Katharine Trendacosta

Jan 15, 2025 | popularresistance.org | Chao Liu |Katharine Trendacosta

Last week, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the FCC, rejecting its authority to classify broadband as a Title II “telecommunications service.” In doing so, the court removed net neutrality protections for all Americans and took away the FCC’s ability to meaningfully regulate internet service providers. This ruling fundamentally gets wrong the reality of internet service we all live with every day.

Jan 7, 2025 | eff.org | Chao Liu |Katharine Trendacosta

Last week, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the FCC, rejecting its authority to classify broadband as a Title II “telecommunications service.” In doing so, the court removed net neutrality protections for all Americans and  took away the FCC’s ability to meaningfully regulate internet service providers. This ruling fundamentally gets wrong the reality of internet service we all live with every day.

Dec 25, 2024 | eff.org | Katharine Trendacosta

For a while, ever since they lost in court, a number of industry giants have pushed a bill that purported to be about increasing access to the law. In fact, it would give them enormous power over the public ability to access, share, teach, and comment on the law. This sounds crazy—no one should be able to own the law. But these industry associations claim there’s a glaring exception to the rule: safety and building codes. The key distinction, they insist, is how these particular laws are developed.

Dec 10, 2024 | eff.org | Katharine Trendacosta

The promise of the internet—at least in the early days—was that it would lower the barriers to entry for any number of careers. Traditionally, the spheres of novel writing, culture criticism, and journalism were populated by well-off straight white men, with anyone not meeting one of those criteria being an outlier. Add in giant corporations acting as gatekeepers to those spheres and it was a very homogenous culture. The internet has changed that.

Oct 18, 2024 | eff.org | Katharine Trendacosta

Antitrust law has long recognized that monopolies stifle innovation and gouge consumers on price. When it comes to Big Tech, harm to innovation—in the form of  “kill zones,” where major corporations buy up new entrants to a market before they can compete with them—has been easy to find. Consumer harms have been harder to quantify, since a lot of services the Big Tech companies offer are “free.” This is why we must move beyond price as the major determinator of consumer harm.