Federal Trade Commission Privacy Law and Policy (FTCPL&P) is my 2016 book on the FTC. It is really two books. The first part details the agency’s consumer protection history from its founding, and in so doing, it sets the context for the FTC’s powers and how it is apt to apply them. The book has an institutional analysis discussing the internal dynamics that shape agency behavior. It details how the FTC policed advertising with treatments of substantiation, the Chicago School debates, the problem of advertising to children, and the Reagan revolution. The second part of the book explains the FTC’s approach to privacy in different contexts (online privacy, security, financial, children’s, marketing, and international). One thesis of the book is that the FTC has adapted its decades of advertising law cases to the problem of privacy. There are advantages and disadvantages to the advertising law approach, but do understand that if you are a privacy lawyer, you are really an advertising law lawyer 🙂
FTCPL&P has been reviewed in the Journal of Economic Literature, the ABA Antitrust Source, the European Data Protection Law Review, World Competition, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law. offers comprehensive consulting, management, design, and research solutions. Every architectural endeavor is an opportunity to shape the future
FTC Posts
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Dyson on Goodmail
Goodmail is a plan that will allow companies to pay a fee to bypass AOL’s junk e-mail filters, thus guaranteeing the delivery of messages. EPIC hasn’t taken a formal position on Goodmail yet, while many other groups have started a campaign against it. And now the spin has begun. Esther Dyson has penned an oped…
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Self-Regulation Produces Another Confusing, Contradictory Privacy Policy
DMNews published this advertisement today for the personal information of Art.com customers. In it, Art.com proposes to sell its customer list of 385,577 people basically to anyone: Art.com Lenser New List Description: This file contains buyers from Art.com, a unique resource that brings homeowners, renters, small businesses and interior decorators a wide selection of high-end…
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Poll Finds DNC Registry Effective
The Wall Street Journal reports on a Harris Interactive poll that found that people who enroll in the Do-Not-Call Registry experience a reduction in telemarketing: A large majority of Americans who have registered their phone numbers with the National Do Not Call Registry say are receiving fewer telemarketing calls than before, according to a Harris…
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Payola and ID Theft Studies
I blogged earlier on Joseph Menn’s excellent article concerning the various powerful interests that are trying to undo state laws that require businesses to give notice of security breaches. His article also has a peek into the financial support behind the various studies that have characterized the identity theft problem as overblown: To press their…
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Mossberg: 3rd Party Cookies Spyware
In today’s Journal, Mossberg argues that third party cookies, small text files often used to identify a computer, are spyware: Some tracking-cookie purveyors say their cookies aren’t really spyware because they aren’t full-fledged programs and they aren’t as outrageous as spyware programs like “key loggers,” which record and report every keystroke you enter. Others argue…
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No PBK for GMU
Phi Beta Kappa rejected GMU’s application for membership. The Washington Post reports: …Deshmukh declined to provide copies of letters sent to the university from Phi Beta Kappa, but she read some portions to a reporter. One letter from the organization asked about media reports that a Virginia legislator had “influenced your president” to cancel a…
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Economics as Science
Professor Leiter has reposted a great discussion on economics and its status as a science. BTW: Did you know that the Nobel Prize for economics isn’t really a Nobel? Check out this post where it is explained that the Bank of Sweden, in order to heighten the status of the field of Economics, endowed the…
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Could a Billboard Invade Privacy?
Some time ago, Stay Free! Magazine published an essay by 1960s ad-man Howard Gossage. In it, Gossage rejects aesthetic arguments against billboards, and instead argues that billboards are a coercive form of advertising that violate individuals’ privacy. Check it: “…there is a very real question whether it has title to its domain. Outdoor advertising is…
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Customer No Service
I just got back from Bank of America, where they say that they no longer notarize documents! The CSR used some lame excuse about 9/11, saying that they could be liable if they notorized a document! Now, that’s a load of crap. I was able to get my document notarized at a local bank… The…
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Search Bank Structures
The National Information Center of the Federal Reserve has this neat search engine that allows you to search the organizational hierarchies of federal banks.
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Machiavelli on Perception of the Past, Present
One of the best discussions of fondness of the past and condemnation of the present times was written by Machiavelli in his <i>Discourses</i>. Men always praise the ancient times and find fault with the present, but not always with good reason; and they are such partisans of things past, that they celebrate not only that…