I'm so glad the end of Net Neutrality has ushered in an era of unprecedented competition in the broadband market.
EDIT: Yes, this acquisition is of the content division of Time Warner, not the ISP, which was previously acquired — by another broadband provider, mooting my general point how, again?
This has nothing to do with the broadband market. Time Warner Cable was spun off from Time Warner in 2009 and subsequently bought up by Spectrum in 2016.
It has plenty to do with the broadband market, if you happen to be an AT&T subscriber, and especially if they're your only choice. This, coupled with their no longer being restrained from the kinds of shenanigans that NN barred, positions them to force preferential choices on their subscribers and wring more money out of them for the privilege of accessing competing services.
This is only good for people holding T and TWX, and probably not even most of them.
I would certainly agree with that but your original comment was specifically about competition in the broadband market, which this deal has absolutely zero effect on and your post seemed to be based on the common misunderstanding of TWC still being part of TW.
That's one of my complaints when courts pretend to rule in favor of stock holders rights. In practice there is an inherent conflict of interest between management and the stockholders whose interests are diverse and barely represented.
Cable companies created regional monopolies with municipalities and used that protection to lay their lines. By the time the 1992 Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act rolled around, they'd established natural monopolies based on that infrastructure and they have benefitted from that ever since.
They don't want to be "dumb pipes", but they also won't give access to those dumb pipes, ensuring that no one else can compete with them upstream. Seems they shouldn't be able to have it both ways, but here we are. So, the next-best-thing would be to assign protection through edicts like Net Neutrality and rigorous anti-trust policing.
Yet, these are now being dismantled as well. Not a good place we're heading.
As noted in other comments this is Time Warner the entertainment assets (not cable co). But it's equally bad at the end of Net Neutrality, as it gives AT&T direct motivation to interfere with competing services trying to offer entertainment over the internet to any customers who happen to get access via AT&T.
That's when it was originally published, it was just approved... and is still AT&Ts "go to" page for the information. Additionally, you can see their "applauding of the courts" here:
... and now excuse me while I try to figure out what the remaining horcruxes are so I can destroy them, and stop it (MA Bell) from coming back to power /s
I don't think the folks who ended net neutrality then go on twitter tirades against Amazon for the public good. Especially since each tweet drives down the value of tech companies.
I certainly can't defend the AT&T-Warner merger nor Amazon's near monopoly. But the enforcement is totally selective and for an insidious reason.
I know about Bell Labs and their contributions. They were the one positive thing from Ma Bell, but there were a LOT of other bad things in Ma Bell that I'd rather not see come about again. I bet we can have a Bell Labs-like thing exist without all the other crap.
I'd love to see it. Where is this fabled research giant that doesn't need a bunch of funding from a giant corporation?
I mean, I guess you could look at DARPA or other government agencies as some sort of equivalent, but you're not exactly escaping controversy by getting your funding from the DoD...
>f you thought music streaming exclusives were bad, just wait until Comcast starts windowing SNL sketches to keep people on its pipes while AT&T only streams CNN to AT&T phones, while Verizon keeps wielding mobile access to NFL games like a club against the American consumer.
Such an anti-consumer dystopia :( It is truly sad to see these markets devolve into such terribleness when there is so much possibility to be had with such incredible technology.
I'm optimistic about it. The more onerous and costly it becomes, hopefully the more people will become disinterested with the mass produced garbage and start unplugging themselves.
Time Warner is definitely still an ISP where I live (NYC)
EDIT: Never mind, I was unaware of the split between the cable and internet businesses. (I still agree with the sibling comments that this isn't hugely important given that AT&T is still an ISP)
Yes, and there are conflicts of interest, as Netflix will push their own stuff over their competitors'. The major difference is that ISPs have a much stronger control of their distribution market, which they can use to gain an advantage on the production market (what's usually called "abuse of monopoly power").
The difference is that I have one choice of ISP and many choices of over-the-top content, none of which can e.g. restrict my ability to access things unrelated to their service as an ISP can. It's apples v oranges.
Netflix isn't your ISP. Netflix doesn't control the means of delivery/distribution. They rely on Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, etc to deliver their data.
Netflix can't just decide that they don't want to compete with Hulu and therefore throttle or block Hulu from their customers.
We know that controlling the means of production and the means of distribution is highly anti-competitive. All you have to do is look at rockefeller and standard oil in the 1800s. Rockefeller bought or threatened his way into controlling the railroads which allowed him to put most of his competitors out of business or forced them to sell to Standard Oil. Controlling the means of delivery allowed rockefeller to monopolize the oil industry in the US.
With the repeal of net neutrality, we are getting to the point where verizon, comcast, at&t, etc can be their own little "internet". And this really hampers future entrepreneurs. If you wanted to start a netflix, youtube or twitch today, but you can't rely on verizon, comcast, at&t, etc to give you fair access to their network, then why bother and who will invest in your company?
But this is the overall direction of the internet and social media the past few years. Less freedom, less openness and a move towards more of a corporate tv/news format.
> But this is the overall direction of the internet and social media the past few years. Less freedom, less openness and a move towards more of a corporate tv/news format.
So when are we nerds getting together to make a new internet?
Also have bad internet in LA. I grew up in North Dakota though, and back there my family is getting 1 gigabit internet for $100/mo from Midcontinent.
Absolutely bizarre and ridiculous that North Dakota, a state that has far less developed infrastructure than either coast, has better internet than Los Angeles.
Is it? I’ve got two fiber lines into my house in a Maryland county where most people are on septic and well. Unsurprisingly, Big California cities have Big California impediments to broadband deployment.
Your example is a 2011 instance of a citizen's group in a single CA city opposing AT&T's indiscriminate installation of unsightly 4-6 foot boxes on sidewalks and other public property? The group asked that they instead be installed on private property or underground.
And it's an issue that was also raised in other non-California cities, including places like NC, CT, IL, DC, etc. See your article, links from it, and [0].
Come on man, you know this does not support your initial assertion.
The SF battle was particularly protracted and terrible. But the point about "unsightly" boxes gets to the heart of the problem. Burying this infrastructure costs money, and tanks the economics of fiber deployment. If you don't believe that coming from "big evil AT&T," just look at Google: they categorically refused to build Fiber to cities that imposed those sorts of requirements: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-....
Places like Louisville and Kansas City got Fiber and San Francisco or LA didn't because: 1) they didn't impose build out requirements (the obligation to pass all households regardless of neighborhood demand); 2) they didn't require burying utilities; 3) they fast-tracked permitting processes; 4) they permitted hanging rather than burying the fiber; and 5) they made space available for Fiber huts.
>But the point about "unsightly" boxes gets to the heart of the problem
The issue is hardly unique to "Big California cities" though, is it? Many localities across the country, including those I cited, have taken similar exception to fiber huts, "lawn refrigerators" and similar infrastructure components; so much so, that it's cliche by now. And, at it's core, it's the same old issue that has manifested in different ways since the phrase "property values" came into existence: everyone wants cell service, but no one wants a cell tower in their backyard.
You citing examples of cities that took a different approach is just the good-ol' association fallacy at its best. "Why, these places aren't California and look at what they did!"
But, it's funny that you mentioned Louisville and build-out requirements. Rather than imposing requirements, the city itself had a plan to expand fiber in an extremely cost-effective way (a third of the usual cost) and in a manner that would serve even lower income neighborhoods. Then, in stepped "tax-payer advocates" backed by the Koch brothers to block the plan, supposedly to protect taxpayers from such tyranny. [0]
The point is that broadband expansion has been an overwrought, complex fight that has impacted various municipalities across the country in different ways. Thus, it's disingenuous to suggest that broadband expansion challenges can be summed up as "Big California cities" and their "Big California impediments". In fact, it's so intellectually dishonest that it leaves a whiff of ideologizing lingering in the air.
> Big California cities have Big California impediments to broadband deployment
What is that exactly?
"First released in October 2013, and updated several times since, the DOCSIS 3.1 suite of specifications support capacities of up to 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s upstream"
Both are fiber (gigabit pro is a 10-gig metro-e connection rate-limited to 2-gig at the switch). It's ironically easier to get it out here than in many places, because the county is easy-going about permitting and all the utilities are overhead.
The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their infrastructure. Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything. There's court cases about it, such as https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-h...
The companies take that money and do things like buy multi-billion dollar companies with it instead.
The market in this sense is free from competition, free to block municipal broadband (illegal in 20 states), free from the consequences of providing terrible service, free from the risk of losing customers, and free from the social obligations of providing a civic service.
It's classic profiteering, capital extraction, dodging responsibility, and engineering the marketplace that leads to California's and the US's subpar system.
And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence, because they have a larger commitment to their ideas of how things are supposed to be then there reality of how things actually are.
Until people break their mythical love affair with the idea that there is no sustained abuse or corruption in a manufactured free market, we will forever be shackled by reading to address its glaring and obvious issues.
> The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their infrastructure.
This is easily disprovable. Broadband providers invest tens of billions a year in infrastructure. The fastest cable or wireless connection available to you is probably 10x faster than it was a decade ago. By comparison, your Intel laptop is maybe 3-4 times faster, maybe less. That cost gobs of money--building cell towers, pushing fiber deeper into the cable network, reducing users per HFC node by a factor of 10, etc. This is all incredibly labor intensive and expensive; it's not just a matter of downloading "DOCSIS 3.1" onto some head ends and calling it a day.
> Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything.
Note also that the "government subsidies" are anything but. The article you link to is talking about Universal Service Fund money, which is actually taken from ISPs and given to other ISPs. It doesn't come out of general tax dollars.
> leads to California's and the US's subpar system.
According to Akamai, U.S. broadband is among the fastest in the world, faster than all the large EU countries: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... We're in the top 10, right after Denmark, and ahead of the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. (the countries comprising 70% of the EU population).
> And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence
Exactly the opposite is true. The actual evidence shows that the 1996 deregulation has been a monumental success in terms of amount of money invested and actual broadband speeds achieved. Proponents of heavy regulation have to deny the actual evidence (dollars spent, speeds achieved) because it suggests a shocking result: even deregulation that resulted in much less competition than anticipated is still better than the prior, heavily-regulated system. (I'm writing this as my awesome government-funded train system is stuck between Annapolis and D.C. for no apparent reason.)
What's holding us back from being even better (and which is why I have fiber but much of Silicon Valley does not) is state & local broadband regulation. Red tape that makes it hard to string up fiber (or forces you to bury it, at much higher cost), hard to create an "minimal viable ISP," etc. When I lived in Baltimore, for example, Verizon wanted to come in and compete with Comcast. The city literally wouldn't let them do it, and pleaded with Google to come build Fiber instead. Which Google wouldn't do, because, quite reasonably, Google only builds Fiber in places where cities are willing to waive requirements municipalities uniformly require for other providers: https://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle....
What does that have to do with AT&T buying HBO, some cable channels and a movie studio? This is to compete with Netflix, not about providing broadband.
AT&T is supposed to provide a conduit between their customers and Netflix not compete with them! It's already catastrophic that ISPs have a monopoly in many markets, using that monopoly to compete with content providers leaves me furious.
Does that really matter? Just because it isn't becoming an Internet monopoly, it's still a content+distribution mega-corp that can squeeze its competitors and limit options for consumers.
AT&T can, under the present legal regime, perfectly legitimately say, "Here's all this 'free' content for you. You'll have to subscribe to the 'Not Our Content' package to access those other services..."
But, sure. Let's run with your example: imagine you had an ISP who let you read Fox News for free, but charged you to visit CNN.
> On top of all that, with the end of NN, AT&T can preferentially shove TWX content in your face, and force you to pay extra to consume someone else's.
Will they though? I don’t recall such a thing happening prior to NN. It always seems that people’s fantasies about what can happen without NN are worse than what will (or did).
AT&T blocked FaceTime because they were afraid that thier crappy overburdened network couldn’t handle the load. [1]
But for some reason, they weren’t worried about other video chatting apps - for instance you could use Yahoo Messenger at the time. What competing app did AT&T have?
Great if you like the provider's content. Quite bad if you like any content not owned by one of the few Internet providers, who can't offer such freebies.
Everyone agrees we are moving towards a world of platforms. Each big platform holder will buy or ally with an isp and smaller content owners will pay 30% rev to use those platforms, just like today with google play store, app store, steam (for games), etc. thats reality, why be a luddite about it?
Monopolies on content don't really matter because media properties aren't fungible. It's not like you can shop around for the best Avengers movie or that Justice League is a substitute.
I agree with you about distribution but it's hard to argue that there aren't lots of competing distribution channels for content.
I think it would not necessarily be insane to envision a system which hands off non-obvious regulatory cases to the legislature, to amend the law such that this and future cases could be trivially decided.
'Activist judge' is indeed a term in the English language, but what does it have to do with this case? There are 'drunk airplane pilots', but does that make the pilot of the plane I'm going to board a suspect?
I think of it in an engineery sense - if the edge case is possible, it will happen.
Maybe that works for software engineering, where it's a good idea to pause a release in case someone uses scripts to send a shitload of bad requests to our API and crashes a server because of our bug or whatever, but I understand that that doesn't work 1:1 with the real world, where it doesn't make sense to not have the aviation industry until we perfect self-flying planes.
So, assuming all those eventualities, why shouldn't we just put you to death now?
To spare you the rhetorical exercise, the answer is because we don't punish you for the things you might do, but only punish you for a) the things that you have done, b) that we can prove, c) beyond a reasonable doubt, d) in a court of law, e) before a jury of your peers.
I think we're getting a little sidetracked here. What the grandparent wanted to say was just that the corset of laws that binds a judge might not be as tight as you think; hence e.g. activist judges.
I think my point stands, which is that not every possibility is an eventuality, and we shouldn't assume that to be true without a willingness to accept a very bad panoply of preventative measures masquerading as corrective measures.
That said, whether or not an activist judge allows a presumptively lawful merger to occur is hardly a hill worth dying on. We have remedies for activist judges through an appeal process. Where an appeals process is not available after the merger, we have remedy for anti-competitive companies through regulatory influence, regulatory agency, rule of law, and a court system to back that up.
No, not at all. This is closer to what the parent was saying
By that argument, someone will:
* beat his wife - true
* murder an enemy - true
* shoot up a school full of children - true
* commit arson - true
* jump bail - true
* evade arrest - true
* die in a hail of bullets - true
You see, all these things do happen. The parent is not arguing that because something is possible any one individual will do it. You're arguing a very different thing.
>Well, the judge has to base the decision on a whole bunch of laws. It's not like judges get to decide this on their own.
This is a weird opinion to hold when you take the fact that two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws.
Judging is the act of applying law (general) to a particular case (specific). Since laws can't anticipate every future situation at their time of writing, no matter what there will _always_ be some disconnect between these two -- i.e. vagueness/generality in law, leading to edge cases.
Which is why two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws, based on their own personal methods of interpretation and biases.
Judges in the lower circuits are also held accountable to higher circuit judges if they don't interpret the law while taking past case judgement into consideration.
A lower district judge can't overrule a higher judge's opinions.
Judges are subject to many checks on their power. First, they only can rule on cases brought before their court, which requires two other parties to want a trial (including, in this case, the Justice Department). Also, unless they are in the Supreme Court, judges generally do not choose which cases they hear. Finally, and most significantly, they also are restricted by laws made by the legislature, precedent made by other judges and higher courts, the facts, juries (if the litigants wish to use them), principles of law, and appeals.
The DOJ had tried to stop the deal[1] but it appears that the court ruled it could carry on [2].
Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in a statement the DOJ was "disappointed
with the Court's decision today. We continue to believe that the pay-TV market will be
less competitive and less innovative as a result of the proposed merger between AT&T and
Time Warner. We will closely review the Court's opinion and consider next steps in light
of our commitment to preserving competition for the benefit of American consumers."
I think the judge is saying they bungled the case so bad that an appeal will be a waste of the courts time. Sounds like the warning is more of an admonishment to the DOJ for wasting the courts time with confusing and unconvincing case.
That is a good question. Anyone with knowledge on the topic care to pitch in and elaborate? It seems to me it is within the rights (and "obligation") of DOJ to appeal and pursue this further.
The burden to prove impact on competition is on the plaintiff. The article does not elaborate on the judge's argument about how they failed. I am curious about the other side's argument also.
Two statements to ponder:
>>"The bulk of the third-party competitor testimony proffered by the government was speculative, based on unproven assumptions, or unsupported -- or even contradicted -- by the government’s own evidence," Leon wrote.
>> "I couldn’t help but notice that the more and more questions were raised during trial about the reliability of Professor Shapiro’s theory and model, the more the government appeared to be minimizing the importance of his analysis," the judge wrote.
I can only infer from this the judge felt DOJ did not have a consistent and non-speculative case (see above). I am not sure what they can bring up during appeals as new evidence. They can appeal the speculation argumentation I guess.
In general, I am not sure what else one can bring to the table regarding mergers. Yes, whatever you bring to the table is going to be some form of speculation. That in itself should not be enough for dismissal, in my opinion of course. The law says differently (substantial). The defendant can always claim they are not going to raise prices. If 5 years from now, the consumer is <place word of choice here with negative connotation>, nobody is going to recall this merge as the root.
People just find it too hard to understand the impact of financial actions (one of the reasons you do not see SEC filing more often).
I am awaiting for the written ruling, but having checked previous cases, and inaction from DOJ, I don't expect much.
P.S. I am not sure this is really a vertical merger. It doesn't seem this clear cut to me. Thoughts on this?
Well, this judge would decide that motion, so it seems like he's told them they would be wasting their time. The realistic options are (1) file for a say ASAP with an eye toward asking the court of appeals to grant the stay after this judge denies it, (2) keep litigating after the deal goes through, or (3) admit defeat. I'm no expert in #1 but I assume it is also very unlikely to work in time to stop the merger (otherwise I think the DOJ would have gone that route).
That leaves litigating after the merger goes through, or just giving up. Often the FTC or DOJ will chose not to keep litigating mergers if they lose in district court because even if they win later, they don't think they will be able to get a very effective remedy--the deal will have gone through and it won't be possible to put everything back to the way it was. (If you are an antitrust lawyer, you for some reason have to talk about this using the phrase "you can't unscramble the eggs.") But it does happen sometimes--Whole Foods/Wild Oats was a good example where, if I remember correctly, Whole Foods had to sell of some of the stores they purchased from Wild Oats years later after winning their merger case in district court but losing the appeal.
I hope we see some lawsuits fighting this precedent all the way to the scotus. It’s that or an amendment, but who knows whether we’ll ever see that level of outrage.
And don't forget this is the entertainment time warner, not the internet service. So I'm curious what intentional timing you found, and how it relates to net neutrality.
One of the biggest issues is when companies that should focus on shipping bits for their customers also have incentive to care about what the bits represent. So this being the entertainment Time Warner is what makes this bad. Got slow service with Netflix or worse a tiny player like Mubi? Why not watch magically super fast Time Warner content that doesn't count against your data cap either?
Do you not know about the context? The admin threatened to block the deal because Trump didn't like CNN's coverage of himself. Neither side is all that great here. Even if the DOJ lawyers wanted to pursue it for the right reasons, Trump and by extension Sessions let it go through because of his animosity towards CNN.
This was probably the most frustrating part of this entire process- they had so many other arguments they could have pulled out of a bag and instead CNN was the one issue that the executive branch had?
It sounds like this issue rallied AT&T / Time Warner's legal team as well. Per the article, it sounded like AT&T / Time Warner used this "issue" to demonstration that the DOJ was opposing the merger not due to any logical reason, but out of spite.
This pull quote is pretty convincing evidence that the DOJ doesn’t comprehend the stakes at all. “Pay TV” is way too small a lens to be thinking about this through. Internet access has a much much bigger impact on people’s lives than mere TV (or the streaming equivalent).
Time Warner doesn't have much to do with internet access though, they sold their cable business to Charter a couple years ago.
That's why analysts are talking about this as a vertical merger, AT&T doesn't have the massive presence in content production that they have in various communication businesses.
This is a distribution company -- internet, cable TV, satellite -- acquiring a content company (the communications portion of Time Warner was spun off as Spectrum). Isn't this just a vertical integration?
Time Warner's cable business was spun off as Time Warner Cable, which Charter Communications later acquired. Charter's cable/internet/tv brand is Spectrum.
Definitely. There are a lot of valid debates you can have about whether or not this is a good thing, but it's very arguably the 'correct' decision in the sense of precedent, and as you are implying, the less surprising one.
In the context of net neutrality ending, this looks like AT&T acquiring the means to exploit discriminatory traffic routing. It seems like there will be a gold rush of sorts, towards building walled gardens, segmenting the Internet into fiefs.
Does ending NN allow an ISP to completely block a website? I.e. to what extent does this also open up the door to overt political censorship?
Technology will help the citizenry destroy these evil megacorps. It's just a matter of time and some improvements in technology. The world where ABC/CBS/NBC/NYTimes/Time/etc could control what people think is over. In the near future we will have a much more educated populace. They will flex their power in ways that seem unimaginable now. When the information revolution finally arrives, these megacorps will be the first against the wall
This is sadly my experience too. Both my parents are educators and life long learners.
It still floors me how many conversations they had with my younger siblings friends parents (I was present) were it more or less went. Friend parent makes baseless or incorrect assertion my history buff father retorted and they just said well I don’t care anyways.
Are you trying for irony? Given that this is just one of several recent cases where companies are locking down the technology that informs people - the technology you are counting on to take on these corps.
Most people do not care. They happily give up all privacy to FB and Google. The funny thing is everyone was worried about the world turning into a version of 1984 and it looks like Brave New World and F451 was more on target.
NB this is "Time Warner the media company", not Time Warner Cable (which is now Spectrum.) This isn't broadband consolidation but rather media/entertainment consolidation.
The deal is most closely comparable to Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011.
Which is what a lot of ex telecoms monopolies are doing as they cant really grow organically anymore another example is BT sport funny how Murdoch's press started bashing BT after they started competing with Sky
This is nuts. This means there is now only one last-mile broadband provider in plenty of big markets. Milwaukee, for example, now no longer has any competition in the broadband space.
>Judge Leon limited how DOJ lawyers questioned certain witnesses and expressed visible skepticism of testimony by the government’s chief economic witness, who presented an empirical model that predicted the deal would lead to small but significant price increases in monthly cable bills. AT&T countered with its own academic economist who said it wouldn’t.
Yeah, I’m sure this won’t lead to _small_ price increases for consumers.
Neither of these companies really affects me as a non-American. But it feels like it just paves the way for mergers of companies that do.
I started thinking of international examples, which got me thinking about Google and Apple. Who in a way feel like they're post-colossal-merger companies already. And I mean... It kind of sucks but it's not nearly as awful as I feared it might look like.
Perfect time to rename the company to "usher in a new era of innovation". How about calling the new AT&T Bell? Because this merged company will be way worse an anticompetitive monopoly than the exploitative operator of the US switched phone network ever could have been.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadhttps://www.textise.net/
EDIT: Yes, this acquisition is of the content division of Time Warner, not the ISP, which was previously acquired — by another broadband provider, mooting my general point how, again?
Is that correct? (I'm not familiar with the US broadband market)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17297966
This is only good for people holding T and TWX, and probably not even most of them.
Like, say it ain't so, man.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
They don't want to be "dumb pipes", but they also won't give access to those dumb pipes, ensuring that no one else can compete with them upstream. Seems they shouldn't be able to have it both ways, but here we are. So, the next-best-thing would be to assign protection through edicts like Net Neutrality and rigorous anti-trust policing.
Yet, these are now being dismantled as well. Not a good place we're heading.
http://about.att.com/story/court_rules.html
... and now excuse me while I try to figure out what the remaining horcruxes are so I can destroy them, and stop it (MA Bell) from coming back to power /s
https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-is-set-to-decide-whether-...
(I know, I'm sorry)
And of course the idea of protecting the public interest isn't a thing anymore in DC.
It is. And had it been successfully blocked, the message would be clearly understood by media outlet owners far beyond CNN's owner.
It is in fact lose-lose.
Same goes for whatever ends up happening to Amazon/WaPo.
This is the only anti-trust you can expect to see now.
Pretty sure Bezos bought it, not Amazon.
I don't think the folks who ended net neutrality then go on twitter tirades against Amazon for the public good. Especially since each tweet drives down the value of tech companies.
I certainly can't defend the AT&T-Warner merger nor Amazon's near monopoly. But the enforcement is totally selective and for an insidious reason.
http://fortune.com/2018/04/04/donald-trump-amazon-jeff-bezos...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/07/trump-bezos-...
Not saying that monopolies are good, it's just not black and white...
http://blog.tmcnet.com/next-generation-communications/2011/0...
A lot of modern computing traces back to them and Xerox.
I mean, I guess you could look at DARPA or other government agencies as some sort of equivalent, but you're not exactly escaping controversy by getting your funding from the DoD...
Such an anti-consumer dystopia :( It is truly sad to see these markets devolve into such terribleness when there is so much possibility to be had with such incredible technology.
I'm not sure I understand the conflicts. Isn't Netflix essentially doing the same thing? Consolidating production and distribution?
EDIT: Never mind, I was unaware of the split between the cable and internet businesses. (I still agree with the sibling comments that this isn't hugely important given that AT&T is still an ISP)
Netflix can't just decide that they don't want to compete with Hulu and therefore throttle or block Hulu from their customers.
We know that controlling the means of production and the means of distribution is highly anti-competitive. All you have to do is look at rockefeller and standard oil in the 1800s. Rockefeller bought or threatened his way into controlling the railroads which allowed him to put most of his competitors out of business or forced them to sell to Standard Oil. Controlling the means of delivery allowed rockefeller to monopolize the oil industry in the US.
With the repeal of net neutrality, we are getting to the point where verizon, comcast, at&t, etc can be their own little "internet". And this really hampers future entrepreneurs. If you wanted to start a netflix, youtube or twitch today, but you can't rely on verizon, comcast, at&t, etc to give you fair access to their network, then why bother and who will invest in your company?
But this is the overall direction of the internet and social media the past few years. Less freedom, less openness and a move towards more of a corporate tv/news format.
So when are we nerds getting together to make a new internet?
[1] https://www.internet2.edu/
Meanwhile I have 300k internet in Pasadena, CA. That's the fastest they offer. My roommate doesn't care and won't upgrade to Spectrum.
Why is it whenever I read the above it means the opposite?
Absolutely bizarre and ridiculous that North Dakota, a state that has far less developed infrastructure than either coast, has better internet than Los Angeles.
AT&T offers gigabit up and down for $70 a month. I usually get at least 900Mbps up and down.
What have they done, relative to other cities, to impede broadband deployment?
And it's an issue that was also raised in other non-California cities, including places like NC, CT, IL, DC, etc. See your article, links from it, and [0].
Come on man, you know this does not support your initial assertion.
[0] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Takes-Heat-for-Hu...
Places like Louisville and Kansas City got Fiber and San Francisco or LA didn't because: 1) they didn't impose build out requirements (the obligation to pass all households regardless of neighborhood demand); 2) they didn't require burying utilities; 3) they fast-tracked permitting processes; 4) they permitted hanging rather than burying the fiber; and 5) they made space available for Fiber huts.
The issue is hardly unique to "Big California cities" though, is it? Many localities across the country, including those I cited, have taken similar exception to fiber huts, "lawn refrigerators" and similar infrastructure components; so much so, that it's cliche by now. And, at it's core, it's the same old issue that has manifested in different ways since the phrase "property values" came into existence: everyone wants cell service, but no one wants a cell tower in their backyard.
You citing examples of cities that took a different approach is just the good-ol' association fallacy at its best. "Why, these places aren't California and look at what they did!"
But, it's funny that you mentioned Louisville and build-out requirements. Rather than imposing requirements, the city itself had a plan to expand fiber in an extremely cost-effective way (a third of the usual cost) and in a manner that would serve even lower income neighborhoods. Then, in stepped "tax-payer advocates" backed by the Koch brothers to block the plan, supposedly to protect taxpayers from such tyranny. [0]
The point is that broadband expansion has been an overwrought, complex fight that has impacted various municipalities across the country in different ways. Thus, it's disingenuous to suggest that broadband expansion challenges can be summed up as "Big California cities" and their "Big California impediments". In fact, it's so intellectually dishonest that it leaves a whiff of ideologizing lingering in the air.
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/koch-brothers-are-cities-new-obs...
What is that exactly?
"First released in October 2013, and updated several times since, the DOCSIS 3.1 suite of specifications support capacities of up to 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s upstream"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
The companies take that money and do things like buy multi-billion dollar companies with it instead.
The market in this sense is free from competition, free to block municipal broadband (illegal in 20 states), free from the consequences of providing terrible service, free from the risk of losing customers, and free from the social obligations of providing a civic service.
It's classic profiteering, capital extraction, dodging responsibility, and engineering the marketplace that leads to California's and the US's subpar system.
And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence, because they have a larger commitment to their ideas of how things are supposed to be then there reality of how things actually are.
Until people break their mythical love affair with the idea that there is no sustained abuse or corruption in a manufactured free market, we will forever be shackled by reading to address its glaring and obvious issues.
This is easily disprovable. Broadband providers invest tens of billions a year in infrastructure. The fastest cable or wireless connection available to you is probably 10x faster than it was a decade ago. By comparison, your Intel laptop is maybe 3-4 times faster, maybe less. That cost gobs of money--building cell towers, pushing fiber deeper into the cable network, reducing users per HFC node by a factor of 10, etc. This is all incredibly labor intensive and expensive; it's not just a matter of downloading "DOCSIS 3.1" onto some head ends and calling it a day.
> Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything.
Note also that the "government subsidies" are anything but. The article you link to is talking about Universal Service Fund money, which is actually taken from ISPs and given to other ISPs. It doesn't come out of general tax dollars.
> leads to California's and the US's subpar system.
According to Akamai, U.S. broadband is among the fastest in the world, faster than all the large EU countries: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... We're in the top 10, right after Denmark, and ahead of the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. (the countries comprising 70% of the EU population).
> And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence
Exactly the opposite is true. The actual evidence shows that the 1996 deregulation has been a monumental success in terms of amount of money invested and actual broadband speeds achieved. Proponents of heavy regulation have to deny the actual evidence (dollars spent, speeds achieved) because it suggests a shocking result: even deregulation that resulted in much less competition than anticipated is still better than the prior, heavily-regulated system. (I'm writing this as my awesome government-funded train system is stuck between Annapolis and D.C. for no apparent reason.)
What's holding us back from being even better (and which is why I have fiber but much of Silicon Valley does not) is state & local broadband regulation. Red tape that makes it hard to string up fiber (or forces you to bury it, at much higher cost), hard to create an "minimal viable ISP," etc. When I lived in Baltimore, for example, Verizon wanted to come in and compete with Comcast. The city literally wouldn't let them do it, and pleaded with Google to come build Fiber instead. Which Google wouldn't do, because, quite reasonably, Google only builds Fiber in places where cities are willing to waive requirements municipalities uniformly require for other providers: https://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle....
Edit: calming myself.
I’m promised gigabit this summer, but we’ll see.
And it ignores that TWC was acquired by another ISP, meaning that sale, whenever it happened, also curtailed broadband competition.
On top of all that, with the end of NN, AT&T can preferentially shove TWX content in your face, and force you to pay extra to consume someone else's.
That is absolutely relevant, and it's disingenuous, at best, to suggest otherwise.
AT&T can, under the present legal regime, perfectly legitimately say, "Here's all this 'free' content for you. You'll have to subscribe to the 'Not Our Content' package to access those other services..."
But, sure. Let's run with your example: imagine you had an ISP who let you read Fox News for free, but charged you to visit CNN.
Will they though? I don’t recall such a thing happening prior to NN. It always seems that people’s fantasies about what can happen without NN are worse than what will (or did).
I do.
But for some reason, they weren’t worried about other video chatting apps - for instance you could use Yahoo Messenger at the time. What competing app did AT&T have?
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/atandt-l...
AT&T can now say all of time warner's content is free for mobile devices. Major blow to their competitors.
I agree with you about distribution but it's hard to argue that there aren't lots of competing distribution channels for content.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/business/dealbook/att-tim...
What does that sound like to you bud?
while (defendant.getSumOfContrib(partyInCharge)<= Gov.Judicial.Common.RULE_FAVOR_MINIMUM) {
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/judicial%20legisl...
Maybe that works for software engineering, where it's a good idea to pause a release in case someone uses scripts to send a shitload of bad requests to our API and crashes a server because of our bug or whatever, but I understand that that doesn't work 1:1 with the real world, where it doesn't make sense to not have the aviation industry until we perfect self-flying planes.
By that argument, you will:
* beat your wife
* murder an enemy
* shoot up a school full of children
* commit arson
* jump bail
* evade arrest
* die in a hail of bullets
So, assuming all those eventualities, why shouldn't we just put you to death now?
To spare you the rhetorical exercise, the answer is because we don't punish you for the things you might do, but only punish you for a) the things that you have done, b) that we can prove, c) beyond a reasonable doubt, d) in a court of law, e) before a jury of your peers.
That said, whether or not an activist judge allows a presumptively lawful merger to occur is hardly a hill worth dying on. We have remedies for activist judges through an appeal process. Where an appeals process is not available after the merger, we have remedy for anti-competitive companies through regulatory influence, regulatory agency, rule of law, and a court system to back that up.
By that argument, someone will:
* beat his wife - true
* murder an enemy - true
* shoot up a school full of children - true
* commit arson - true
* jump bail - true
* evade arrest - true
* die in a hail of bullets - true
You see, all these things do happen. The parent is not arguing that because something is possible any one individual will do it. You're arguing a very different thing.
This is a weird opinion to hold when you take the fact that two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws.
Which is why two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws, based on their own personal methods of interpretation and biases.
A lower district judge can't overrule a higher judge's opinions.
http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-rules-on-att-time-warner-...
I think the DOJ will just take it as a loss.
What would they have to lose?
Their professional reputations.
The burden to prove impact on competition is on the plaintiff. The article does not elaborate on the judge's argument about how they failed. I am curious about the other side's argument also.
Two statements to ponder: >>"The bulk of the third-party competitor testimony proffered by the government was speculative, based on unproven assumptions, or unsupported -- or even contradicted -- by the government’s own evidence," Leon wrote.
>> "I couldn’t help but notice that the more and more questions were raised during trial about the reliability of Professor Shapiro’s theory and model, the more the government appeared to be minimizing the importance of his analysis," the judge wrote.
I can only infer from this the judge felt DOJ did not have a consistent and non-speculative case (see above). I am not sure what they can bring up during appeals as new evidence. They can appeal the speculation argumentation I guess.
In general, I am not sure what else one can bring to the table regarding mergers. Yes, whatever you bring to the table is going to be some form of speculation. That in itself should not be enough for dismissal, in my opinion of course. The law says differently (substantial). The defendant can always claim they are not going to raise prices. If 5 years from now, the consumer is <place word of choice here with negative connotation>, nobody is going to recall this merge as the root.
People just find it too hard to understand the impact of financial actions (one of the reasons you do not see SEC filing more often).
I am awaiting for the written ruling, but having checked previous cases, and inaction from DOJ, I don't expect much.
P.S. I am not sure this is really a vertical merger. It doesn't seem this clear cut to me. Thoughts on this?
That leaves litigating after the merger goes through, or just giving up. Often the FTC or DOJ will chose not to keep litigating mergers if they lose in district court because even if they win later, they don't think they will be able to get a very effective remedy--the deal will have gone through and it won't be possible to put everything back to the way it was. (If you are an antitrust lawyer, you for some reason have to talk about this using the phrase "you can't unscramble the eggs.") But it does happen sometimes--Whole Foods/Wild Oats was a good example where, if I remember correctly, Whole Foods had to sell of some of the stores they purchased from Wild Oats years later after winning their merger case in district court but losing the appeal.
And don't forget this is the entertainment time warner, not the internet service. So I'm curious what intentional timing you found, and how it relates to net neutrality.
That's why analysts are talking about this as a vertical merger, AT&T doesn't have the massive presence in content production that they have in various communication businesses.
Does ending NN allow an ISP to completely block a website? I.e. to what extent does this also open up the door to overt political censorship?
1) Google blocking Microsoft and Amazon devices from accessing YouTube content.
2) FBI takeovers of DNS entries to web servers or TOR nodes.
And if political censorship is your biggest concern, should youtube be held accountable for blocking firearms content on their site?
Where are the examples of ISPs blocking web pages? Throttling != blocking. Bandwidth is not infinite.
Edit: If facts are inconvenient, that downvote button provides a nutritional burst of serotonin.
Most people don't know and/or don't care.
It still floors me how many conversations they had with my younger siblings friends parents (I was present) were it more or less went. Friend parent makes baseless or incorrect assertion my history buff father retorted and they just said well I don’t care anyways.
Most people do not care. They happily give up all privacy to FB and Google. The funny thing is everyone was worried about the world turning into a version of 1984 and it looks like Brave New World and F451 was more on target.
The deal is most closely comparable to Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011.
Yeah, I’m sure this won’t lead to _small_ price increases for consumers.
His rationale on this particular is over 30 pages long. It starts at page 57-ish.
I started thinking of international examples, which got me thinking about Google and Apple. Who in a way feel like they're post-colossal-merger companies already. And I mean... It kind of sucks but it's not nearly as awful as I feared it might look like.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/business/dealbook/att-tim...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/att-time-warner-ruling.html
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/att/2018/06/12/att-wins-...
http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_time_warner.html
If anyone knows a significantly better URL for this submission, let us know and we can change it again.
More details, especially where it matters. and a more analytic language.