with leaked videos and hacked online meetings. Reaction has been swift and flawed from many…
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On Balance, We’re All Better Off With Big Tech and Big Telecom During a Crisis
Thanks to the novel Coronavirus, the U.S. economy has come to an unprecedented halt and the country’s death toll stands at more than 20,000. Amid…
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Antitrust Policy #NeverNeeded and Dangerous in a Crisis
The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission will now allow some collaboration between companies to address the corona virus health threat. They also warned a…
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Regulatory Restraint, Full Throttle
Members of Congress pursuing compromise or bipartisan net neutrality legislation should think twice about regulating away certain practices as a priori harmful. Among the greatest…
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Need for More Wireless Spectrum Will Persist beyond COVID-19 Crisis with Introduction of 5G Technology
Last week, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and US Cellular all asked the FCC for temporary access to additional spectrum to accommodate the recent increased demand for…
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Federal Court Rightly Affirms Online Platforms’ First Amendment Rights
This week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, “despite YouTube’s ubiquity and its role as a publicfacing platform, it remains a private forum,…
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Amazon Documentary Shows How Consumers Benefit
PBS’s Frontline aired its documentary, “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos,” last night. While the tone of the piece was markedly suspicious,…
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Proposed iHeart Media Acquisition Threatened by Antitrust Regulation
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Liberty Media Corp, which already owns Sirius XM satellite radio, including its Pandora streaming service, and 33% of…
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California’s New Privacy Law Will Harm Consumers and Innovation
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes into effect January 1, 2020. The law requires companies of a certain size that collect information on customers…
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Department of Justice Wrong to Block Sabre Acquisition of Farelogix
On January 27th, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) will attempt to block travel technology company Sabre Corporation from purchasing communications protocol innovator Farelogix, Inc. This will be the…
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Government of Singapore Demonstrates Real Online Censorship
Singapore’s recent policing of online content provides an instructive example of the difference between private curating of material by platform owners and dangerous curtailing of…
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Twitter’s Ban on Political Ads Has No First Amendment Implications
Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey announced that the social media platform will ban all political advertising. This comes on the heels of Facebook’s recent announcement…
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States Making Predictable Grab for Revenue via Online Sales Taxes
Fallout from the 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair Supreme Court decision, which allowed remote sales tax collection from online purchases, has begun and The Wall Street Journal editorialized…
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Department of Justice Creates Frankenstein Imitation of Market Competition
The Department of Justice’s long-awaited merger approval for T-Mobile and Sprint is good news for consumers on balance, but the conditions required for the agency’s blessing are…
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State Officials, Department of Justice Should Green-Light Sprint-T-Mobile Merger
Yesterday’s filing by ten state attorneys general to block the proposed merger of wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint is the latest threat to the innovations…
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Liberate Local TV Programming from Price Controls
The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing on the state of the media marketplace on June 5 and the debate around reauthorizing The…
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Federal Communications Commission Wisely Steps out of Way of Sprint/T-Mobile Merger
Today the Federal Communications Commission signaled it will likely vote to approve the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile.
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Don’t Let Facebook Team up with Big Government to Censor the Web
Facebook’s expulsion of several controversial figures from its platform last week is an example of a company managing its own private property to what it…
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Net Neutrality Regulation Still a Bad Idea
The debate at today’s House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing was largely between making blocking, throttling, and fast lanes illegal and going further to…
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Agenda for the 116th Congress: Tech and Telecom
As technology and telecommunications evolve, new challenges inevitably arise for policy makers. New mandates or prohibitions should be avoided in all but the most exceptional…
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New Cable Franchise Rules to Benefit Consumers
In September of last year, the Federal Communications Commission issued a further notice of proposed rulemaking clarifying how the amount that cities are allowed to…
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End of the Road for Net Neutrality Comeback Attempt
The end of the 115th Congress meant the end of using the Congressional Review Act to void the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of Obama-era net…
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Year in Review 2018: Internet Sales Tax
On June 21, 2018, in South Dakota v. Wayfair, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed fifty years of precedent by allowing states to collect sales taxes…
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Best Books of 2018: Life after Google
Are Tucker Carlson’s predictions of Google taking over the future keeping you up at night? Sooth yourself with the creative destruction described in “Life after…
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Last-Minute Delay in CVS-Aetna Deal Could Threaten Consumer Benefits
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon surprised many on Monday when he announced he may halt the integration of CVS pharmacy’s assets with the nation’s…
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Discard Static Market Analysis, Let Sprint and T-Mobile Merge
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has been making a convincing case for a swift and condition-free approval from regulators of the proposed Sprint and T-Mobile…
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U.S. Justice Department Challenges California Net Neutrality Rules
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Supreme Court Devastates Small Online Businesses and Consumers in South Dakota v. Wayfair
Today’s Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair is extremely disappointing and will likely cost online sellers and consumers dearly. Stopping state regulatory…
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Last Chance for the 115th: Keeping the Internet Sales Tax at Bay
Bad Internet sales tax legislation (mercifully) continues to stall in Congress. Pro-tax expansionists like Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) made a big political push to tie…
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Wayfair Supreme Court Case Could Upend How We Buy and Sell Things Online
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, Corp, that could have a huge impact on people who sell…
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Online Sales Tax Bill a Small-Business Killing Tax Hike
The Wall Street Journal editorial board was entirely correct yesterday when they said, “Republicans have spent the last year cutting taxes and regulations, which…
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5G Will Work—If Government Gets out of the Way
To usher in a new era of 5G virtual reality, 4K video, and self-driving cars, a major network upgrade is needed. The greater data demands…
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Don’t Bring Net Neutrality Regulations Back from the Dead
Republicans on Capitol Hill are looking to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with their recently introduced net neutrality legislation, Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-LA) Open Internet…
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Don’t Let an Online Sales Tax Hike Creep into Omnibus Spending Bill
With the siren song of the omnibus spending bill calling, legislators would be wise to resist pressures to include increases in online sales…
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CEI’s Ryan Radia Weighs in on Latest in Net Neutrality Debate
CEI has done its share on the topic for more than 10 years. Tune in to FreedomWorks live streams on February 26 to hear CEI’s…
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State Net Neutrality Regulations Constitutionally Unsound
Since the Federal Communications Commission voted to roll back federal net neutrality regulations, many states have opposed the measure with executive orders, lawsuits, and legislation.
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Bringing Net Neutrality Back from the Dead Would Be a Big Mistake for Congress
Passing a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify the Restoring Internet Freedom Order would be as bad an idea as net neutrality regulations themselves were.
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Burger King Video Inadvertently Highlights Absurdity of Net Neutrality Claims
A new corporate video from Burger King ostensibly supports net neutrality regulations, but actually demonstrates exactly why such rules are unnecessary.
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Tech Crystal Ball 2018
Expert predictions on top tech issues for the new year.
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Four Reasons So-Called Net Neutrality Regulations Should Be Scrapped
The Federal Communications Commission's Internet Freedom Order means a return to the light-touch regulatory regime the Internet thrived under for twenty years. …
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Beware the Online Sales Tax Grinch
Expanded sales tax authority is a small business killer. …