The Federal Trade Commission spent the last 20 months conducting an investigation into some of Google's business practices. The agency was under great pressure from Google's competitors to bring a lawsuit against the company, and impose restrictive antitrust remedies as punishment for Google's alleged misdeeds. Following the FTC's announcement of...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly considering suing Google for antitrust violations. There is an inherent difficulty in determining when a company's competitive actions might merely harm less effective competitors (that's a good thing) and when it might harm consumers and the market in general. Because of...

Jeffrey Katz, the CEO of a company called Nextag, has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that Google's practices in search had hurt his company. His op-ed responds to the EU's recent request that Google propose remedies to address competitive concerns raised in the...

(Published today in The Atlantic)

Just because its justices are not elected doesn't mean they're not political. It's time for some public accountability.

Recently, there has been considerable debate over whether President Obama should run against the Supreme Court as part of his re-election campaign. High-ranking Democratic Rep.

Next Friday, February 10, the Stanford Technology Law Review is holding its annual symposium, and this year's topic is an important one: First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age. Of the three panels, one is devoted to privacy and another to copyright. The third is devoted to a long, ambitious...

Yesterday, Google rolled out some big changes to its search engine, attempting to more fully integrate results from social networks. Well, not network[s], but network.  Google does not have the right to index most Facebook content, and Google search will integrate content from Google+ . It has three...

The sixth Singularity Summit is this weekend. The Summit is a TED-style conference of 700 scientists, engineers, businesspeople, and technologists discussing issues pertaining to the Singularity. The Singularity is that point in time when computer intelligence exceeds human intelligence. The concept was set out in a 1993 article by...

Law professors have a lot of theories about what the First Amendment means, but the most "standard" theory is not very useful for addressing some of the most important free speech issues of our time--and that theory would even limit average Americans' ability to speak with one another. To understand...

We're two years into the Obama administration, and many are measuring how President Obama's government has delivered on Candidate Obama's campaign promises.

Here's a look at how he's done on technology policy. Before you yawn and click away, bear in mind: these wonky decisions will fundamentally determine the future of...

President Obama's FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has a reputation in DC of being a "tepid" regulator. From reports of his net neutrality proposal, he's living up to that reputation.

The proposal does not meet Obama's campaign promises, or Obama's other agencies' actions, on net neutrality. It is...

Apparently before the year is out, on Dec. 21, the Federal Communications Commission will issue rules to help shape the future of  the Internet. In fact, the FCC Chairman may be circulating those rules to fellow commissioners on Wednesday. These rules will decide how much control AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will...

On net neutrality, the FCC has all the political cover it could ever want--the president himself, Senator Rockefeller, Congressman Ed Markey, technology companies and other companies in our economy, and notable citizen groups on both sides of the aisle (though even more that tend to be aligned with...

You may have noticed a lot of tech experts are going gaga over it: Barbara van Schewick's new book "Internet Architecture and Innovation." Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig (the trail-blazing cyberlaw champion) recommended it in the New York Times this week; Susan Crawford (a law professor...

Time magazine reports that the White House has "kept quiet" on the Google-Verizon pact because the FCC is dealing with net neutrality, and the FCC is an independent agency.

This alone was good news: it means that the White House is denying rumors (reaching Harvard Professor...

A lot of people have been discussing the Verizon-Google pact, including venture capitalists (on NYT's Room for Debate) and Silicon Valley companies. Most people agree: Google does evil, calls it net neutrality.

Last week I wrote up a guide of the FCC negotiations on...

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Verizon and Google have made a deal on network neutrality policy they'd like to see in America. That deal (surprise!) is Google can get special privileges on Verizon's network. The Huffington Post splash page mocks Google's slogan: "Don't Be Evil" with an asterisk. Asterisk:...

A lot of people are discussing the FCC's meetings on net neutrality. Many are discussing the process--"secret," "backdoor," "corporate behemoths," or merely "stakeholder" discussions, depending on your point of view (from outside the room, or from inside). Others, noting the bizarreness of the whole process, are providing interesting

Today, Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that would probably land any law student an F in telecom law class, if not a trip to the school psychologist.  McDowell has a long history of factually challenged op-eds on Internet deployment and

Friends, Law Scholars, Law Students:

I know your type.

You can't jog without your iPod.  To run the miles, you need that melodic beat of the Black-Eyed Peas, the triumphal boasts of Jay-Z, the fluid rhymes of Snoop.

I feel you.

But you, like me, have always wished, deep down,...

Like millions of others, this afternoon, I watched the US narrowly lose, in extra time, to Ghana. I watched in a packed restaurant in Palo Alto, California, and when time expired, everyone applauded. We lost, but our team played well throughout the games, and made us all proud.

Afterward, a...