Update

Ninth Annual Symposium on the Law & Economics of Privacy & Data Security

The Program on Economics & Privacy held its Ninth Annual Symposium on the Law & Economics of Privacy & Data Security in-person at the Antonin Scalia Law School on June 10, 2021. The symposium included a fireside chat with FTC Commissioner, Noah Phillips, and Jon Fasman, the U.S. Digital Editor for The Economist, who discussed his new book We See It All: Liberty and Justice in the Age of Perpetual Surveillance. The Symposium featured panels on surveillance capitalism, the interplay between privacy and competition, and the future of online advertising.

Private Litigation Under the California Consumer Privacy Act

The report, titled “Private Litigation Under the California Consumer Privacy Act,” examines the private actions filed under the CCPA since its effective date.

Executive Summary
In June of 2018, the Governor of California signed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) into law. The law went into effect on January 1, 2020, and the Attorney General promulgated regulations to implement the CCPA in August 2020. Broadly, the CCPA is designed to protect consumer privacy by providing transparency into the personal data that businesses collect and share, and giving consumers the right to prevent companies from sharing their data with third parties. Although these core privacy provisions are enforced exclusively by the California Attorney General, the CCPA provides a private right of action when a business’s failure to implement “reasonable security practices and procedures” results in the theft of personal information.

Please click here to read the report.

The First Amendment, Section 230, and Content Moderation

VIRTUAL
Date: March 3, 2021 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Content moderation decisions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election—including the removal of President Trump from Twitter and Facebook—have brought into sharp relief the power that social media platforms wield in shaping the national discourse. These social media platforms have come under increasing fire from both the left and the right and have been accused of unfairly censoring conservative viewpoints and failing to adequately curb misinformation and harmful content. Indeed, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides companies broad protection from suits involving both the content third parties post on their platforms and “good faith” content moderation decisions. Further, many have pointed to lack of competition as the culprit, suggesting antitrust or other economic regulation as a remedy for perceived problems with platforms’ content moderation decisions. At the same time, any reform proposal will have to be squared with these platforms’ First Amendment rights.

Join us for a vibrant discussion of these issues with a panel of distinguished academics:

Jane Bambauer, Professor of Law, The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law

Genevieve Lakier, Assistant Professor of Law, Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar, The University of Chicago Law School

Adam White, Assistant Professor and Executive Director, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School

Moderator: James C. Cooper, Professor of Law and Director, Program on Economics & Privacy, Law & Economics Center, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School

Please see below for the recording of this event or click here to watch!