1. Monthly archive
  2. August 2017

August 2017

Hal Singer, a Title II opponent, explains why Ajit Pai’s plan won’t protect net neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission plan to repeal network neutrality rules depends partly on the argument that antitrust rules can protect consumers and websites from bad behavior by Internet service providers. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes overturning the rules seeks comment on whether "the existence of antitrust regulations aimed at curbing various forms of anticompetitive conduct" makes the current net neutrality rules unnecessary. But even a prominent opponent of the current net neutrality rules that Chairman Pai wants to overturn says that antitrust isn't robust enough to protect consumers and websites from ISPs.

This anti-antitrust argument comes from economist Hal Singer, who opposed the FCC's 2015 decision under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler to impose net neutrality rules by reclassifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. Chairman Pai has repeatedly said that Singer's research on alleged network investment declines proves that the net neutrality rules have been harmful. Singer has derisively called the current net neutrality framework, "the Wheeler tax." But on the question of whether antitrust rules can protect consumers from net neutrality violations, Pai and Singer do not agree.

Sen Klobuchar wants answers on FTC's quick approval of Amazon-Whole Foods deal

Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member, is demanding answers on the speed with which the Federal Trade Commission approved Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods. Sen Klobuchar said she was concerned that the FTC “did not fully review” the deal before signing off on it Aug 23. “Amazon's increased access to data on consumers and their behavior, and its dominance in internet retail sales, raises questions about whether this merger harms consumers and suppresses competition,” she said. “Examining such complicated issues is the FTC's primary responsibility, and I will be calling on the FTC to provide an explanation for why they made such a quick decision regarding this merger.”

Is Sinclair Too Liberal And Too Anti-Trump?

[Commentary] I found that most of Sinclair’s news-producing stations were as mainstream as the Mississippi River. And if you believe that mainstream is synonymous with liberal (I don’t), then Sinclair will be, upon closing of the Tribune deal, the nation’s leading purveyor of liberal news and views in broadcast television. In my diligent research, I found many damning news reports about President Donald Trump, his populist agenda and his apparent collusion with the Russians during the campaign. On top of that, I found biting satire aimed at Trump and the GOP leadership just about every day in late night and heaps of scripted entertainment programming that make a mockery of traditional family values. Many of these stations, I would note, are not in blue states where the out-of-touch elites dwell, but in solidly red states that generally back Republicans and supply Trump with his he-can-do-no-wrong supporters.

I believe that Sinclair’s national news is much more conservative than the networks’ are liberal. But, for the foreseeable future, the networks will be pumping out far more national news than Sinclair is. As Sinclair said in its filing, the Big Three “dominate the national broadcast news offerings in most local markets.” Right now, it all kind of evens out. So, the next time you hear someone say that Sinclair will destroy America by broadcasting politically driven news, you should ask: What news — ABC, CBS or NBC?

FCC Releases Data on Mobile Deployment as of June 30, 2016 and December 31, 2016 Collected through FCC Form 477

The Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (Bureau) today released data from two separate data collections representing mobile voice and broadband deployment as of June 30, 2016, and December 31, 2016. These deployment data were collected through FCC Form 477.

China Is Trying to Give the Internet a Death Blow

I live in the only country in the world where the internet gets worse every year — at least if you’re trying to look at YouTube or Twitter or Google or virtually any other large non-Chinese site. For years, the only way to get to such services has been with a virtual private network (VPN), a tool that slips past China’s “Great Firewall” into the freedom of the outside world. Even as the Chinese internet has gotten better, access to the outside has gotten worse. And now it might be cut off entirely, as orders from the government reportedly seek to shut down VPNs altogether, severing even this thin lifeline.

These increased measures aren’t about control of information. They’re about preventing mobilization — about stopping angry Chinese from using the methods practiced at Tahrir Square in Egypt and the Maidan in Ukraine. Match that with an ever more sprawling security state and growing top-down xenophobia, and measures that would have seemed implausibly harsh four years ago now seem highly likely. But these paranoid demands could end up hamstringing the country’s economic and technological ambitions, leaving it stuck in a pit of its own making.

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