Ownership

Trade group INCOMPAS wants the Federal Communications Commission to include redacted materials from recent mergers involving Comcast, Charter and AT&T in its review of Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back the agency’s network neutrality rules. The group, which counts Netflix and Sprint among its members, said economic studies, internal company presentations and other data submitted as part of the commission’s merger review process shows that internet service providers have incentive to curb competition. The information would be vital in a court review of final rules, said INCOMPAS CEO Chip Pickering. “The FCC has taken a position that the ISPs do not have the means and the motive to act against online competitors,” Pickering said. “And if that’s the question, you have to look at all the evidence. And a refusal to consider the evidence, I think any court would find unreasonable.”

INCOMPAS noted that its request would not make the information available to the general public. Instead, only certain parties would be able to see the documents — the same confidentiality the FCC used in the merger reviews. Comcast, Charter and AT&T opposed the request, arguing that sharing the information in the net neutrality proceeding risks disclosure of sensitive documents. Charter said the “unprecedented request is a harmful fishing expedition, which, if granted, would violate federal law.” Pickering finds the companies’ opposition suspect: “Their nuclear reaction for simply asking for the evidence to be included continues to beg the question, ‘What do they have to hide?’” INCOMPAS asks the FCC to act by July 31. Agency representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Apparently, Bill Shine, a former co-president of Fox News and top lieutenant to the network’s founder, Roger Ailes, has spoken with White House officials about taking a position on President Donald Trump’s communications team. Shine has no political experience outside of producing cable news, and he was forced out of Fox News in May after his name surfaced in lawsuits that accused him of abetting Ailes’s harassing behavior toward women. (Shine has denied all wrongdoing, as did Ailes, who died in May.)

But Shine has an influential ally in the Fox News host Sean Hannity, an informal adviser to President Trump — and one of his most loyal on-air supporters — who dined with Shine, the president and the first lady at the White House the week of July 24. Shine’s job prospects are unclear now that Trump has fired his communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, who also attended last week’s dinner and worked with Shine during his tenure as a host on Fox News and the Fox Business Network. Shine’s association with Scaramucci may hinder his chances with some factions in the West Wing.

Steve Bannon, the chief strategist to President Donald Trump, believes Facebook and Google should be regulated as public utilities, according to an anonymously sourced report in The Intercept. This means they would get treated less like a book publisher and more like a telephone company. The government would shorten their leash, treating them as privately owned firms that provide an important public service.

The plan is a prototypical alleged Bannonism: iconoclastic, anti-establishment, and unlikely to result in meaningful policy change....Americans will have to examine the most fraught tensions in our mixed system, as we weigh the balance of local power and national power, the deliberate benefits of central planning with the mindless wisdom of the free market, and the many conflicting meanings of freedom.

The likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google are about to go to war with the Congress over the most unlikely of causes: Human trafficking. A new bill by Sen Rob Portman (R-OH)— backed by 19 other lawmakers from both parties — would open the door for state attorneys general and victims alike to take legal action against social networks, review websites, advertisers and others that don’t do enough to combat users who post exploitative content. But the proposal is already drawing opposition from Silicon Valley, where tech companies want to put an end to human trafficking — but don’t want to do so in a way that also subjects them to new lawsuits.

The fight centers on a website for classified ads called Backpage, which investigators — in Congress and elsewhere — long have alleged is a haven for illegal prostitution and underage exploitation. For years, though, Backpage has dodged significant scrutiny with the help of a portion of federal law that generally spares website owners from being held liable for the third-party content posted by their users. The legal shield is known as Section 230, and it’s part of the Communications Decency Act. And for many in Silicon Valley, it’s something of a holy grail: They claim the 1996-era rules allowed the internet to evolve without fear of lawsuits. To that end, Sen Portman and his allies want to weaken that shield just a little bit, ensuring “that websites that facilitate sex trafficking can be held liable and that victims can get justice,” they said in a statement. Their proposal would give state attorneys general new power to prosecute offenders, while allowing victims to sue those websites — and potentially others, like the ad networks that support them.

Marc McCutcheon of South Portland was watching WGME’s evening newscast as he has for half a century when something came on that shocked him. In the midst of the local news, a taped commentary from President Trump’s former special assistant Boris Epshteyn appeared on the screen, trumpeting the administration’s position with what he thought selective use and abuse of facts. McCutcheon, a small-business owner and political independent, describes the experience as “surreal,” “extremely jarring” and “so out of place with the friendly, local broadcast from news people I’ve come to trust over the years.” There was no rebuttal, no context, no alternate point of view – a situation he found concerning. WGME-TV (Channel 13) and WPFO-TV (Channel 23) each carry the segments nine times a week on orders from their owner, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation’s largest owner of local television stations and an aggressive, unabashed disseminator of conservative commentary supporting the Trump wing of the Republican Party. The company has been in the national news regularly because the pro-Trump segments are appearing at the same time the company is awaiting approval from the Trump administration for it to purchase the 42 stations of the Tribune Media company, which will extend its reach to 72 percent of American households.

Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix — along with their telecommunication industry foes —have not committed to sending their chief executives to testify before the US Congress in September on the future of network neutrality. Not a single one of those companies told the House Commerce Committee, which is convening the hearing, that they would dispatch their leaders to Washington (DC) in the coming weeks, even at a time when the Trump administration is preparing to kill the open internet rules currently on the government’s books.

The panel initially asked those four tech giants, as well as AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon, to indicate their plans for the hearing by July 31. For now, though, the committee said it isn’t giving up and would extend its deadline, as it continues its quest to engage the country’s tech and telecom business leaders on net neutrality. “The committee has been engaging in productive conversations with all parties and will extend the deadline for response in order to allow for those discussions to continue,” a spokesman said.

While Verizon is telling the Federal Communications Commission to get rid of Title II classification and to weaken the open internet rules, Verizon Wireless is already trying to undermine the open internet by experimenting with potentially anti-consumer discrimination practices. Unfortunately, Verizon Wireless is proving why millions of Americans are correct in voicing their concern over the FCC’s proposal to repeal its 2015 net neutrality rules.

Recently, many Verizon Wireless customers reported their Netflix and YouTube speeds appeared to be capped at 10 Mbps. Verizon acknowledged that it was conducting “network testing” to “optimize” its video streaming, and claimed that it was reasonable network management. Verizon’s actions and the cloud of uncertainty surrounding their practices is a timely reminder that, absent a strong regulator, Internet service providers can and will use their gatekeeper power to harm consumers and grow their own market power. If you want to connect to the internet, and access all the services that you can get through that connection (from entertainment to education to employment) you must go through an internet service provider. Broadband companies know they have substantial leverage in the internet ecosystem, which is why it is so vital for the FCC to actively combat harmful practices such as throttling.

For the past few days, rumors have been swirling that Sprint wants to merge with Charter Communications. If the two got together, it could be a major deal, combining the wireless and cable industries in a big, new way. But now reports suggest that Charter, the nation's second-biggest cable company, simply isn't interested in a deal. There are indications that Sprint and its parent company, Softbank, aren't yet ready to give up on Charter. But why is Sprint so hellbent on a tie-up with the cable giant in the first place, and why doesn't Charter want to partner with America's fourth-biggest cellphone carrier?

The deal could mean new bundles of services. You might, for example, be able to buy Sprint's wireless service together with Charter's cable service. And much like AT&T has done with DirecTV, it's possible Sprint could seek to put Charter's video content on mobile to attract and retain customers. But, since Charter is working on a pilot of its wireless plans, it's still early enough in the process that the cable company can afford to wait.

Fifteen state attorneys general have teamed up with a pro-Hollywood group to launch a campaign aimed at dissuading the public from visiting file sharing sites. To be sure, it's true that ads and other content on piracy sites can infect unsuspecting visitors with malware. But these attorneys general, in conjunction the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), really want you to know that visiting pirate sites can ruin both your life and your family's life. The scary black-hooded hacker on their video messages says it all. "Hackers use pirate websites to infect your computer and steal your ID and financial information, or even take over your computer's camera without you knowing it," the top cops from the states say in the PSAs. The PSAs are appearing on social media, radio, and television this summer.

Verizon is taking a different view on the one-touch make-ready (OTMR) proposals being considered by the Federal Communications Commission, saying that any new rules should not be driven by the labor agreements carriers have with unions like the Communications Workers of America (CWA). In an FCC filing, the service provider said that developing OTMR rules that are in line with labor agreements could cause issues for providers seeking access to poles. “The commission should not tailor its OTMR rules to specific companies’ particular collective bargaining agreements,” Verizon said in the filing. “That approach would result in a patchwork of rules that might be subject to change every few years and would be administratively unmanageable for new attachers.” This is different than the position that has long been held by fellow telecommunication companies AT&T and Frontier.