Ownership

Analysts say AT&T’s declaration that it would offer distributors arbitration when Turner carriage deals expire—and its promise of no blackouts for seven years—if its acquisition of Time Warner goes through answers one of the government's biggest objections to the deal. AT&T disclosed the offer in response to the Justice Department’s suit looking to block the merger on antitrust grounds.  MoffettNathanson Research analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson called AT&T's arbitration and no-blackout gambit clever.

Facebook may soon ask you to "upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face," to prove you're not a bot. The company is using a new kind of captcha to verify whether a user is a real person. According to a screenshot of the identity test shared on Twitter and verified by Facebook, the prompt says: “Please upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face.

The internet is dying. Sure, technically, the internet still works. Pull up Facebook on your phone and you will still see your second cousin’s baby pictures. But that isn’t really the internet. It’s not the open, anyone-can-build-it network of the 1990s and early 2000s, the product of technologies created over decades through government funding and academic research, the network that helped undo Microsoft’s stranglehold on the tech business and gave us upstarts like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix.

Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, blasted Twitter for what he said was a push to “discriminate” against conservatives. He  accused Twitter of hypocrisy for its criticism of the FCC's plan to repeal the Obama-era regulation. “When it comes to a free and open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem,” Chairman Pai said.

AT&T and Time Warner said an explosion of online programming has spawned a “golden age for television—and for consumers,” in its first court filing countering government claims that their planned merger would stymie competition and hurt customers. AT&T, in a formal written answer to the lawsuit, said the video marketplace is changing quickly and is “intensely competitive,” and that nothing about the Time Warner deal would harm that. AT&T said online rivals like Netflix and Amazon were spending billions of dollars on developing and streaming video content, and that leading tech c

The newest area of work in MacArthur's long-standing Journalism and Media Program is support for organizations that enable, encourage, and amplify civic media-making. We are supporting nonprofit organizations that train and amplify fresh voices, with a particular emphasis on empowering young people and historically marginalized communities to tell their own stories, shape the public narrative, and assert influence over the matters that concern them. We call this work "participatory civic media."

AT&T/DirecTV and Time Warner have told a federal court and, by extension, the Justice Department and Trump Administration, that the feds' case against their proposed merger is "improper selective enforcement of the antitrust laws."  That came in its official response to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit following DOJ's suit to block the deal, which was filed in that court.

Comcast said it has no plans to offer fast lanes on the internet after the Federal Communications Commission eliminates Obama-era regulation, which banned the practice. The nation's biggest cable operator responded to a report from the website Ars Technica, which stated Comcast might be considering offering a service that would charge companies like Netflix and Google to deliver their services more quickly to consumers. In a statement, Comcast denied the claim. "Comcast hasn't entered into any paid prioritization agreements. Period," spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said.

Comcast continues to repeat it’s mantra that it will never block, throttle or discriminate against lawful content. But slight adjustments in its wording over the years indicates the Philadelphia-based company could change its position. Internet service providers have a monopoly or duopoly in many parts of the country, leaving consumers with little-to-no choice if they disagree with ISPs disclosed policies.

In the eight days after news broke that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wants to fully repeal network neutrality rules, cable and broadcast news networks -- aside from MSNBC -- have given the story very little coverage.