Antitrust law has a new reputation: exciting. Jennifer Dixton, antitrust law professor at UCLA and a Justice Department antitrust enforcer for more than two decades, remembers a different era. As she tells Alex Alben, “when I started practicing antitrust, it was a little sleepy.” Today it shows up in your newsfeed, and her students are lining up for the class.
This episode of the Responsible AI podcast opens in Hollywood. California and twelve other states challenged the proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. merger after the Justice Department decided not to bring a case. Jennifer explains why states have a seat at the table, how the 30 percent market-share presumption works, and why the proposed settlement—an independent editorial board for the news operation, minimum film output, and a 45-day theatrical release window—looks unusual and a little familiar. Alex adds a family angle: his grandfather was a Warner Bros. attorney during the 1940s consent decrees, and the two trace the line from those decrees to today’s streaming-era deal.
Jennifer walks through why Google’s default-search deals drew scrutiny, why courts hesitate to order breakups, and how the Microsoft case may have cleared a path for companies like Google to grow. She also tackles the puzzle of free products. When a service costs nothing, regulators look at quality instead of price, and, in her words, “Less competition probably means less quality.”
Can frontier AI companies collaborate on safety protocols without running afoul of antitrust law? Jennifer’s answer draws on DOJ business reviews of COVID-era collaborations and on open, industry-led standard setting.
The episode closes in the classroom, where she is swapping take-home papers for think-on-your-feet exercises, and where she notes that despite AI’s abilities, “you still have to know the basics as a lawyer.”
Topics
01:36 The Current State of Antitrust Law
02:45 Antitrust in the Entertainment Industry
04:16 State vs. Federal Antitrust Enforcement
05:15 Market Concentration and Antitrust Standards
07:06 Merger Remedies and Independent Oversight
09:27 Behavioral Commitments in Mergers
11:15 Historical Context of Antitrust in Media
11:44 The Evolution of Antitrust Enforcement
13:46 Big Tech and Antitrust Actions
15:31 Consumer Welfare vs. Freemium Models
17:27 Challenges of Breaking Up Big Companies
19:37 Algorithmic Collusion and Pricing Models
22:27 Surveillance Pricing and Antitrust Concerns
25:00 AI's Impact on Antitrust Law
26:20 Collaboration for AI Safety
29:02 COVID-19 and Antitrust Policy Adjustments
31:33 Transparency in AI Collaboration
34:09 AI in Education and Legal Training
39:03 Antitrust and Innovation
About Professor Jennifer Dixton: Jennifer teaches Antitrust Law and Antitrust and Intellectual Property in the Digital Economy, and holds teaching appointments at UCLA, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and has taught at Loyola Marymount Law School. Professor Dixton is also an affiliated faculty member with UCLA’s Institute for Technology Law & Policy.
For more than two decades, Jennifer was an antitrust enforcer for the U.S. Department of Justice, where she focused on the intersection of antitrust law and intellectual property rights, standards development, artificial intelligence and other technology, as well as antitrust compliance.
Jennifer received her LL.M. from the George Washington University Law School and her J.D. from the Catholic University Columbus School of Law.
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