{"id":25255,"date":"2022-10-03T15:12:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T19:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/?p=902014"},"modified":"2022-10-03T15:12:49","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T19:12:49","slug":"what-to-do-when-free-speech-no-longer-pays-the-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2022\/10\/03\/what-to-do-when-free-speech-no-longer-pays-the-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"What To Do When Free Speech No Longer Pays The Bills?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SpeechThe First Amendment does more than let you pressure students into praying with you in public a la Bremerton<\/em><\/a>. It also protects the right to free speech and the free press. You know what else is fundamental? Paying rent, eating food and saving enough money to afford Bayonetta 3<\/a> once it drops. And if folks interested in covering the news don’t want to end up on the highway with a “Will Report For Food” sign, they might want to pay a little bit of attention to antitrust.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Google and Facebook, which currently control the bulk of digital advertising and have become the main source of news for many Americans. A huge number of search results on Google link to news stories, reproducing enough content for users to consume. But 65% of these users do not click through<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0news publishers\u2019 websites.<\/a>\u00a0This means that even when their work has delivered value to the public, the businesses actually investing in and doing the work of journalism can\u2019t earn sufficient advertising revenue to cover their costs. Needless to say, this is not economically sustainable.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

That is exactly what the\u00a0bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act<\/a>, currently in Congress, would do. It would\u00a0authorize news outlets<\/a> to create \u201cjoint negotiating entities\u201d to bargain for compensation from internet platforms for the news stories they use…The bill also creates a carve-out from federal antitrust law, the statutory framework that regulates economic competition and coordination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The innovation associated with free markets only really comes about if the markets are actually<\/em> free. Monopolies tend to chill innovation<\/a> \u2014 what’s the point in investing in the R&D required for the new breakthrough if your customer base stays the same? This doesn’t just apply to widgets, it goes for news sources too. If a Google or a Facebook ultimately comes to control the mechanisms that determine how the average person sees the news, how will people find out if (read: when) something goes wrong at one of the companies? Take Amazon for example. They’ve already been mired in antitrust litigation that accused them of rigging search results<\/a> to push their own products above other suppliers. If Google has free reign to control which stories get viewed, do you think they wouldn’t<\/em> suppress other outlets trying to break through the search results? With the amount of Scout’s Honors I’ve seen the Supreme Court call on and do away with, I personally would like to see some actionable checks and balances when it comes to maintaining free speech.<\/p>\n

What should the future of free speech look like? How should it be protected from corporate interests? Is antitrust the answer? Let us know at tips@abovethelaw.com.<\/p>\n

A New Law Can Help Us Keep The Robust Free Press Our Democracy Needs<\/a> [LA Times]<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord\u2122 in the Facebook group\u00a0Law School Memes for Edgy T14s<\/a>. \u00a0He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim,\u00a0a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor<\/a>, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at\u00a0cwilliams@abovethelaw.com<\/a>\u00a0and by tweet at\u00a0@WritesForRent<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Antitrust and Constitutional law scholars, you’re up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142937,"featured_media":512887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3633],"tags":[1245,10360,373,493,10363,10366],"class_list":["post-25255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antitrust","tag-antitrust","tag-corporations","tag-free-speech","tag-innovation","tag-journalism-competition-and-preservation-act","tag-monopoly"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat To Do When Free Speech No Longer Pays The Bills? - Above The Law's Legal Tech Non-Event<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2022\/10\/03\/what-to-do-when-free-speech-no-longer-pays-the-bills\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What To Do When Free Speech No Longer Pays The Bills? 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