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Abstract:
Google Books represents the latest attempt at the centuries-old goal to build a universal library. In 2004, Google started scanning books from libraries around the world. Although it made copyright licensing agreements with some publishers, it did not obtain permission from each rights-holder before scanning, indexing, and displaying portions of books from the stacks of libraries. Unsurprisingly, authors and publishers sued for copyright violations. Google settled the class action lawsuit in a sweeping agreement that has raised suspicion from librarians, users, and the government. In this paper, I analyze the antitrust and competition issues in the settlement agreement. I find that the simultaneous aspects of agreements and pricing pose serious antitrust problems. The settlement effectively gives Google simultaneous agreements with virtually all the rights-holders to in-copyright American books. It also requires that Google set prices for books simultaneously. In a competitive market, both agreements and pricing would occur independently. Under current law, however, no potential competitor can make agreements with the rights-holders to orphan works. The simultaneity, therefore, concentrates pricing power, leading to cartel pricing (a problem under § 1 of the Sherman Act) and monopolization (a § 2 problem).

Google, Book Search, copyright, antitrust, simultaneity, orphan works

Abstract:
This short piece describes the failure of the widespread plans to provide public wireless internet access. It identifies three interrelated types of causes for the near-universal failure of these ambitious plans: regulatory, technical, and economic. Essentially, most municipalities opted to use WiFi to provide internet access because residents’ computers already supported WiFi and because FCC regulations do not require operating licenses for WiFi. But the regulations around this unlicensed technology restrict its operation. Combining these regulatory restrictions with the physical limitations of signals on WiFi’s frequency led to a technology inadequate to blanket a city in wireless internet signals. Finally, the business plans for public WiFi both failed to anticipate how residents would actually use the service and failed to anticipate that the private telecommunications sector would soon provide high-speed wireless internet access using better-suited technologies such as 3G.

WiFi, wireless, internet, market failure, 3G

Abstract:
The False Claims Act prohibits fraud against the government. Unsurprisingly, fraud against the government remains common despite the statute-fraudsters must return billions of dollars in government money each year, and billions more dollars of fraud remain undetected. Through the qui tam provision, the government has enlisted the help of private citizens to discover and prosecute fraud. The program has helped to recover over half of the total recovered fraud over the past two decades. But some courts have threatened this program by holding that information disclosed through the Freedom of Information Act triggers the public disclosure bar of the qui tam provision. This interpretation conflicts with the language of the statute, leads to absurd results, ignores the statutory history, and destroys the incentives for private parties to help uncover fraud. An investigation into models of information secrecy and the efficient markets hypothesis reveals the boundaries of the public disclosure bar as defined in the statute. The language, history, and incentives structure of the statute all lead to the conclusion that some FOIA disclosures do not necessarily trigger the public disclosure bar.

False Claims Act, qui tam, fraud, FOIA, efficient markets