Congress

Conclusions:

Most of what we have learned in the five months since the election indicates that the Trump Administration is not going to be Google’s antitrust advocate and protector like the Obama Administration effectively was from 2013-2016, in de facto shutting down any real U.S. antitrust scrutiny of Google, and in turn implicitly discouraging antitrust enforcement of Google in the EU and around the world.  

This antitrust enforcement sea change has three big picture implications: for the EU, for the U.S., and for markets.

Please see PBS NewsHour’s five minute segment here with Gigi Sohn and I discussing Congress’ rescission of the FCC’s unimplemented broadband privacy order that the Wheeler-FCC majority passed last October by a 3-2 vote.

President Trump’s impressive nominee to head the DOJ Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim, enters the global antitrust stage when one company, America’s Alphabet-Google, has been under near constant antitrust investigation around the world for a decade and faces multiple pending antitrust enforcement actions.

What is the global and U.S. antitrust community to glean from this nomination?

Mr. Delrahim’s background speaks volumes, especially if one believes the adage, people are policy.

Overall, Makan Delrahim is a widely-respected, veteran antitrust official, attorney, expert, and professor, with high-level antitrust experience that check all the right boxes, organizationally, functionally, and professionally.

Mr. Delrahim’s antitrust-specific experience is outstanding.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, March 23, 2017, Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

Senate CRA Vote Rescinding FCC’s Broadband Privacy Order Paves Way for House Passage and Has Congress Prioritizing Consumer Privacy Protection Over Net Neutrality

WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:

 “The CRA was made for correcting big agency mistakes just like the FCC’s Broadband Privacy Order, which made consumer privacy protection worse not better, because it prioritized technology over people, net neutrality over consumer privacy protection, the FCC over the FTC, and the interests of edge platforms over the interests of American consumers.”

“The most embarrassing part of the FCC’s broadband privacy order is that it does not really protect consumers’ privacy at all. That’s because effectively it only requires ISPs to keep certain information private when every other entity on the Internet does not have to keep private that exact same information.”

Please see my The Hill op-ed on: “Consumer privacy is more important than net neutrality.”

Here is my latest The Hill op-ed on How “Outdated Telecom Law Poses a Challenge for Agit Pai’s FCC.”

• It explains what is NOT a modern FCC.
• It’s also part 26 of my Modernize Obsolete Communications Law Series. (See below.)

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Modernize Obsolete Communications Law Series

Please don’t miss my latest The Hill op-ed, “Congress Please Undo FCC’s Dysfunctional Internet Privacy Rules,” which explains how these last minute regulations created a confusing mess for consumers.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans formally asked FCC Chairman Agit Pai to close the docket on the set-top box proceeding because it is no longer under active consideration, and because it “remains an unnecessary regulatory threat to the content creation and distribution industries” and casts a “shadow over investment and innovation.”

This is a wise, pro-competitive, pro-property rights, and good government request from Congress to the new Pai FCC.

The FCC should efficiently utilize this decision opportunity to employ the statutory sunset provision in the law to permanently sunset and remove this unnecessary and serious regulatory threat to competition, copyrighted contractual content and its creation, investment, and innovation.

Please don’t miss my latest The Hill Op-ed “The New Political Calculus for Net Neutrality.”

Please don’t miss my latest The Hill op-ed entitled “Rating the FCC’s Net Neutrality Enforcement Policy a Zero”

• It explains how net neutrality ceased being pro-consumer.