Ownership

On a Wednesday night in June in Cedar Rapids (IA) it was just like old times for Right Side Broadcasting. Live on YouTube, hosts Steve Lookner and Liz Willis interviewed people sporting “Make America Great Again” hats, who waited eagerly in line to watch President Trump take the stage at a jam-packed, campaign-style rally. Some of the Trump fans doubled as Right Side fans, and asked Lookner and Willis to pose for selfies in their branded polos. After generating $1.1 million in advertising revenue and donations in 2016, Right Side entertained grand expansion plans. Founder Joe Seales told Business Insider last fall that he wanted to add news shows to his company's YouTube channel and build toward 24-hour programming. Instead, Right Side has been forced to cut back amid steep revenue declines. A staff of 12 is down to four. Shows hosted by Mike Cernovich, Wayne Dupree, Margaret Howell and Nicholas J. Fuentes have been canceled. Far from seeing a gusher of donations from energized Trump supporters, Seales said he has been propping up Right Side Broadcasting with money from his own pocket.

Teaming up with Right Side on webcasts before Election Day fueled speculation that former reality TV star Donald Trump might launch a television channel, if the vote didn't go his way. When CNN asked campaign chief executive Stephen K. Bannon about the prospect of “Trump TV” in October, the former Breitbart News chairman smiled and said, “Trump is an entrepreneur.” According to Seales, Right Side never discussed going into business with Trump in the event of a defeat.

President Donald Trump's recent tweet about Amazon is putting the issue of online sales taxes back in the spotlight. In a tweet June 28 criticizing the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, President Trump called the publication "the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should)."

It's unclear exactly what Trump meant by "internet taxes." Amazon in April started collecting sales taxes on purchases in every state that levies a sales tax. But Congress has also banned states from taxing consumer's internet access. Asked about the tweet, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she had not discussed it with Trump. The White House also did not respond to an email from The Hill Friday about the tweet or the broader online sales tax issue. But lawmakers and others who want states to be able to force online retailers to collect sales tax were heartened by Trump's comment.

Semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom Limited has agreed to establish a firewall to remedy the Federal Trade Commission’s concerns that its proposed $5.9 billion acquisition of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. is anticompetitive. These concerns arise because of Broadcom’s current access to the confidential business information of Brocade’s major competitor, Cisco Systems, Inc., that could be used to restrain competition or slow innovation in the worldwide market for fibre channel switches.

Fibre channel switches are part of storage area networks that transfer data between servers and storage arrays in data centers. Because fibre channel switches can quickly and securely transfer large amounts of data, they are often used for mission-critical applications. According to the complaint, San Jose (CA)-based Broadcom makes the fibre channel application specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, that are custom-tailored to carry out the functions of each switch. Brocade and Cisco are the only two competitors in the worldwide market for fibre channel switches, and Broadcom supplies both companies with ASICs to make fibre channel switches. The complaint alleges that Broadcom’s acquisition of Brocade could harm worldwide competition in the fibre channel switch market because as Cisco’s supplier, Broadcom has extensive access to Cisco’s competitively sensitive confidential information.

[Commentary] The problem with regulating technology companies is that, faced with tough new rules, they can eventually innovate their way out, often by switching to newer, unregulated technologies. The risk of targeted regulation informed by little other than economic doctrines might even be fuelling a corporate quest for eternal disruption: instead of surrendering to the regulators, technology firms prefer to abandon their old business model. It’s through this lens that we should interpret the likely fallout from the €2.4bn fine imposed on Alphabet, Google’s parent company, by the European commission. It arrives after a lengthy, seven-year investigation into whether the company abused its dominance to promote its own online shopping service above search results. The commission’s case seems sound; the sad fate of small online retailers, unable to compete with Alphabet over the past decade, suggests as much.

However, one should not mistake the factual correctness of the commission’s case for an informed strategic vision: if it has a clue about effective ways to limit the power of data platforms, it’s not showing it. The reality is that even though advertising-powered search still accounts for the bulk of Alphabet’s earnings, the company’s real focus these days is on finding lucrative and creative uses for the troves of data that it has already extracted, processed and turned into artificial intelligence. Alphabet’s future revolves around information-intensive services, not around running matchmaking platforms for advertising.

[Evgeny Morozov is a visiting scholar at Stanford University and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation.]

Sinclair Broadcast Group has added seven stations to its growing group. The Federal Communications Commission granted the transfer of seven full-power stations from Bonten Media Group to Sinclair and granted Sinclair's request that KCFW Kalispell (MT) continue to operate as a satellite of KECI Missoula (MT) under the satellite exception to the duopoly prohibition in smaller markets (ones without eight independent voices). "Given that KCFW is the only full power television station in its community of license, is located in a community of license with limited economic viability, and is costly to operate as a stand-alone station, it is unlikely that an alternative operator would be willing and able to purchase or operate the station as a stand-alone facility," the FCC said in retaining the satellite exemption. The transfer of that was unopposed.

Verizon Wireless said it is disconnecting a small group of customers who use vast amounts of data in rural areas where Verizon relies on roaming agreements with smaller network operators. "Earlier this month we notified a small group of customers who are out of contract and primarily use mobile data on other wireless companies’ networks that we won’t be their service provider after July 30, 2017," a Verizon spokesperson said. "This only affects a few people who primarily roam on other networks and does not affect customers who primarily use Verizon's own network."

The customers who are affected "are using vast amounts of data—some as much as a terabyte or more a month—outside of our network footprint," the company said. Verizon gave the customers several weeks notice so they have time to port their numbers to new providers. Verizon provided no option to switch to different plans. "We regularly review accounts with data use that primarily takes place outside of the Verizon network," Verizon also said.

RadioShack is going down swinging. With nearly all of its stores now out of business, the retailer’s creditors have sued Sprint and are accusing the wireless carrier of backstabbing RadioShack and destroying any hope of a great American comeback story. The creditors are seeking $500 million in damages, and are alleging that Sprint used a co-branding partnership formed between the two companies in 2015 to its own selfish benefit — and to RadioShack’s eventual doom.

This study evaluates the estimated impact of the Federal Communications Commission’s recent efforts to remove barriers to investment into next-generation wireless and wireline broadband networks, and thereby to accelerate the transition from legacy copper networks to next-generation services.

We estimate that these proposed changes could have a significant impact not only on new wireless and wireline broadband infrastructure investment, but could also positively impact job creation, economic output and consumer welfare. Our models forecast that with these new rules in place, up to an incremental 26.7 million premises would become economical to serve with next generation networks, driving up to $45.3 billion in capital investment. This investment would be made by incumbent service providers across the country and is expected to take place over at least five years.

Apparently, As US officials investigated in January the FSB's alleged role in election cyber attacks, US technology firms were quietly lobbying the government to soften a ban on dealing with the Russian spy agency. New US sanctions put in place by former President Barack Obama last December - part of a broad suite of actions taken in response to Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election - had made it a crime for American companies to have any business relationship with the FSB, or Federal Security Service.

US authorities had accused the FSB, along with the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, of orchestrating cyber attacks on the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a charge Moscow denies. But the sanctions also threatened to imperil the Russian sales operations of Western tech companies. Under a little-understood arrangement, the FSB doubles as a regulator charged with approving the import to Russia of almost all technology that contains encryption, which is used in both sophisticated hardware as well as products like cellphones and laptops. Worried about the sales impact, business industry groups, including the US-Russia Business Council and the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, contacted US officials at the American embassy in Moscow and the Treasury, State and Commerce departments, according to five people with direct knowledge of the lobbying effort.

A battle is brewing at the Federal Communications Commission between cable and telecom industry groups and state attorneys general over broadband speed investigations. Citing state complaints alleging false advertising of internet speeds, USTelecom and NCTA have asked the FCC for a ruling confirming internet service proviers are following federal transparency rules by posting online their average performance during times of peak usage, as evaluated by the Measuring Broadband America program. But a bipartisan group of 35 attorneys general told the agency the petition “represents nothing more than the industry’s effort to shield itself from state law enforcement.”

One of the AGs involved, New York’s Eric Schneiderman, accused Charter in February of misleading customers by advertising internet speeds the company hasn’t delivered. The industry groups say the Charter complaint relies on unofficial speed measurement tools. The deadline for reply comments to the FCC is July 3.