In this issue, we take a look at how a new royalty scheme by dominant music streaming service Spotify shortchanges smaller artists in favor of the large music labels.

A new Industry Spotlight on container shipping shows how decades of deregulation and consolidation have left the United States dependent on a ‘container cartel’ of six foreign-owned shipping firms which control more than 90 percent of US trade on major routes.  It recommends a series of fixes to improve the U.S. outlook.

As debates about AI governance and transparency sweep across governments, the Open Markets Institute has joined an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold California's law requiring AI companies to disclose information about the data used to train their models. 

Massive corporations like Google should not be able to buy their way out of complying with EU law.

The Commission's approval comes despite months of warnings fromcivil society, journalists, and thefilm and TV industries that the deal would concentrate an unprecedented share of production, distribution and broadcasting power in the hands of one company, reducing the number of major American studios from four to three.

CMDG director Courtney Radsch argues how policymakers must urgently regulate the AI industry before it replicates and supercharges "surveillance capitalism" business models that commercially exploit personal data and reward psychological manipulation

Without these orders, the 60% of Europeans who use an Android device would be locked into Gemini as their only system level AI assistant, and Google would continue to leverage its overwhelming monopoly over search data to gain an unfair advantage over its competitors in AI development. 

In this issue, we explore how California’s COMPETE Act sets the stage for California to become a global superpower in antitrust, as the Trump administration all but suspends federal enforcement.

Editorial director Anita Jane argues that AI’s real danger is not superintelligence, but Big Tech’s inflated economics, concentrated power, and use of AI to turn workers and creators into tools serving machines rather than people.

Open Markets Institute applauds the 12 state attorneys general suing to block the Ellison family’s illegal, anti-democratic efforts to take over Warner Bros. Discovery properties and fold them into their Paramount-Skydance media empire.