Ownership

How does antitrust fare in the required reduction in federal regulations? First, antitrust is law enforcement, it’s not regulation.  At its best, it supports reducing regulation, by encouraging competitive markets that, as a result, require less government intervention.  That is to say, proper and timely antitrust enforcement helps competition police markets instead of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. doing it.

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are controlling Americans’ minds and wallets, and they need to be stopped before they destroy the US economy and democracy itself. That was the message from a dimly-lit, packed conference room in a nondescript Washington DC hotel near the train station last week. Nearly 200 tech executives, journalists, public relations people, and academics attended the event, organized by the Open Markets Institute, a tiny nonprofit that’s becoming a lightening rod for the growing anger and frustration with Big Tech in America. Here are their main points:

Across the board, we are reviewing our regulations to make sure that they reflect current market conditions; that they are applied evenly and fairly; and that they are consistent with the law and sound principles of economics. In some cases, that means streamlining rules to reflect current technological and marketplace realities.  In other cases, that means eliminating them altogether.  In all cases, it means getting government out of the way as much as possible in order to encourage private initiative. Beyond that, we have adopted a posture of regulatory humility.

[Commentary] If the government goes to court to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, as seems increasingly likely, it may well be the antitrust case of the decade, even without the claims of presidential meddling that have already engulfed the deal in partisan controversy. A lawsuit by the Justice Department, along with its earlier, widely reported demands that AT&T sell either DirecTV or Turner Broadcasting to gain approval for the deal, would mark a radical departure from decades of antitrust enforcement policy, both in defining what is an unlawful anticompetitive merger and

Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s new antitrust chief, made clear he doesn’t favor approving mergers based on corporate commitments to refrain from particular conduct, another potentially ominous sign for AT&T-Time Warner. The issue has proved a key one in discussions between the companies and the Justice Department. The AT&T-Time Warner transaction is a vertical merger that combines complementary companies instead of direct competitors.

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has called on Federal Communications CommissionChairman Ajit Pai to investigate Russian state-sponsored media outlets RT and Sputnik. She points out that the US intelligence community has concluded both meddled in the elections and also that this is her third letter she has sent to the chairman seeking an investigation. She says Pai's responses to the previous two were to dismiss her concerns while failing to fully address them.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to modernize its broadcast ownership rules and to help promote ownership diversity in the broadcast industry. The Order on Reconsideration:

Time is said to be in talks to sell itself to the Meredith, in a deal backed by Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire brothers known for supporting conservative causes. The new round of negotiations, motivated by the surprise entry of the Kochs, could lead to a quick deal. The Kochs have tentatively agreed to back Meredith’s offer with an equity injection of more than $500 million. The companies have been negotiating over the past several days, and Meredith is reviewing the latest Time Inc. financial information.

If the Justice Department sues to block AT&T's planned acquisition of Time Warner, the challenge will likely raise novel legal issues, making one of the most ambitious antitrust cases in decades hard to handicap. In the typical merger case, the government challenges a proposed combination of two companies that directly compete.

Nov 16, the Federal Communications Commission majority will continue down its destructive path of adopting a series of actions that fail to put consumers first. They will make it more difficult for low-income Americans to access affordable communications services; they will adopt a so-called ‘voluntary’ television standard that has even more outstanding and unanswered questions than the February Notice of Proposed Rulemaking; they will shred consumer and competition protections in times of technology transitions; and they will open the door to massive media consolidation at the expense of l