Law Commons^™

The Regulation Of Interactive Television In The United States And The European Union, Hernan Galperin, Francois Bar

Federal Communications Law Journal

The broadcasting industry is rapidly entering the era of digitization, distributed intelligence, and interactivity. The case of interactive television offers an opportunity to investigate how desirable policy goals should be implemented in the post-convergence environment. This Article first reviews the evolution of the broadcasting industry through three successive models: the traditional "Fordist" television model, the current multichannel television model, and the emerging ITV model. Second, it characterizes the basic components of ITV and explores the concerns raised by the evolution of multichannel video programming distributors into ITV platform operators. Next, the Article reviews how regulators in the United States and …

Making And Keeping Regulatory Promises, Warren G. Lavey

Federal Communications Law Journal

Multiyear regulatory commitments, or their absence, are an important part of the functioning of the telecommunications services and products industries. In this Article, Warren G. Lavey argues that, under some conditions, it is both possible and beneficial for regulators to commit to a well-defined, multiyear sequence of regulatory changes. First, this Article examines several examples of how efforts for comprehensive reform fared in real multiyear implementations. It also explores how some piecemeal regulatory changes evolved into efforts for comprehensive reform based on a well-defined sequence. This Article considers the effects of multiyear regulatory promises through analysis of several regulatory actions …

What’S In A Name?, Jonathan Zittrain

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Ruling the Root, Milton L. Mueller, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, 301 pages.

A review of Milton L. Mueller's Ruling the Root, The MIT Press, 2002. In the spring of 1998, the U.S. government told the Internet: Govern yourself. This unfocused order-a blandishment, really, expressed as an awkward "statement of policy" by the Department of Commerce, carrying no direct force of law-came about because the management of obscure but critical centralized Internet functions was at a political crossroads. In Ruling the Root, Mueller thoroughly documents the colorful history both before and after this moment of inflection, and gives …

Enhancing Competition:Are Proposed Federal Communications Commission Rules That Treat Local Exchange Carrier Access To Multiple Tenant Environments A Taking?, Kathryn Gordon

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 marked a fundamental change in the attitudes of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission toward local telephone exchange carrier policy. This change affected local exchange carriers in many ways, including their relationships with the owners of multiple tenant environments, such as office buildings and apartment complexes. Under the Act, FCC rulemaking increased competitive local exchange carriers' access to the facilities of incumbent local exchange carriers by removing competition barriers. However, owners of of multiple tenant environments can also act as barriers to local exchange carrier competition. This Note will first review the general purpose behind …

An Overview Of Progress In The International Regulation Of The Pharmaceutical Industry, Joan Costa-Font, Aaron Burakoff Harvard University; University Of Barcelona

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The pharmaceutical industry, a significant source of healthcare throughout the world, has several features that distinguish it from the rest of the health industry. In the last half-century, new technology, better technological know-how, and overall economic growth have led to widespread and rapid growth in the pharmaceutical sector. Advancements in pharmaceutical research and development have led to the production of drugs that can routinely combat afflictions that, only years ago, were untreatable or even fatal. Since 1970, the average share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on pharmaceutical goods has increased in most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) …

The Fable Of Entry: Bounded Rationality, Market Discipline, And Legal Policy, Avishalom Tor

Michigan Law Review

Legal scholars have recently advanced a behavioral approach to the law and economics school of thought in an attempt to improve its external validity and predictive power. The hallmark of this new approach is the replacement of the perfectly rational actor with a "boundedly rational" decisionmaker who, apart from being affected by emotion and motivation, has only limited cognitive resources. To function effectively in a complex :world, boundedly rational individuals must rely on cognitive heuristics - simplifying mental shortcuts - that inevitably lead people to make some systematic decision errors; as a result, their behavior necessarily deviates from that predicted …

A Proposed Antitrust Approach To High Technology Competition, Thomas A. Piraino Jr.

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Antitrust In The International Telecommunications Sector: The United States Challenges Mexico's Telmex Monopoly, Luz Estella Ortiz Nagle

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reevaluating Amateurism Standards In Men's College Basketball, Marc Edelman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that courts should interpret NCAA conduct under the Principle of Amateurism as a violation of§ 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and that courts should order NCAA deregulation of student-athletes' indirect financial activities. Part I of this Note discusses the history of NCAA regulation, specifically its Principle of Amateurism. Part II discusses the current impact of antitrust laws on the NCAA. Part III argues that the NCAA violates antitrust laws because the Principle of Amateurism's overall effect is anticompetitive. Part IV argues the NCAA could institute an amateurism standard with a net pro-competitive effect by allowing student-athletes …

The Report Of The Attorney General's National Committee To Study The Antitrust Laws: A Retrospective, Thomas E. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

In 1955, the third year of the Eisenhower administration, the Michigan Law Review published what I believe to be the only symposium on antitrust law ever to appear in its pages. The occasion was the release in March of that year of a Report of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws,2 a nearly fourhundred- page examination of virtually all facets of federal antitrust doctrine and enforcement. The pages of the symposium led me of course to revisit the Report itself, a visit a little like seeing an old high school friend long forgotten some forty years …

The Concrete Barrier At The End Of The Information Superhighway: Why Lack Of Local Rights-Of-Way Access Is Killing Competitive Local Exchange Carriers, Christopher R. Day

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 contained the promise of a deregulated national telecommunications market with unfettered competition in both the local and long-distance telecommunications markets. Unfortunately, five years after the Act was signed, competition in local telephony is still not a reality in many areas. While some of the blame may be placed on failed business models and the withdrawal of venture capital from the market, a series of regulatory failures have also served to create an inhospitable environment for competitive local exchange carriers. One of the areas where this failure has been most evident is in governmental failure to …

An Efficiency Analysis Of Contracts For The Provision Of Telephone Services To Prisons, Justin Carver

Federal Communications Law Journal

As the numbers of prisons and prisoners continue to increase, so does the market for prison services. One of the more lucrative segments of this industry is the telephone market. To the extent that the services are provided to the prisoners, the relationship resembles a third party beneficiary contract, but due to the perverse financial incentives and the political climate surrounding prisons and prisoners, neither the state nor the private entity acts in the best interests of the consumers in particular or of society in general. This Article will analyze the efficiency of these contracts, introduce alternate arrangements, and compare …

Why Adco? Why Now? An Econmic Exploration Of Industry Structure For The "Last Mile" In Local Telecommunications Markets, T. Randolph Beard, George S. Ford, Lawrence J. Spiwak

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Article discusses important economic characteristics of local exchange markets. First, this Article explains that entry into the market requires large fixed and sunk costs, making entry risky and necessitating scale economies. Consequently, only a few local access networks can supply the market. These networks cannot be small, however, because a large market share is required to realize sufficient scale economies to effectively compete with the ILEC and survive. Secondly, acquiring the needed market share may be difficult for entrants who either attempt to purchase unbundled network elements from the incumbent or attempt to build their own network from the …

The Globalization Of Antitrust Enforcement: Governance Issues And Legal Responses, Lucio Lanucara

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Detariffing And The Death Of The Filed Tariff Doctrine: Deregulating In The “Self” Interest, Charles H. Helein, Jonathan S. Marashlian, Loubna W. Haddad

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Article reviews the history of the FCC's detariffing efforts, addressing the major issue raised not so much by detariffing itself, but by the FCC's view of detariffing orders impact on the Filed Tariff Doctrine. Notwithstanding the existence of the Doctrine for nearly a century, the FCC, through detariffing, has declared the Doctrine dead. This Article formally opposes the FCC's declaration and suggests that the FCC's motivations behind detariffing have failed to consider, much less attempted to properly balance, the conflicting public interests involved. Comparing and contrasting the legal rights enjoyed by long-distance carriers under the Filed Tariff Doctrine to …

My View From The Doorstep Of Fcc Change, Kathleen Q. Abernathy

Federal Communications Law Journal

Commissioner Abernathy discusses the five key principles that inform her regulatory philosophy:
1) Congress sets the FCC's responsibilities in the Communications Act, and the Commission should faithfully implement those tasks rather than pursuing an independent agenda;
2) Fully functioning markets deliver better products and services to consumers as compared to markets regulated by the government. Unless structural factors prevent markets from being competitive, or Congress has established objectives (such as universal service) that are not market-based, government should be reluctant to intervene in the marketplace;
3) Where the FCC promulgates rules, it should ensure that those rules are clear and …

A Common Carrier Approach To Internet Interconnection, James B. Speta

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Article argues that some generalized interconnection rules are broadly appropriate. Specifically, some lessons learned from the ancient regime of common carrier regulation provide the appropriate regulatory foundation for the modern Internet. Since at least the middle ages, most significant carriers of communications and commerce have been regulated as common carriers. Common carrier rules have resolved the disputed issues of duty to serve, nondiscrimination, and interconnection. These were the problems of seventeenth-century ferry owners and innkeepers, eighteenth-century steamships, nineteenth-century railroads, and twentieth-century telephone networks. They are similar to the problems of the twenty-first-century Internet, and similar rules can govern its …

Smut On The Small Screen: The Future Of Cable-Based Adult Entertainment Following United States V. Playboy Entertainment Group, Bradley A. Skafish

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Note argues that the most important aspect of Playboy is the Court's determination that cable television is not analogous to broadcast media. Provided it withstands the test of time, this distinction allows the cable industry to avoid the more stringent regime placed upon broadcast media. The Playboy decision also shows the Court's willingness to invalidate laws even when they serve a compelling interest and impose less restrictions than a complete ban. Members of the Court differed on whether "signal bleed" actually constituted an influence harmful to children. This discrepancy evinces a significant disagreement on where lines should be drawn …

Why Premerger Review Needed Reform - And Still Does, Andrew G. Howell

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Consumer Protection Gaining Strength Under State Antitrust Suits, Amanda Strainis-Walker

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

A Digital Free Trade Zone And Necessarily-Regulated Self-Governance For Electronic Commerce: The World Trade Organization, International Law, And Classical Liberalism In Cyberspace, 20 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 595 (2002), Kristi L. Bergemann

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

In the absence of a world government, cross border trade is always subject to rules that must be politically negotiated among nations that are sovereign in their own realm but not outside their borders. The author explores the development of an international trade and e-commerce paradigm in two main phases as the Internet superhighway bridges nations together. She argues that the construction of an international trading framework must strike the appropriate balance between institutional order and norms and the human and business realities of free trade and democracy. She further argues that the balance can be achieved by creating an …

Global Antitrust And The Evolution Of An International Standard, William Sugden

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Note explores recommendations for developing a global antitrust regime and ultimately rejects those suggestions in favor of more traditional nationally-based applications of antitrust rules. Part II introduces an economic model of global antitrust to show the systemic difficulties inherent in creating a global regime. Part III contrasts the difficulties in creating a global regime with the greater historical success of developing regional antitrust authorities. Part IV tracks the history of the extraterritorial application of antitrust laws by the United States and the European Union. Part V argues that the path to effective global antitrust lies not in the creation …

Law School Accreditation: The Applicability Of State Action And Noerr Exemptions, And First Amendment Principles, Marina Lao

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Who Determines The Optimal Trade-Off Between Quality And Price?, Barbara Ann White

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Jeffrey M. Cross

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Parallel Antitrust Investigations: The Long Arm Of The Doj From The Perspective Of An E.U. Defense Counsel, Roderick Lambert

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

The United States As Antitrust Courtroom To The World: Jurisdiction And Standing Issues In Transnational Litigation, Spencer Weber Waller

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Damages In Private Antitrust Actions In Europe, Jonathan Sinclair

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Calculation Of Damages In Transnational Antitrust Cases, Jeffrey Dorman

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Review Of The Treatment Of The Per Se Rule By The U.S. Supreme Court Over The Last Twenty-Five Years: A Response To Albert Gourley's Proposal To Add A Per Se Rule To Canada's Competition Law, Jeffrey M. Cross

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.