Designing the Digital Platform Commission

For those concerned with the continued power of Big Tech over our lives online, the time has come to think beyond antitrust. While an important tool, antitrust simply cannot do it all. While federal antitrust enforcers have enjoyed some success, Big Tech keeps getting bigger. Meanwhile, the European Union and the United Kingdom have active regulators – shaping digital regulation while the United States sits on the sidelines.

The time has come to build a better big tech mouse trap to protect U.S. consumers and open up the U.S. digital platform market to vibrant competition.

A growing chorus of academics and advocates have urged Congress to create a sector-specific regulator that would have the power to take on these digital giants. This approach would maximize government efficiency and effectiveness by creating one agency to act as the cop on the beat, rather than relying on multiple federal agencies trying to make laws written for an analog world work in the digital age. As other countries get more aggressive in their efforts to police digital platforms, the question is increasingly not whether digital platforms will be regulated but who will regulate them.

For more than a year, Public Knowledge has surveyed advocates and convened experts to determine the most effective and efficient way to promote competition and protect consumers online. Join us as we present and discuss our new paper, “Building the Digital Platform Commission: How to Design a Regulator to Rein In Big Tech.” Written by Public Knowledge’s Senior Vice President Harold Feld and Policy Director Lisa Macpherson, this new paper provides concrete recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders interested in creating a digital future that protects consumers from rip-offs and anticompetitive practices. Harold Feld will present the paper to a panel of experts, who will provide feedback on the paper and next steps.

Date: April 28, 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Location: Law Office of Jenner and Block, 1099 NY Avenue, NW Suite 900

Paper Presentation: Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge

Keynote: Kathleen Bradish, Vice President & Director of Legal Advocacy at American Antitrust Institute.

Moderator: Justin Hendrix, CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit media venture concerned with the intersection of technology and democracy. Previously, he was Executive Director of NYC Media Lab.

Panelists:

• Prem Trivedi, Policy Director of New America’s Open Technology Institute. He leads OTI’s research and advocacy efforts to improve outcomes in technology policy by prioritizing fairness and meaningful transparency in governance.
• Alissa Cooper, Executive Director of Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI), a new center at Georgetown University that connects independent research with technology policy and design. Alissa has been a leader in developing global Internet standards and governance.
• Anna Lenhart, Policy Fellow at Democracy & Politics at the George Washington University. Most recently she served as a Senior Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and as Technology Policy Advisor in the US House of Representatives (including advising on legislation to create new agencies and new bureaus at existing agencies).

Reception with light refreshments following the event.