Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast

This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast kicks off with a stinging defeat for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which could not persuade the courts to suspend the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard acquisition. Mark MacCarthy says that the FTC’s loss will pave the way for a complete victory for Microsoft, as other jurisdictions trim their sails. We congratulate Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President, whose policy smarts likely helped to construct this win. Meanwhile, the FTC is still doubling down on its determination to pursue aggressive legal theories. Maury Shenk explains the agency’s investigation of OpenAI, which raises issues not usually associated with consumer protection. Mark and Maury argue that this is just a variation of the tactic that made the FTC the de facto privacy regulator in the U.S. I ask why policing ChatGPT’s hallucinatory libel problem constitutes consumer protection, and they answer, plausibly, that libel is a kind of deception, which the FTC does have authority to police. Mark then helps us dri