Ownership

The Supreme Court said that it would hear a case alleging that Comcast discriminated against an African-American owned media company in declining to take up its channels. The justices said in an unsigned order that the court will consider whether the network needs to prove that Comcast meant to act in a discriminatory way in the case. Byron Allen, the owner of the Entertainment Studios Network (ESN), alleged that Comcast violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866 in rejecting to carry his channels.

A Washington State judge ruled that Comcast violated consumer protection laws more than 445,000 times, bogusly charging thousands of state cable consumers for a $5.99 plan they didn’t even know they were getting. Judge Timothy Bradshaw ordered Comcast to pay $9.1 million in penalties and ordered Comcast to pay back all the customers it has been ruled to have misled, with 12% interest. That figure could exceed another $3 million.

The Federal Trade Commission has sent top antitrust officials into the heart of Silicon Valley to seek out complaints about anti-competitive behavior, an unusual move that offers yet another hint about the government’s growing interest in policing the industry's giants. The weeklong tour included private meetings between leaders of the FTC's new technology task force and more than a dozen industry players to discuss the state of their businesses and market competition challenges, apparently.

State attorneys general are preparing for their own investigations into big tech platforms including Google and Facebook, based on concerns that largely mirror those driving probes by the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and Congress. Several state attorneys general and aides said a core group of AGs has been discussing how to address antitrust-related concerns around big tech companies for some months.

If any of the tech giants are found guilty of anticompetitive behavior, they’re likely to be hit with heavy fines and other sanctions. But trying to force through a breakup of one or more of the companies will be tough to do because:

1. Big tech firms have generally made their services available for free.
2. They aren’t “natural monopolies.” 
3. Big tech firms dominate data gathering and use insights to provide even more free services.

Apple is leveraging its platform's market power to help users protect their privacy. The new "Sign In with Apple" service aims to offer apps and websites a privacy-protecting alternative to using Google or Facebook as a means of authenticating user logins. Apple will require iOS app developers that offer Google, Facebook or any third-party authentication to also offer Sign In with Apple.

The "Internet is broken." That, according to Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), is the sentiment animating a bipartisan antitrust review of technology titans in the House of Representatives. He is right to initiate the effort. But exploring the particulars of so sweeping a contention may take years. Meanwhile, there’s one broken thing Congress already knows it has to fix. A small group of companies has substantial control over a massive part of American life. This control has come with costs, from the flourishing of online disinformation to a flood of security breaches.

Democratic Reps plan a sweeping review of Facebook, Google and other technology giants to determine if they’ve become so large and powerful that they stifle competition and harm consumers, marking a new, unprecedented antitrust threat for an industry that’s increasingly under siege by Congress, the White House and 2020 presidential candidates.

Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) led a letter to Department of Justice (DOJ) Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim on potential political interference in the T-Mobile and Sprint merger investigations. Recent reports indicate that senior White House officials may be attempting to insert their views into the Antitrust Division’s investigation into the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.