Apparently America does not have “equal justice under law” when it comes to media concentration limits.

Seldom can one find a starker commercial example of unequal legal, law enforcement, and regulatory treatment of very similar commercial activities than that between old media and Internet/new media companies concerning media concentration and antitrust enforcement.

Both legacy old media companies and Internet/new media companies are in the communications business, own and/or produce media of some type, and distribute media in different physical ways, consumption formats, and time/situation dimensions.

Please see this one-page graphic that illustrates how America’s media concentration double standard treats similar old and new media companies completely dissimilarly, and how it results in a predictable stark market share dichotomy.  

Ultimately old media concentration has been limited by the traditional antitrust limits that apply to all industries and companies over the years.

That’s no longer true for Big-Internet companies like Google and Facebook.

Please don’t miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “How U.S. Internet Commons Policies Lessen Growth Jobs & Security.”

It spotlights how U.S. Internet commons policies – where “free” means a price of zero and “open” means no property -- create winner-take all economic outcomes for the Netstablishment at the expense of everyone else.

Google’s unprecedented Obama Administration influence and its self-serving anti-employment, anti-property, and pro-regulatory policy agenda, are on a collision course with the job-creating, pro-property, deregulatory Trump Administration growth agenda.

Keep watch to see who adapts to whom and how.

I.  Google’s Unprecedented Lobbying Influence

Current Alphabet-Google Chairman Eric Schmidt enjoys the privilege of being the only corporate leader of a publicly-traded company on the President’s nineteen member Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

In the wake of a generally-unexpected election outcome, most everyone in the Internet space is grasping to understand the implications of an all Republican-led government and a Trump FCC, on their key issues. 

The purpose of this analysis is to spotlight and explain the most predictable changes to expect. By design, it is not comprehensive, because some issues are naturally less predictable than others.

To be most accurate, this analysis will be high-level and strategic, not detailed and tactical, because the “what” and the “why” here are more predictable at this early stage than the specific “how,” “when,” and “who” -- for obvious practical reasons.

I. Why are some issues very predictable at this early stage?

First, the simple, hiding-in-plain-sight, premise here, is the process/values clarity and predictability that naturally flow from unified one-party control of the levers of government.

This is the fourth time in eighteen years there will be unified one-party control of government: the Democrats had it 1993-94 and 2009-10; and Republicans had it 2003-06 and now in 2017-18. History confirms the high-level strategic predictability of one-party control of the levers of government.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, November 9, 2016, Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

Election Provides Opportunity to Modernize Communications and Privacy Laws; And to Ensure a Pro-competition FCC that Fully Respects the Rule of Law, Facts, Due Process, Property Rights and Contracts

Google is in the process of submitting its defenses to the EU antitrust charges that Google abuses its >90% dominance in search, mobile, and advertising. At the same time a new U.S. Administration soon will take a fresh look at U.S. antitrust enforcement, much like the EU did for Europe in late 2014.

So how did EU v. Google become the most consequential antitrust case of the young 21^st century? 

Don’t miss Google’s enduring big wireless ISP ambitions in the midst of all the noise and confusion about the future of Google Fiber.

And also don’t miss Google’s grand ambitions to organize and dominate America’s spectrum-related information via its certification as a key FCC Spectrum Access System Administrator, given how little public attention it has gotten to date.

Google continues to pivot its Internet access ambitions away from deploying capital-expensive fiber technology deployment to deploying much-less-capital-expensive unlicensed wireless access technology, which does not require digging and burying fiber, and which may only use free unlicensed spectrum.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, October 27, 2016, Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

The FCC’s Broadband Privacy Rules Confuse Consumers with Partial, Inconsistent and Misleading Privacy Protection Because Their Personal Data Remains Unprotected from Every Entity but ISPs, and the FCC’s Privacy Rules Are Effectively at War with the FTC’s Consumer Protection Mission  

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

To prove to the public once and for all that the FCC’s proposed broadband privacy rules are designed to benefit consumers and not special interests, the FCC has agreed to answer some reel questions from reel people about their reel privacy concerns just before they vote on the rules October 27.

These reel consumer questions were chosen by the FCC’s new artificial intelligence algorithm to determine which of the four million questions submitted in the FCC comments for this proceeding were the most open, neutral, competitive, non-discriminatory, unbiased, and FCC-supportive.

So that these reel consumer questions can be immediately re-tweeted, liked on Facebook, ranked on Google, and echoed by Amazon, the FCC’s algorithm will only chose consumer questioners who are willing to make their name and all personally identifiable information fully available to edge providers to monetize however they want, but not available at all to any ISP.

Top Questions for the FCC Commissioners on Broadband Privacy Rules

This analysis of the competitive facts underlying AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner is an outgrowth of my discussion of the acquisition on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show this morning with Cecilia Kang of the New York Times and John Bergmeyer of Public Knowledge. The show can be heard here.

My main point was that the competitive facts are the best friend of this transaction.

I elaborate on that conclusion below.

The key facts lead me to believe the transaction should and will be approved, most likely by the DOJ, because of: the antitrust-benign competitive share facts in all the relevant markets; the antitrust precedents that constrain the DOJ’s ability to successfully challenge in court a vertical merger with these benign shares; and the companies have signaled they understand that if any legitimate competitive concerns arise they can be mitigated successfully with conditions and DOJ oversight of the transaction.    

If officials examine the competitive facts of this acquisition with an open mind and with due process, they’ll discover first impressions can be very misleading.