Garrett A. Johnson, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Boston University Questrom School of Business, and Nico Neumann, Assistant Professor and Fellow, Centre for Business Analytics at the University of Melbourne Business School, are working on a paper titled “The advent of privacy-centric digital advertising: Tracing privacy-enhancing technology adoption.” The paper draft may be read here.
Please see below for a video of Professor Johnson explaining their work.
Earlier this week, the Law & Economics Center‘s Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP), along with the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project, filed a comment in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule.
The comment focuses on those parts of the proposal that are most likely to impact operators’ incentives to provide online services for children: limitations on engagement; data minimization; and duplicative consent requirements. Together, these proposed modifications to the COPPA rule are likely to reduce the quantity and quality of online services for children by directly chilling operators’ incentives to improve their products and by reducing revenue streams needed to produce online services. The comment concludes that for regulatory intervention of this scale, the FTC must conduct a rigorous cost-benefit analysis that compares the reduction in consumer surplus from losses in online services against any benefits in mental and physical health to children, which it simply has failed to do. The comment also points out the legal frailty of these proposals. First, while there may be legitimate reasons to be concerned about children spending too much time on screens, Congress did not design COPPA to address this concern but left that in the hands of parents. Modifications to the COPPA rule adopted to address these concerns go beyond congressional authorization as found in the COPPA statute. Second, restrictions that reduce children’s ability to receive online content and to communicate online violate the First Amendment unless they are narrowly tailored to address an important government interest. Given the lack of empirical evidence the Commission has mustered, the comment concludes the FTC will have serious difficulty convincing a court that encouraging “engagement” (i.e., more speech) is categorically harmful, and the proposed rule modifications that would interfere with engagement will be struck down for failure to identify a government interest.
You can view the full joint comment here.
The Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP), part of the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, has accepted proposals for large-scale empirical research on various facets of the economics of privacy.
To learn more details, please click below.
Continue reading “Call for Proposals for Large-Scale Empirical Research”
Gregory M. Dickinson, Assistant Professor of Law at St. Thomas University Benjamin L Crump College of Law, has published his paper “Privately Policing Dark Patterns” in the Georgia Law Review. The paper may be read here.
Please see below for a video of Professor Dickinson explaining his work.
The Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP) at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School held a Research Roundtable on Competition and Consumer Protection Issues Surrounding Information Flows.
A conversation between PEP Director James C. Cooper and Professor Alessandro Acquisti.
Alessandro Acquisti is the Trustees Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. His research combines economics, behavioral research, and data mining to investigate the role of privacy in a digital society. His studies have promoted the revival of the economics of privacy, advanced the application of behavioral economics to the understanding of consumer privacy valuations and decision-making, and spearheaded the investigation of privacy and disclosures in social media.
Abraham L. Wickelgren, the Fred and Emily Wulff Chair at the University of Texas Law School, has published his paper “The Effect of Consumer Inferences on Privacy Regulation When Information is Costly”. The paper may be read here.
Please see below for a video of Professor Wickelgren explaining his work.
Dr. Brenden Kuerbis, a Research Scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Public Policy, and his coauthor Dr. Milton Mueller, Professor and Program Director, Masters of Science in Cybersecurity Policy at the George Institute of Technology, have published the paper “Exploring the Role of Data Enclosure in the Digital Political Economy”. The paper can be read here.
Researchers Cristobal Cheyre, Benjamin T. Leyden, Sagar Baviskar, and Alessandro Acquisti have published a new paper titled “The Impact of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Framework on the App Ecosystem.” The reading can be accessed here.
Aileen Nielsen, Ph.D. Student at ETH Zurich’s Center for Law & Economics, has published a new paper titled “Whose Data, Whose Value? Simple Exercises in Data and Modeling Evaluation and Implications for Tech Law and Policy.” The piece can be accessed here.
