Markets run on information. Buyers make decisions by relying on their knowledge of the products available, and sellers decide what to produce based on their understanding of what buyers want. But the distribution of market information has changed, as consumers increasingly turn to sources that act as intermediaries for information—companies like Yelp and Google. Antitrust Law in the New Economy considers a wide range of problems that arise around one aspect of information in the marketplace: its quality. Sellers now have the ability and motivation to distort the truth about their products when they make data available to intermediaries. And intermediaries, in turn, have their own incentives to skew the facts they provide to buyers, both to benefit advertisers and to gain advantages over their competition. Consumer protection law is poorly suited for these problems in the information economy. Antitrust law, designed to regulate powerful firms and prevent collusion among producers, is a better choice. But the current application of antitrust law pays little attention to information quality. Mark Patterson discusses a range of ways in which data can be manipulated for competitive advantage and exploitation of consumers (as happened in the LIBOR scandal), and he considers novel issues like “confusopoly” and sellers’ use of consumers’ personal information in direct selling. Antitrust law can and should be adapted for the information economy, Patterson argues, and he shows how courts can apply antitrust to address today’s problems.

Featuring foreword from Maciej Szpunar, First Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union and Professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice This book delivers a comprehensive examination of the legal systems that regulate the responsibilities of intermediaries for illegal online content in both the EU and the US. It assesses whether existing systems are capable of tackling modern challenges, ultimately advocating for the introduction of a double-sided duty of care, requiring online intermediaries to do more to tackle illegal content whilst also better protecting their users’ rights.

This book provides a comprehensive, authoritative, and state-of-the-art discussion of fundamental legal issues in intermediary liability online, while also describing advancement in intermediary liability theory and identifying recent policy trends.

Posner uses economic analysis to probe justice and efficiency, primitive law, privacy, and the constitutional regulation of racial discrimination.

This book presents a comprehensive view of Internet intermediaries, their economic and social function, development and prospects, benefits and costs, and roles and responsibilities.

This SPR Departmental Paper will provide policymakers with a framework for studying changes to national data policy frameworks.

Seduction by Contract explains how consumer contracts emerge from market forces and consumer psychology. Consumers' predictable mistakes - they are short-sighted, optimistic, and imperfectly rational - compel sellers to compete by hiding the true costs of products in complex, misleading contracts. Only better law can overcome the market's failure.