This issue of Infrastructure focuses on cutting-edge antitrust and civil liability issues facing companies in the communications and tech sectors of our nation’s economy that represent about 20 percent of the total capitalization of the entire U.S. stock market. Those companies include trillion-dollar behemoths Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, which all offer services that have been critical to our economic survival of the COVID pandemic.
January 21, 2022 Columns
Editor’s Column
By William R. Drexel
In the first article, Big Tech Antitrust Enforcement Update, Jim Herbison covers the tremendous developments that have occurred in Big Tech antitrust enforcement since he wrote his Spring 2020 Infrastructure article on the Big Tech investigations that were incipient at that time. Those investigations have produced a plethora of enforcement actions, civil lawsuits, and legislative proposals that could reshape antitrust as well as Big Tech for years to come.
In our second article, Section 230: Twenty-Six Words that Created Controversy, Joe Cosgrove traces the legislative genesis and judicial application of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That section of the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 creates immunity from liability for the content made available by internet service providers, including the largest Big Tech companies that are in the crosshairs of the antitrust enforcement agencies. However, the scope of that immunity has been the subject of judicial disagreement and the suggestion by at least one Supreme Court justice that courts have applied the section 230 immunity too broadly. Moreover, the exercise of editorial discretion by such providers over the content they carry, particularly as to political speech, has created considerable bipartisan interest in legislative modification of section 230 immunity. However, no consensus has emerged on the scope of that legislation. The article outlines the section 230 reform proposals that have surfaced thus far, while noting that controversy is likely to remain for some time over the appropriate legislative response to the changing internet landscape.
We hope you enjoy this issue as well as our associated podcasts. If you have suggested topics for future issues or podcasts or would like to submit an article for consideration, please contact me at [email protected].