Digital Economy and Inequality (part II)

Transatlantic Seminar: Consumer Law, Technology and Inequality

  • Date: Feb 16, 2022
  • Time: 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Location: online

Speakers:
Natali Helberger (University of Amsterdam)
Agustin Reyna (Digital Team Leader at the European Consumer Organization - BEUC)
David B. Lawrence  (Policy Director for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice)
Ramsi Woodcock (University of Kentucky)

Moderation: Mateusz Grochowski (Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law)


About the participants:

Natali Helberger is professor in Information Law at the Institute for Information Law (IvIR), University of Amsterdam. She studied Law at the Freie Universität Berlin and received her doctarate from the University of Amsterdam. Her thesis, Controlling Access to Content: Regulating Conditional Access in Digital Broadcasting (2005), examines the regulation of digital gateways and their implications for information law and policy, competition, freedom of expression and the interests of users. In 2005, she was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

Natali specialises in the regulation of converging information and communication markets. Focus points of her research are the interface between technology and information law, user rights and the changing role of the user in information law and policy. Exploring the interaction between media law, privacy and data protection law, consumer law and communications law is an important driver behind her research.

Among other things, she is a member of the EC High Level Expert Group Connect Advisory Forum, a High Level Expert Group on the Internet of Things as well as the EC Cloud Computing Expert Group, member of the Advisory Board of the Dutch Mediaombudsman, a member of the Communications and Media Scientific Committee of the Florence School of Regulation, member of the program committees of EuroCPR, ITS and theIAMCR Panel of Advisors and reviewers. She is also a member of the editorial committees of the Journal of Information Policy and Mediaforum.
 

Agustin Reyna is a Digital Team Leader at the European Consumer Organization (BEUC). At this position he coordinates BEUC’s policies in the area of copyright, data protection, telecommunications and competition. In 2017 Agustín was elected co-EU chair of the Intellectual Property committee of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, a network of over 75 organisations representing consumers’ interest in the US and the EU. Argentinean born, Agustín obtained his law degree in the National University of Córdoba. He studied ICT law in Spain (ICADE, Comillas Pontifical University) and Belgium (CRIDS, University of Namur) and he is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on copyright and consumer protection (University of Bremen).

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David B. Lawrence is the Policy Director for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.  In this capacity, he oversees policy development at the Division and the work of its Appellate, Competition Policy, and International sections. Just prior to this appointment, Mr. Lawrence was Chief of the Competition Policy and Advocacy Section, focusing in particular on merger policy and on legislative reform efforts in digital markets. Mr. Lawrence has served the Antitrust Division since 2011 in a variety of investigation, litigation, and policy roles, including as Counsel to five Assistant Attorneys General.  He was a law clerk to Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and to Judge Richard Holwell of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  He earned his J.D. from New York University and his B.S. (Physics) from the University of Massachusetts.
 

 

Ramsi Woodcock is an expert on antitrust law, economics, and policy, with a particular focus on the consequences of the information age for the antitrust treatment of personalized pricing, dynamic pricing, and advertising. He has also written on the consequences of antitrust's consumer welfare standard for corporate law, antitrust error cost analysis, the innovation economics of reverse payment patent settlements, and the law and economics of risk exposure in the tort law context. His article "Personalized Price Regulation as an Income Tax Alternative" was selected for presentation at the 2019 Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum, and his paper "The Obsolescence of Advertising in the Information Age" appeared in The Yale Law Journal in 2018.

Prior to joining the faculty at UK Law, Professor Woodcock was Assistant Professor of Legal Studies in the Department of Risk Management and Insurance in the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University, and held a secondary appointment in the College of Law at Georgia State University. He has practiced antitrust law in the Washington, D.C., offices of WilmerHale, and served as a law clerk to Judge Thomas Ambro of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
 

Mateusz Grochowski [moderation] obtained his Ph.D. cum laude at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, receiving the prize for the best Polish dissertation in private law. He holds a title of Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the Yale Law School.

He is an Affiliated Fellow at the Information Society Project (Yale Law School) and was an Emile Noël Fellow at New York University School of Law. Prior to joining the Max Planck Institute, he was an Edmond J. Safra Fellow at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. He has been also appointed as a Member of the Office of Studies and Analyses of the Supreme Court of Poland.

He received several scholarships and awards, including the Fox International Fellowship (Yale) and a scholarship for outstanding legal researchers from the Foundation for Polish Science.

 


About the seminar series:
The Transatlantic Seminar on Consumer Law, Technology, and Inequality is a joint initiative of five partners: the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Private Law, Jagiellonian University in Cracow, the Free University in Berlin, and the European University Institute in Florence. The seminar seeks to create a space for sharing knowledge, ideas, and experience across geographic and professional boundaries, with a special emphasis on bringing US and European scholars, policy-makers, and social activists together. Each session will combine speakers who rarely appear together but share interests at the intersections of law, economics, and society.
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