California’s school phones
California’s phone rule goes far enough
California is right to make every district write a phone policy and right to stop there, because future founders will need their attention more than their apps.
Section
Policy & Regulation
Governments, courts and regulators, and what they mean for those who build.
Australia’s social-media ban
Australia’s teen ban came too soon
Australia’s under-16 ban answers a real collective-action problem, but it fines platforms for an age check nobody has yet shown can work, and should have waited for the trial.
Student loans and the courts
Congress should fix student lending
The Supreme Court was right to stop the president cancelling $400bn of student debt alone, and Congress should now fix the lending that created it rather than bill taxpayers.
Foreign students and America
America should keep its foreign students
America nearly told 1.1m international students to go home over a technicality, and the founders it would have lost are worth far more than the rule’s tidiness.
The H-1B fee
Ration H-1B visas by wage, not fee
A flat $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions will cull the cheapest hires and poorest employers, when allocating by wage would target the abuse the White House cites.
America’s stablecoin law
America’s stablecoin bargain is sound
The GENIUS Act is a sound bargain, full reserves in exchange for legal certainty, and its real test will be how strictly the new regulators apply it.
California and AI regulation
Newsom was right to veto SB 1047
Gavin Newsom was right to veto a bill that regulated AI by the size of the cheque, but wrong to leave the vacuum to a panel of experts
America and TikTok
Write rules for all foreign apps
Congress was right to make ownership the issue with TikTok, but it should have written a rule for every foreign-owned app and not a statute with one name on it.
Europe’s AI Act
Europe legislates ahead of the products
Europe has passed the world’s first comprehensive AI law, and its test is whether rules written before the products existed can bind the firms that make them.
Biden and artificial intelligence
Biden’s AI order is half right
Mr Biden’s AI order is sensible where it asks developers to show their homework and hollow where it pretends a presidential pen can do Congress’s job.
Europe’s Digital Markets Act
Judge the DMA by rivals’ gains
Brussels was right to name its gatekeepers, but it should be judged on whether rivals win customers, not on how many rules the six firms obey
Meta and EU data transfers
A fine mess
Ireland’s record fine on Meta punishes a company for a conflict that only governments can settle, and Europe should fix the treaty, not fine the tenant.
Export controls
The silicon curtain
America’s sweeping new chip controls on China make strategic sense, but unlike the cold war’s embargo they have only one government behind them
The CHIPS Act
Pay for fabs, then stop
America is right to pay for chip factories, but the tax credit will do more good than the grants, and the real test is whether Washington knows when to stop.
Section 230
Trump cannot rewrite Section 230 by order
Mr Trump’s order asks a regulator to rewrite a law that Congress wrote plainly, and if it worked it would make platforms more cautious editors, not more neutral ones.
Huawei and TSMC
America’s chip weapon wears out with use
America’s new rule on Huawei’s chips is a clever weapon, but each use of it teaches the world to build around American tools
America v Apple
Target Apple’s tolls, not its phone
The Justice Department’s suit is strongest where Apple’s gatekeeping protects its services profits, and it should resist the temptation to ask a court to design the iPhone.
Epic v Google
Open the Play Store to rivals
A jury has found that Google rigged Android’s app market, and the right remedy is more competition for the Play Store, not a court-drawn design for the phone.
America v Amazon
Prime suspect
The government’s case against Amazon is strongest where it targets the penalty for cheap prices elsewhere, and weakest where it treats a popular service as a crime.
America v Google, again
Break up Google’s ad exchange
The Justice Department is right that Google should not run both the auction and the biggest bidders in it, and a break-up of the ad exchange is the remedy to press.
America v Microsoft
Make Microsoft share Call of Duty
The FTC is right to worry about a console maker hoarding games, but a binding promise to share Call of Duty is a better remedy than a ban on the deal.
The Digital Markets Act
Europe should demand choice, not designs
Europe’s new rulebook for tech gatekeepers is right to demand choice, but it should stop short of dictating how rival products are built.
Epic v Apple
Steering committee
Judge Gonzalez Rogers was right to clear Apple of monopoly and to let developers steer customers elsewhere, which does more for competition than a monopoly ruling would have.
Lina Khan at the FTC
Lina Khan should enforce the law first
Lina Khan is right that antitrust has grown too fond of low prices, but she will do more by winning cases under existing law than by rewriting it.
America v Facebook
Face value
The government has a fair case that Facebook bought a rival it feared, but a break-up is the wrong cure, and its own past clearance of the deals is its weakest point.
America v Google
Feeling lucky
The Justice Department’s case against Google is narrower than its critics fear and better aimed than its fans realise, and its target should be the price of the default.
Transatlantic data
America should change its surveillance law
Europe’s court was right that American surveillance law fails its tests, and Washington should change that law rather than patch up a third doomed deal.
Facebook’s Libra
Make Libra obey the money rules
Congress should neither strangle Libra nor wave it through, but test whether Facebook will submit to the rules that bind everyone else who handles other people’s money.