In an October 25 blog commentary posted at this site, Geoffrey Manne and Kristian Stout argued against a proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ban on the use of mandatory arbitration clauses in internet service providers’ consumer service agreements.  This proposed ban is just one among many unfortunate features in the latest misguided effort by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the privacy of data transmitted over the Internet (FCC Privacy NPRM), discussed by me in an October 27, 2016 Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum:

The growth of the Internet economy has highlighted the costs associated with the unauthorized use of personal information transmitted online. The federal government’s consumer protection agency, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has taken enforcement actions for online privacy violations based on its authority to proscribe “unfair or deceptive” practices affecting commerce. The FTC’s economically influenced case-by-case approach to privacy violations focuses on practices that harm consumers. The FCC has proposed a rule that that would impose intrusive privacy regulation on broadband Internet service providers (but not other Internet companies), without regard to consumer harm.  If implemented, the FCC’s rule would impose major economic costs and would interfere with neutral implementation of the FTC’s less intrusive approach, as well as the FTC’s lead role in federal regulatory privacy coordination with foreign governments.

My analysis concludes with the following recommendations:

The FCC’s Privacy NPRM is at odds with the pro-competitive, economic welfare enhancing goals of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. It ignores the limitations imposed by that act and, if implemented, would harm consumers and producers and slow innovation. This prompts four recommendations.

The FCC should withdraw the NPRM and leave it to the FTC to oversee all online privacy practices under its Section 5 unfairness and deception authority. The adoption of the Privacy Shield, which designates the FTC as the responsible American privacy oversight agency, further strengthens the case against FCC regulation in this area.

In overseeing online privacy practices, the FTC should employ a very light touch that stresses economic analysis and cost-benefit considerations. Moreover, it should avoid requiring that rigid privacy policy conditions be kept in place for long periods of time through consent decree conditions, in order to allow changing market conditions to shape and improve business privacy policies.

Moreover, the FTC should borrow a page from former FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright by implementing an “economic approach” to privacy.  Under such an approach, FTC economists would help make the commission a privacy “thought leader” by developing a rigorous academic research agenda on the economics of privacy, featuring the economic evaluation of industry sectors and practices;

The FTC would bear the burden of proof in showing that violations of a company’s privacy policy are material to consumer decision-making;

FTC economists would report independently to the FTC about proposed privacy-related enforcement initiatives; and

The FTC would publish the views of its Bureau of Economics in all privacy-related consent decrees that are placed on the public record.

The FTC should encourage the European Commission and other foreign regulators to take into account the economics of privacy in developing their privacy regulatory policies. In so doing, it should emphasize that innovation is harmed, the beneficial development of the Internet is slowed, and consumer welfare and rights are undermined through highly prescriptive regulation in this area (well-intentioned though it may be). Relatedly, the FTC and other U.S. government negotiators should argue against adoption of a “one-size-fits-all” global privacy regulation framework.  Such a global framework could harmfully freeze into place over-regulatory policies and preclude beneficial experimentation in alternative forms of “lighter-touch” regulation and enforcement.

Although not a panacea, these recommendations would help deter (or, at least, constrain) the economically harmful government micromanagement of businesses’ privacy practices in the United States and abroad.  The Internet economy would in turn benefit from such a restraint on the grasping hand of big government.

Stay tuned.