Antitrust Law As A Tool Against Privacy Abuses

By William Reiss and Matthew Geyer

Typically, when one thinks of anti-competitive harm, one envisions a consumer or business paying an inflated price for a product or service resulting from an unlawful monopoly or agreement among competitors. And, in most antitrust cases, that is the very landscape. But as social media and technology continue to expand into new frontiers by offering free products and services to users; commentators, regulators, and perhaps most importantly courts have begun to recognize a new concept of anti-competitive harm: harm to privacy.