In Ohio Telecom Association v. FCC, the consolidated challenge to the FCC’s Open Internet Order, which we now know will not be leaving the Sixth Circuit, the parties must brief the motions panel by July 8 as to the effect of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Chevron on the appellants’ motion to stay the order pending review. The agency has a more than credible argument that the Order never needed Chevron in the first place. Skidmore was there all along. A word on the tortured history of Open Internet protection, a rather basic regulatory concept: Telecommunications service must be provided in a ..read more

California’s proposed link tax is back in the spotlight, as legislators’ proposal to subsidize media conglomerate newsrooms has been amended in advance of an upcoming hearing. The latest version of the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) appears to mirror Canada’s Online News Act and gives so-called “covered platforms” two options: paying an unknown annual fee for “accessing the internet websites of the providers” or entering into arbitration with media outlets producing articles to access their content.  Due to these updates, now the bill not only remains a harmful link tax th ..read more

Over recent years, many of your state legislators have proposed to expand state-level antitrust legislation inspired by the New York Twenty First Century Antitrust Act (S9336), which creates a stricter state-level antitrust regime than the federal antitrust regime for all companies operating in New York State. None of the state bills moved during the most recent legislative sessions, however, there remains significant risk that state legislatures in the future will consider similar legislation. A recent study by the CCIA Research Center examined the economic impacts of the proposed changes in ..read more

According to recent Korean press articles, Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) officials have been promoting Korean policy proposals modeled on the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) by making a particular claim: the U.S. is poised to pass a DMA-style law in the next year, so Korea should follow suit. There’s just one problem: the claim is false, as everyone in Washington, DC knows that the bill is dead. In fact, the U.S. bill in question, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), died two years ago in the 117th Congress, and there has never been a serious effort to resurr ..read more

A recent motion by booksellers in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) quixotic monopolization case against Amazon highlighted the contradictions in the agency’s case against the popular retailer. The FTC responded by asking the court to keep booksellers out of the case. Though both the FTC and American Booksellers Association (ABA) take issue with Amazon, the agency doesn’t want booksellers undermining its peculiar antitrust theory. Whereas booksellers contend Amazon’s prices are unfairly low, the FTC claims Amazon drives prices up. One of the key discrepancies between the ABA’s claims ..read more

California legislators recently unveiled the state’s latest misguided attempt to rebuild the local news industry — SB 1327. The bill proposes what the legislator calls a “Data Extraction Mitigation Fee”, which imposes fines on online platforms meeting certain monetary and service thresholds.  During a press conference introducing the bill, Sen. Glazer noted there were only three companies this bill would apply to — Meta, Google, and Amazon. This is due to each company grossing more than $2.5 billion in advertising revenue, selling “advertisers information about or access to users of thei ..read more

Legislators in Sacramento continue to deliberate over the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), but instead of local journalism, national businesses such as Alden Global Capital stand to be the true beneficiaries of the bill. A New York hedge fund, the group is collectively the second-largest owner of newspapers in the country. Why is this the case when California legislators claim the bill would revitalize the local journalism ecosystem?  In response to Google’s recent announcement that it would begin a testing process for a small population of California users to measure the i ..read more

Last week, prior to the American Bar Association’s 72nd Antitrust Spring Meeting, CCIA co-hosted a conference alongside Concurrences titled “The 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines: A Review,” at which CCIA and Concurrences also released their joint publication on the Guidelines. The event had three main panels headlined by leading antitrust practitioners. First, an opening discussion highlighting the key changes brought about by the Guidelines. Second, an overview of the key aspects of the revised Guidelines, with a discussion among the book’s authors. Third, a debate with leading merger practitione ..read more

Last Friday, Meta filed a Motion for Summary Judgement (MSJ) in its ongoing case against the FTC for alleged monopolization. The case, initially filed by the FTC in 2020 and amended in 2021, accused Meta (at that time Facebook) of abusing its alleged monopoly power by using a “buy-or-break” strategy to acquire its competitors. The lawsuit particularly focused on the acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp by Meta in 2012 and 2014, as support for the FTC’s argument. As Meta mentioned in its MSJ, the FTC has yet to provide any substantial basis for its case. Broadly speaking, there are seve ..read more

After months of speculation and a four-year investigation, the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) Antitrust Division, alongside multiple state & district attorneys general, filed a lawsuit against Apple. In its suit, the DoJ is accusing the company of violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features of its iPhone. This is the most recent example of U.S. authorities taking a more interventionist approach to innovative markets, following other digital sector lawsuits by the DoJ and the FTC last fall. This lawsuit marks the third time the DoJ has targeted ..read more