The big cyberlaw story of the week is the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Google and the many hats the company wears in the online ad ecosystem. Lee Berger explains the Justice Department's theory, which is not dissimilar to the Texas Attorney General's two-year-old lawsuit. When you've lost both the Biden administration and the Texas Attorney General, I suggest, you cannot look too many places for friends – and certainly not to Brussels, which is also pursuing similar claims of its own. So what is the Justice Department's late-to-the-party contribution to this dogpile? At least two things, Lee suggests: a jury demand that will put all those complex Borkian consumer-welfare doctrines in front of a Northern Virginia jury and a "rocket docket" that will allow Justice to catch up with and maybe lap the other lawsuits against the company. This case looks as though it will be long and ugly for Google, unless it turns out to be short and ugly. Still, Mark reminds us, for Justice, finding an effective remedy may be harder than proving anticompetitive conduct.
Nathan Simington assesses the administration's announced deal with Japan and the Netherlands to enforce its tough decoupling policy against China's semiconductor industry. Details are still a little sparse, but some kind of deal was essential for the U.S. campaign to work. For Japan and the Netherlands, the details are critical, and any arrangement will require flexibility and sophistication on the part of the US Commerce Department if it is to work in the long run.
Megan Stifel and I chew over the Justice Department/FBI victory lap after they put a stick in the spokes of The Hive ransomware infrastructure. We agree that the lap was warranted. Among other things, the FBI handled its access to decryption keys with more care than in the past, providing them to many victims before taking down a big chunk of the ransomware gang's tools. The bad news? Nobody was arrested, and the infrastructure can probably be reconstituted in the near term.
