The fine folks at George Mason University School of Law’s Henry G. Manne Program in Law & Economics Studies have put together another stellar agenda and lineup of speakers for their Second Annual Conference on Competition, Search & Social Media. The event will be held at GMU’s School of Law on Wednesday, May 16th from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Panel topics are listed as follows:
PANEL 1: Antitrust and Platform Competition in Search and Social Media (This panel will discuss issues involving market definition, network effects, and dynamic considerations when analyzing search and social media platform competition.)
PANEL 2: Search, Duties to Deal, and Essential Facilities (This panel will explore the extent to which search engines should be viewed as utilities, and whether they may have a legal duty to assist their rivals under the essential facilities doctrine as it survives after Trinko and Linkline.)
PANEL 3: The Interface Between Privacy and Competitive Analysis in Search and Social Media (This panel will explore the extent to which privacy should be germane to antitrust analysis of online search and social networks, including whether privacy can be viewed as a dimension of quality and the extent to which privacy regulation may affect competition.)
PANEL 4: Are There Workable Remedies for “Search Engine Bias”? (This panel will discuss economic, legal (including First Amendment), and practical issues surrounding potential remedies to allegedly “biased” search engine results.)
I’m honored to have been asked to moderate the second panel since it focuses on an issue I’ve been given a lot of thought to lately. (See my recent working paper, “The Perils of Classifying Social Media Platforms as Public Utilities.“)
Seriously, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better set of speakers on these topics. Check them all out here, where you can also RSVP if you’re interested.
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