Ownership

The small army of career antitrust officials is marching toward a great unknown. For one thing, the Justice Department officials still don’t have a boss who will have the final say on whether to approve or block AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner.

President Trump’s pick for assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust matters, Makan Delrahim, has been held up in a logjam of nominees in the Senate. And President Donald Trump himself, who said during the 2016 campaign that he opposed the deal, is another wild card. A senior administration official said that members of the White House were discussing how they might use their perch over the merger review as leverage over Time Warner’s news network, CNN. All of that has effectively put into limbo the most significant business deal before the Trump administration, a benchmark for business transactions going forward. In turn, that has cast a cloud over the business world, which is watching the lengthy regulatory process with intense interest.

Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has warned attorney general Jeff Sessions that any political interference in the Justice Department's review of the AT&T-Time Warner merger would be "unacceptable." Sen Klobuchar was responding to a report in the New York Times that White House advisors have discussed leveraging the deal against Time Warner-owned CNN, which President Donald Trump has hammered as fake news—most recently in a tweet featuring him pummeling a figure with a CNN logo for a head.

President Trump said as a candidate his White House would oppose the deal. In a letter to AG Sessions, sen Klobuchar said that while she has "serious questions" about the deal's impact, "the transaction should be judged solely on its impact on competition, innovation, and consumers, not as 'leverage' for political gain." She added: “Any political interference in antitrust enforcement is unacceptable. Even more concerning, in this instance, is that it appears that some advisers to the President may believe that it is appropriate for the government to use its law enforcement authority to alter or censor the press. Such an action would violate the First Amendment.”

The Federal Communications Commission is opening up the docket on the Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media for the public to weigh in. The FCC is currently reviewing the $3.9 billion deal between the two media companies to determine if it is in the “public interest.” Parties interested in making their case regarding the merger heard can, as of July 6, make “ex parte” presentations to the FCC, which will be publicly disclosed on the agency’s website. The presentations can come in the form of oral or written arguments.

Critics of the deal have argued it might harm the public by significantly consolidating the local news media market, where both Sinclair and Tribune have large holdings. In its public notice, the FCC said the merger would slightly exceed the 39 percent national audience reach limit. The companies, however, have told the FCC that they “will take such actions to the extent required to comply with the terms of the Merger Agreement and the national television ownership limit (including the UHF Discount), in order to obtain FCC approval of the Transaction.”

In a big victory for cable operators large and small, a federal court has said the Federal Communications Commission was within its authority to make it easier for cable video services to shed basic rate regulations. The US Court of Appeals has upheld the FCC's decision—under former chairman Tom Wheeler—reversing the rebuttable presumption that cable operators are not subject to local competition, thereby making regulators prove there is a lack of competition or rate regulations go away.

The onus had been on cable operators to prove their was competition, but the FCC concluded that the near-nationwide availability of DBS essentially represented that competition. The commission, with the strong backing of cable operators—NCTA–The Internet & Television Association and American Cable Association both intervened in the court challenge on the FCC's side—in 2016 voted to reverse the rebuttable presumption and assume cable systems faced local market competition (primarily given the ubiquity of satellite TV) unless telecom regulators or other challengers could prove they did not. A finding of effective competition lifts basic cable price regulations. Writing for the three-judge panel that rejected the challenge to that decision by the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, and the Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission, judge Douglas Ginsburg said the FCC decision was within its authority.

Thanks in part to organizations like Free Press Action Fund, the movement to protect free expression online is strong — for proof look at the millions of people fighting to save Network Neutrality. But there’s an important problem that many free-expression advocates aren’t aware of because it usually lurks just beneath the sleek interfaces of our devices and software: DRM, or digital restrictions management.

DRM is a broad class of technologies that give the manufacturer of a digital good special control over the ways people use it. DRM has been around since the 1990s and has colonized personal computers, smartphones, game consoles, cars, tractors and more. DRM harms free expression most when it interferes with our use of media like videos, books and music. This DRM is the underlying technology that prevents you from copying Amazon Kindle e-books on to a Barnes and Noble Nook, from downloading a clip of a movie on Netflix for use in a documentary or from sampling a song from Spotify in a new piece of music. DRM exists primarily so that Hollywood studios, big music labels and streaming services like Netflix and Spotify can use it to artificially corral us into spending more money than we would if we were able to make full use of media.

[Zak Rogoff is the campaigns manager at the Free Software Foundation.]

President Donald Trump bashed the American press corps on July 6, singling out CNN and others as "fake news." That wasn't new, of course. What was different was where it occurred. This latest example of Trump's anti-media rhetoric -- perhaps the defining element of his presidency thus far -- came during a visit to Warsaw, Poland, his second overseas trip since taking office. In the past, presidents have often used foreign visits to preach the value of a free press. President Trump went a different way.

[Commentary] After an extensive investigation, the European Union found that Google has, for many years, violated European antitrust law by rigging its general search results to favor its own comparison shopping service over rivals. But a recent Post editorial faults the EU for imposing a $2.7 billion fine on the company. The editorial board questioned whether Google’s conduct hurt either competitors (who were just “unlucky,” according to The Post) or consumers. It claimed that users “may well prefer to see” Google’s results first and that the fine “seems to be a case of punishment without crime.” This view ignores the facts.

Google painstakingly executed a strategy to increase its search-ad revenue by making it both possible and necessary for merchants to raise prices to consumers, as a review of studies from the EU, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and others show. And as a result, Google’s ad revenue has soared at the expense of its users.

[Gary Reback is a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer at Carr & Ferrell LLP]

CBS News had it wrong when it reported that AT&T's DirecTV was cheating customers with "bait and switch" tactics and overcharges over the past two years, AT&T told a group of Democratic senators who raised questions about the story. "Contrary to what is suggested in the story, AT&T is fully committed to honoring its deals, offers, and promotions—and AT&T meets that commitment every day.”

Facebook and Google will be joining a mass online demonstration in support of the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules, apparently. The two internet giants join dozens of other companies and activist groups planning to rally grassroots support next week for the regulations, which require internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally.

They had been conspicuously quiet as Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has launched proceedings to repeal the protections, arguing that the agency overstepped under the Obama Administration by reclassifying internet service providers as common carriers. “We have not heard directly from either Facebook or Google, but we’re glad to hear that these companies are listening to their employees and Internet users and will speak out for net neutrality with the rest of the Internet on July 12,” Evan Greer, campaign director at Fight for the Future and an organizer for the event, said in a statement. “In previous years these companies have often been on the sidelines of these fights, so we hope that they plan to do something meaningful in the spirit of the protest and educate their users about what’s at stake if we lose net neutrality protections that protect our online free speech, and give them opportunities to take action.”

[Commentary] Anyone who doubts the value of local newspapers in the 21st century should consider this: They may be the only institution capable of stopping the spread of fake news online. That’s because fake news is a local phenomenon, or rather, a rootless digital scourge masquerading as a homegrown local product. It then gets repackaged and distributed on the national level — ironically (but not coincidentally) replicating the lifecycle of real news.
[Erik Sass is editor of Publishers Daily]