August 2015

Singling out recent disputes involving Dish, Mediacom Communications and DirecTV, the National Association of Broadcasters, in a meeting with Commissioner Ajit Pai of the Federal Communications Commission's office, suggested the FCC should apply a “bad actor factor” when the FCC considers a good faith complaint.

The rhetorical jabs between broadcasters and cable operators have escalated since the FCC opened up a Congressionally-mandated rulemaking to review the “totality of circumstances” used to determine if both sides are acting in good faith. Just a month ago, the NAB warned the FCC that cable would “manufacture a crisis” to get an edge in the current review. “Since we filed that warning , there have been several impasses or near impasses involving the usual cast of characters -- mostly notably DISH, DirecTV, and Mediacom,” wrote the NAB’s Rick Kaplan in an ex parte filed with the FCC Aug 25.

[Commentary] For months, a group of writers calling themselves Authors United have campaigned, mostly unsuccessfully, against the business practices of Amazon.com. It is perhaps the writers’ lack of legal expertise that has given them the freedom to put forth what antitrust experts described to me as a highly unorthodox argument: that, even though Amazon’s activities tend to reduce book prices, which is considered good for consumers, they ultimately hurt consumers. The authors are, in essence, trying to make the case that Amazon is bad not only for writers, but also for people who buy stuff on the site -- and they’re taking this approach for good reason.

US courts evaluate antitrust issues very differently, nowadays, than they did a hundred years ago, just after antitrust laws were established to keep big corporations from abusing their power. Back then, judges tended to be largely concerned with protecting suppliers from being squeezed by retailers, which meant that, if a corporation exercised monopoly power to push prices down, hurting suppliers, the company could easily lose an antitrust case. But by the nineteen-eighties, the judiciary’s focus had shifted to protecting consumers, leading courts to become more prone to ruling in favor of the corporation, on the grounds that lower prices are good for consumers.

The newly appointed United Nations special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, has called the United Kingdom's oversight of surveillance "a rather bad joke at its citizens’ expense," and said that the situation regarding privacy is "worse" than anything George Orwell imagined in his novel 1984. Cannataci said: "at least Winston [a character in Orwell's 1984] was able to go out in the countryside and go under a tree and expect there wouldn’t be any screen, as it was called. Whereas today there are many parts of the English countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined. So the situation in some cases is far worse already."

Cannataci is also concerned about the routine surveillance carried out by Internet companies as a key part of their business model. "They just went out and created a model where people’s data has become the new currency," he said. "And unfortunately, the vast bulk of people sign their rights away without knowing or thinking too much about it."

[Commentary] Children's programming might have just become the new front line in the subscription battle as streaming services try to boost subscriber numbers. Their strategy aimed at attracting younger viewers, though, is now getting more awareness.

At stake will be millions of dollars in subscription fees for streaming services that have the best offerings. One reason why children are a target audience is because they are natural binge-watchers, prone to viewing the same episode over and over. Parents, who once sat their kids down in front of DVDs, are discovering that streaming services offer more varied programming and are more convenient in a pinch.