Ownership

Nokia will combine its worldwide delivery capabilities and wireless passive optical network (WPON) with Facebook’s Terragraph technology to launch global gigabit broadband trials in 2018 with select customers. The Nokia, Facebook project is an attempt to accelerate the adoption of 60 GHz fixed wireless access technologies to deliver gigabit services and connect more people.

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case that could have far-reaching implications for law enforcement access to digital data and for US companies that store customer emails in servers overseas. What began as a challenge by tech giant Microsoft to a routine search warrant for a suspected drug dealer’s emails has become a marquee case over data access in the Internet age. At issue is whether a US company must comply with a court order to turn over emails, even if they are held abroad — in this case in a Dublin server.

His first Washington remains the one out west, but Bezos is growing his presence in D.C. In addition to owning the Post and a thriving business in federal-government cloud computing, he's got a giant real estate project on his hands, having spent $23 million on the city's priciest house: a 27,000-square-foot colossus. Could it be a coincidence that three of the finalist sites for Amazon's new HQ are in the DC area?

After billionaire Joe Ricketts announced the shuttering of local news organizations Gothamist and DNAInfo last fall, readers across the country mourned the loss of the beloved sites, and worried about the vulnerability of journalism in the digital age. Now, a consortium of public radio stations, including WNYC in New York, WAMU in Washington DC, and KPCC in Southern California, has banded together to bring some of those sites back from the dead.The three stations are acquiring the assets of Gothamist and some of its associated sites, including LAist, DCist, and DNAInfo.

Five years ago. Nicco Mele warned that technology — particularly social media — was taking power from big institutions and and giving it to individuals. When used for good, he said in his 2013 book “The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath,” new technologies could empower individuals, give smaller players a fighting chance and challenge incumbents. But there was also a dark side to the power shift, warned Mele, the director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

When US District Court Judge Richard Leon hears the U.S. government’s lawsuit to stop the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, he will be deciding not just one media deal but two. Not only can his decision allow one blockbuster merger, but it could also lead to the unwinding of a second. After President Donald Trump and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, the person who will most closely watch the case will be Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast. If Judge Leon approves the deal, Roberts will likely lob in another bid for the assets that 21st Century Fox agreed to sell to Disney.

[Commentary] Which hurts civilization more: no one believing anything, or everyone believing lies? If we fail to take immediate action to protect our news and information ecosystem, we may soon find out. We are careening toward an infocalypse — a catastrophic failure of the marketplace of ideas. So what can we do? In short, we need massive investment across industry, civil society and government, to understand and mitigate threats to our information ecosystems. And we need it now.  As of now, there are a few particularly promising mitigations that deserve immediate consideration:

Sinclair has submitted its new proposal to purchase Tribune stations, taking into account the deregulatory media ownership changes the Federal Communications Commission made in December 2018 to allow for more local station ownership, including allowing smaller-market duopolies and the ownership of more than one top station in a market in some circumstances.  The plan includes divestitures of WGN-TV Chicago (IL) and WPIX-TV New York, and KSWB-TV San Diego (CA) to come under the FCC's 39 percent ownership cap. Sinclair does not own stations in either New York or Chicago.

Google has succeeded where Genghis Khan, communism and Esperanto all failed: It dominates the globe. Though estimates vary by region, the company now accounts for an estimated 87 percent of online searches worldwide.

[Commentary] The indictments brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III against 13 individuals and three organizations accused of interfering with the US election offer perhaps the most powerful evidence yet that Facebook and its Instagram subsidiary are harming public health and democracy. The best option for the company — and for democracy — is for Facebook to change its business model from one based on advertising to a subscription service. Facebook’s advertising business model is hugely profitable, but the incentives are perverse.