John Eggerton

The News Media Alliance has told the Federal Trade Commission that it needs to take action to "rein in tech giants' anticompetitive conduct." That came in comments to the agency in advance of a planned series of public hearings over the next six months or so on competition and consumer protection policy in the digital age. It told the FTC that the Googles and Facebooks of the world did not get to be dominant in distribution and monetization on their merits alone.

According to testimony and documents provided by the fire chief of Santa Clara County, one of the CA counties fighting the largest wildfire in the state's history, throttling of its Internet speeds per a lower-priced Verizon data plan had a significant impact the department's ability to provide emergency and potentially life-saving services. The documents came in the legal challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's lifting of regulations against online blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) has asked Federal Communications Commission Inspector General David Hunt to investigate what he said was FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's failure to disclose a conversation he had with White House General Counsel Don McGahn about the Sinclair-Tribune merger, suggesting it could have been a "coverup." Ranking Member Pallone is wondering why Chairman Pai did not disclose the conversation during an earlier House FCC oversight hearing.

Public Knowledge, Mozilla, the Benton Foundation, INCOMPAS and others challenging the Federal Communications Commission's Restoring Internet Freedom order say that was not just bad policy but illegal. That is coming in a brief with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which is hearing their challenge to the network neutrality regulation rollback--the deadline for initial briefs from non-government parties is Aug 20.

Key leadership of the Federal Communications Commission's Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE) have a big problem with the way the FCC has structured the new diversity incubator program they otherwise support, a problem they say could "destroy" the program. That warning came in a call the week of Aug 13 between committee members James Winston and David Honig and Matthew Berry, chief of staff to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

The Federal Communications Commission has provided a five-business-day extension for comments and reply comments on its Fourteenth Broadband Deployment report, but denied requests for a longer extension and for any extension on its request for comment on the state of fixed broadband competition.

The Content Creators Coalition has told the Federal Trade Commission that its members need government protection from big edge providers they say are abusing their dominant positions on the Web.  That came in a filing with the FTC, which is launching a broad review of its competition and consumer protection regime. It also comes as the agency is newly charged with overseeing network neutrality after the Federal Communications Commission deeded it oversight in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order.

Sen Tom Udall (D-NM) has signaled he will use some of his time questioning Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai at an Aug 16 FCC oversight hearing to make sure he has journalists' backs. That is the same day journalist organizations are getting together to push back on President Donald Trump's attacks on mainstream media as fake news outlets in league with his Democrat opponents to undermine his presidency and policies. Sen Udall will call on Chairman Pai "to defend the free press in light of repeated attacks from President Trump and members of his administration."

The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau says it has no issue with the FCC's administrative law judge (ALJ) terminating a hearing into Sinclair's representations about the now-imploded Tribune deal. The FCC docket was still open. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had recommended referring the deal to ALJ Richard Sippel, citing allegations that Sinclair had been less than candid in its representations--Sinclair flatly denied any of it--and that some TV station spin-offs could still leave it in effective control of some of those stations.

Four Democratic representatives are pressing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for answers about the FCC's misidentification of a flood of network neutrality comments as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, specifically when he and others at the FCC found out about the inaccurate diagnosis. The Reps suggested that there were only two options: that Chairman Pai already knew it was not a DDoS attack but had not shared that information, or that he was ignorant of it, which they suggested would be "dereliction of duty."