Ben Popper

In January, we reached out to BuzzFeed in the wake of the dossier to find out whether the company felt it would be putting itself at risk — legal and financial — by publishing such materials. Recently, Aleksef Gubarev, the Russian-born chief executive of tech firm XBT, sued BuzzFeed for defamation.

Though Gubarev’s lawyer insists that his client is in no way tied to the president’s administration and the suit is not political, it does pose a major question for BuzzFeed: What are the potential repercussions of its aggressive approach to journalism, which pushes beyond some of its more traditional competitors? And in the Trump era, how should it balance the risk and reward of hard-hitting journalism at a company that makes most of its money on light-hearted entertainment?

What is causing the Internet congestion that is degrading service to Netflix consumers? Level 3 -- which helps carry that Netflix traffic to Verizon's network in Los Angeles -- says the problem could be solved in five minutes and for a very small cost, but that Verizon is refusing to make these upgrades, because it wants to extract a fee from Level 3 instead.

Verizon's story matches up pretty well with the one being pushed by Netflix and Level 3. It's saying that Netflix traffic has overwhelmed the points of connection between the ISP and the middlemen who deliver this data for the streaming video giant.

The key difference is that Verizon says Netflix could solve this problem easily by spreading its traffic over multiple transit providers. Level 3 is arguing that the best solution would be to simply upgrade Verizon's network, a process it claims to have offered to pay for.

The news that AT&T had agreed to acquire DirecTV for a whopping $48.5 billion came as no surprise to observers of the pay-TV industry.

"If you think back to the ’90s the marketplace was full of small companies. We've seen wave after wave of mergers and now there are fewer and larger companies," says Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst. "Going forward were going to see even fewer and even larger competitors going forward or moving toward a national, competitive marketplace for television, telephone, Internet, wireless."

For AT&T, the deal is mainly about gaining scale in video and acquiring the bargaining power that comes with that to license premium content -- particularly with the looming specter of a tie-up between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. AT&T will combine its 5.7 million U-verse TV customers with DirecTV's roughly 20.3 million US subscribers.

"All of a sudden you're talking about the number-two pay-TV provider in the country," says Dan Rayburn, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "That means you can negotiate for better programming, and at a better price."

Having access to premium content is key to AT&T's ambition to become a major player in the world of streaming video. "DirecTV is way ahead of AT&T in terms of licensing deals. Something like NFL Sunday Ticket is a game-changer for AT&T if they can offer it as part of a package to their wireless customers," says Rayburn.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said the deal will allow AT&T to offer premium video on all screens, from TVs to smartphones to cars and airplanes. Just how important is big-ticket content like the NFL? The deal terms actually stipulate that AT&T can walk away from the merger if DirecTV doesn't win the contract with the NFL to renew that exclusive.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission will start deciding the future of the Internet. It’s an emotional, controversial, drawn-out battle that has been building for years, pitting some of the biggest Internet providers in the world against the government, American citizens, and virtually every denizen of the web.

A new report with previously unseen documents set to be published by New York’s Public Utility Law Project (PULP) demonstrates how Verizon deliberately moves back and forth between regulatory regimes, classifying its infrastructure either like a heavily regulated telephone network or a deregulated information service depending on its needs.

The chicanery has allowed Verizon to raise telephone rates, all the while missing commitments for high-speed Internet deployment. Why would Verizon -- which, like all big telecom companies, is generally averse to government regulation -- make a point of repeatedly noting that its fiber network fell under the same strict rules as the telephone system?

There are two reasons. First, Title II designation gives carriers broad power to compel other utilities -- power, water, and so on -- to give them access to existing infrastructure for a federally controlled price, which makes it simpler and more cost-effective for cables to be run. And that infrastructure adds up: poles, ducts, conduits running beneath roads, the list goes on.

Second, Title II gave Verizon a unique opportunity to justify boosting telephone rates in discussions with regulators, arguing that these phone calls would run over the same fiber used by FiOS, Verizon’s home Internet service.

The Federal Communications Commission made clear that it won't heed Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' call to expand the scope of network neutrality to regulate the way companies connect across the physical infrastructure of the Internet.

This system, which includes Internet companies like Netflix, middlemen like Cogent, and Internet service providers like Comcast, is the backbone that moves data across the country from Netflix servers into consumers' homes.

"Peering and interconnection are not under consideration in the Open Internet proceeding, but we are monitoring the issues involved to see if any action is needed in any other context," an FCC spokesperson said. Confusingly, at the same time, the agency also said that it was considering new rules to regulate the paid arrangements between companies like Comcast and Netflix.

[Commentary] Why did Netflix agree to pay Comcast and violate Netflix’s own stated principles? According to CEO Reed Hastings, "Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience."

That is certainly part of the truth. Given Comcast’s massive size, Netflix could no longer afford to have so many customers suffering poor service. But informed speculation would suggest there is also a more opportunistic strategy at play here. Netflix had been negotiating with the major American ISPs for two years over these fees.

What if the deal happened now because Comcast, under intense regulatory scrutiny over its proposed merger with Time Warner, finally came to the table with terms Netflix could agree to? Is it possible Hastings saw the chance to strike a deal with the devil, abandoning his own stated principles to capture a bargain at a moment of maximum leverage?