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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What Standard Should Govern Consumer Interpretation of Company Claims?
If anyone’s interpretation of a claim could be used to prove a violation of the FTCA, all advertising would have to be very carefully crafted. Advertisers would have to excise humor and hyperbole, lest the Commission decided to take cases to protect the humorless and completely credulous. A too literal enforcement scheme would cause advertisers…
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Excerpts from The Republican Party Platform of 1912
The Republican party is opposed to special privilege and to monopoly. It placed upon the statute-book the interstate commerce act of 1887, and the important amendments thereto, and the anti-trust act of 1890, and it has consistently and successfully enforced the provisions of these laws. It will take no backward step to permit the reestablishment…
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On Why the Common Law Failed to Police False Advertising
Under the common law, civil actions could be brought for deception involving false statements between the buyer and seller, however, successful suit required a showing of injury. The victim would recover the difference in value between the product as sold and as stated. Thus, recovery was limited and the individual would not have strong incentives…
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On Structural Versus Case-by-Case Approaches
Thomas C. Blaisdell’s 1932 analysis of the agency concluded that it “has been little more than a body for the regulation of the trade practices of ‘small business.’ This is contrary to the expectation and plan of its founders, who conceived a body to protect both small business and the consumer…”[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left…
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Blowback and Creating a Constituency
E. Pendelton Herring noted in 1934 that, “Making political enemies was soon found to be an incident in the routine of (FTC) administration. The discharging of official duties meant interfering with business, and often ‘big business.’”[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″…
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Progressive Party Platform of 1912
We believe that true popular government, justice and prosperity go hand in hand, and so believing, it is our purpose to secure that large measure of general prosperity which is the fruit of legitimate and honest business, fostered by equal justice and by sound progressive laws. We demand that the test of true prosperity shall…
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The Federal Technology Commission?
Technology is an ancient concept. The Greeks differentiated epistêmê, the idea of knowledge, from technê, which meant craft or arts or applied knowledge. The Oxford English Dictionary defines technology as, the “branch of knowledge dealing with the mechanical arts and applied sciences; […] The application of such knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry, manufacturing,…
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Excerpts from The Democratic Party Platform of 1912
A private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable. We therefore favor the vigorous enforcement of the criminal as well as the civil law against trusts and trust officials, and demand the enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary to make it impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United States. We favor…
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So Many Rules
Starting in the 1960s, the FTC read its organic statute as conveying the power to create trade regulation rules. Many of the rules from the 1960s have been repealed, but when they were in effect, violators could be subject to significant fines. Some, like the Cigarette Rule which required health hazard labels on tobacco products,…
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On Advertising Anxiety
Americans have very different attitudes towards advertising. Some see it as promoting a richer lifestyle through providing information about the remarkable choices available to consumers. But advertising also causes anxiety across the political spectrum. There is continuing concern that modern innovations in advertising have somehow tipped the balance of power between the firm and the…
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George Rublee: A Father of the Commission
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] Legislation always has many parents, but George Rublee made special efforts to instill progressive politics into federal antitrust legislation. Rublee was a kind of political itinerant. Not formally affiliated with any…
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On Being a Guinea Pig
Imagine living in a country where one’s main protection against dangerous products comes through labeling. From 1906 until passage of stronger regulations over foods, drugs and cosmetics, the government could do very little about dangerous products that were popularly marketed to the public. In 1933, Arthur Kallet and Frederick J. Schlink shocked the public with…