Ownership

Comcast is increasingly making demands in TV programming contract negotiations that would force its smaller rivals to raise their minimum cable TV prices, a lobby group for small cable companies told the Federal Communications Commission Oct 11. The American Cable Association (ACA), which represents nearly 800 small and medium-sized cable operators, asked the FCC to investigate the practice and prohibit it under its program access rules.

The issue relates to Comcast's ownership of regional sports networks that are marketed under the brand of Comcast's NBC subsidiary. Comcast wants to redefine the so-called "minimum penetration policy," essentially making it impossible for small cable companies to sell a cheap, basic tier of TV service that doesn't include higher-priced channels, the ACA alleged.

Rep Keith Ellison (D-MN) has asked Federal Trade Commission Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen for documentation of its long-running antitrust investigation of Google, which was closed in 2013 with no finding of antitrust violations. In 2013, the FTC concluded: "Google’s display of its own content could plausibly be viewed as an improvement in the overall quality of Google’s search product. Similarly, we have not found sufficient evidence that Google manipulates its search algorithms to unfairly disadvantage vertical websites that compete with Google-owned vertical properties."

That came despite complaints to Congress from some small online businesses that Google was disfavoring them in search. Rep Ellison points out that Google did volunteer to change some business practices in the wake of the investigation. "Given the impact Google has on small businesses, the flow of information, and that Google controls an outsize portion of the market for online search and online advertising, the public has a right to know what the Federal Trade Commission found in its investigation into Google," Ellison said in a letter to Ohlhausen.

[Commentary] As unprecedented as President Donald Trump’s relentless and angry attack on the media is, it’s important to realize that unless he wants to break the law by doing something like ordering wiretaps of reporters (as Nixon did), there’s not much he can do. He could create an enemies list and instruct his aides not to speak to certain journalists. But given how incredibly leaky his White House is, they’d probably ignore him. He can try to discredit certain news organizations, which he has done.

But you may have noticed that the main targets of his ire (CNN and the Times) are doing quite well in the Trump era. He has the power of the bully pulpit, but at least in this area, he’s finding it awfully hard to put his authoritarian impulses into practice. Which of course will only make him more enraged as he turns on cable news or picks up the paper and fails to find the praise he seeks. At least he’s got “Fox & Friends” to make him feel better.

President Donald Trump suggested that media companies which report critically on him should be punished by having their television station licenses revoked. In a tweet, the President decried the supposed "fake news coming out of NBC and the Networks." He asked, "At what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!" President Trump seems to have been furious over an NBC News report that said he wanted a tenfold increase in the US' nuclear arsenal. He claimed the story was "pure fiction" and "made up to demean."

Trump's veiled threat may contribute to the increasingly-chilly atmosphere journalists in the US are working under during his Administration. But his threat is essentially toothless. First of all, there is no single license for NBC or any other national television network. Licenses are granted to individual local stations -- and NBC doesn't even own most of the stations that broadcast its content across the country. And it is extremely unusual for any station's license to be taken away for any reason, much less for a political vendetta. The licenses for local television stations are subject to review by the Federal Communications Commission every eight years. It would not be possible for President Trump or his allies to challenge all of the licenses held by NBC in one fell swoop. Individuals who reside in the areas the local channel airs would have to submit complaints to the FCC.

Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA) called on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to reject any efforts by President Donald Trump or his administration to infringe on the First Amendment or undermine the independence of the FCC. On Oct 11, President Trump tweeted, “[w]ith all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” In his letter, Sen Markey asks Chairman Pai to provide any correspondence or communications from the White House or other members of the Trump administration that have encouraged the FCC to take action against a broadcaster.

[Commentary] Are social media platforms like Twitter subject to the First Amendment? Is there a right to free speech on social media owned by private corporations? The Knight First Amendment Institute thinks so. In July, the institute sued the president, his director of social media, and his press secretary to unblock the blocked. By banning these users based on views they expressed about tweets by the president, the Institute argues, Trump violated the users’ right to free speech because the blocks were based on disagreement with the users’ messages. Two weeks ago, as part of this litigation, lawyers for the president acknowledged that he personally blocked the Twitter users “because the Individual Plaintiffs posted tweets that criticized the president or his policies”—what free speech law calls “viewpoint discrimination.” In places where the First Amendment applies—such as public forums—it bars the government or its officials from such bias....

As it stands, the country’s libertarian conception of free speech is allowing, and even ferociously feeding, an erosion of the democracy it is supposed to be essential in making work—and some government regulation of speech on social media may be required to save it.

[Lincoln Caplan is the Truman Capote Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School ]

[Commentary] The tech giants are too big. Other than President Donald J. Trump, that’s the defining story of 2017, the meta-narrative lurking beneath every other headline. The companies I call the Frightful Five — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company — have experienced astounding growth over the last few years, making them the world’s five most valuable public companies. Because they own the technology that will dominate much of life for the foreseeable future, they are also gaining vast social and political power over much of the world beyond tech.

Now that world is scrambling to figure out what to do about them. And it is discovering that the changes they are unleashing — in the economy, in civic and political life, in arts and entertainment, and in our tech-addled psyches — are not simple to comprehend, let alone to limit. This is the first of several columns in which I’ll take measure of the Five. Here, I assess their efforts to infiltrate entertainment — their plans to push deeper into the business of movies, TV and music, and the fears of cultural domination those moves have provoked.

The US Supreme Court asked the Trump administration for its views on whether to hear Apple’s bid to avoid a class-action lawsuit accusing the tech giant of inflating consumer prices by charging illegally high commissions on iPhone software sales through its App Store. The justices are considering whether to take up Apple’s appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed the proposed class-action suit alleging it violated federal antitrust law to proceed. Apple said the case should be thrown out because only developers of the apps who were charged the commissions, not consumers, should be entitled to bring such a suit.

Apple charges app developers a 30 percent commission on App Store consumer purchases. The Justice Department will provide the high court with its stance on the matter. The dispute could have a major impact on electronic commerce, which has seen explosive growth, with $390 billion in US retail sales in 2016.

CenturyLink is making a final push to get the Federal Communications Commission to approve its pending acquisition of Level 3 Communications, with hopes of closing it in October 2017. The FCC is the only regulator that has yet to sign off on the purchase. To date, CenturyLink and Level 3’s proposed merger has gotten approvals from 19 states. It has also gained pre-closing notice filings in 14 other states. At this point, CenturyLink and Level only need the final sign off from the California Public Utilities Commission, which is expected to approve the acquisition during a meeting in Oct.

X is the so-called moonshot factory at Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The purpose of X is not to solve Google’s problems; thousands of people are already doing that. Nor is its mission philanthropic. Instead X exists, ultimately, to create world-changing companies that could eventually become the next Google.

The enterprise considers more than 100 ideas each year, in areas ranging from clean energy to artificial intelligence. But only a tiny percentage become “projects,” with full-time staff working on them. It’s too soon to know whether many (or any) of these shots will reach the moon: X was formed in 2010, and its projects take years; critics note a shortage of revenue to date. But several projects—most notably Waymo, its self-driving-car company, recently valued at $70 billion by one Wall Street firm—look like they may.