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Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2010-04-01 20:10
FTC antitrust concerns over "inter-locking-directorates" reportedly have forced Kleiner-Perkins' John Doerr, to step down from Amazon's board, because he is also on the board of Amazon, a major book and cloud-computing competitor of Google -- per Miguel Helft's and Brad Stone's scoop at the New York Times Bits post.
This is the third (Amazon, Apple, Yahoo) too-cozy-for-antitrust-authorities, Keiretsu-like, Google business relationship that either the DOJ or FTC apparently have broken up.
- (I will elaborate on each of these problematic Keiretsu-like relationships (Amazon, Apple and Yahoo) later in the post.)
Three different interventions by antitrust authorities involving Google's ties with three different Fortune 500 companies in eighteen months constitutes a pattern and underscores the depth and breadth of antitrust concerns that U.S. antitrust authorities have about Google.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2009-11-30 17:19
Like the FCC’s National Broadband Plan task force identified seven critical gaps in the path to the future of universal broadband, the FCC should resolve six identified “critical gaps” in the FCC’s proposed Open Internet regulations before moving forward to regulate the Internet for the first time -- by dictating Internet access pricing, terms and conditions or dictating what services which businesses can and cannot offer on the Internet.
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Here are six critical gaps in the FCC's proposed open Internet regulations:
Credibility Gap: The FCC isn’t "preserving," but changing the Internet by regulating it for the first time.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2009-11-03 13:30
eBay is licking their chops at the prospect of the FCC's open Internet regulations locking in their dominance of:
Like Google, eBay knows that "openness" is industrial-policy-speak for:
- Rewarding favored "national champions" and
- Locking in first-mover and netopoly scale-and-scope-advantages.
The netopolists must be giddy at how they now have the full power of the FCC focused on permanently locking in their market dominance going forward.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2009-10-30 14:17
The FCC's claims that their proposed net neutrality regulations would just "preserve" the open Internet are simply not true. The facts are clear that the FCC's proposed regulations would:
- Be a big change in FCC Internet policy;
- Implement big Internet policy changes without Congressional authorization; and
- Change the Internet in big ways.
- (The one-page PDF version of this post is here.)
The FCC’s proposed net neutrality regs are a big change in FCC Internet policy; they would:
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2009-10-19 10:46
In effectively reversing fifteen-year bipartisan U.S. communications policy from promoting competition and reducing regulation to promoting regulation and reducing competition, the FCC’s coming “Open Internet” regulations are anything but neutral; they pick sides and strongly skew outcomes.
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First, the FCC is proposing new preemptive business bans mid-game, the harshest most disruptive form of economic regulation possible.
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Second, the FCC is arbitrarily discriminating among increasingly similar and converging businesses resulting in the arbitrary punishment of some businesses for what they allegedly might do, while rewarding others with protection from competition for what they allegedly might not do.
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Third, the FCC is arbitrarily mandating one-way technology convergence without any supportable justification, i.e. banning distribution convergence into applications/content, while encouraging application/content convergence into distribution.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2009-10-08 13:01
Given that the apparent justification for new formal net neutrality rules is that fifteen-year policy has failed and that the market is unable to ensure consumer choice, the FCC will need to justify with facts that broadband providers indeed have market power to exercise anti-competitively.
Kudos to Larry Darby of the American Consumer Institute for his excellent and illuminating comparative financial analysis of the market power and profits of broadband companies vs. Internet companies. From his post:
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2009-09-24 10:27
What an "Open Internet" does not mean is as important as what it does mean.
- Surely an "Open Internet" is not intended to mean what it certainly can mean: un-protected, unguarded, or vulnerable to attack.
- Thus, it is essential for the FCC to be explicit in defining what the terms -- "Open Internet," "net neutrality," and Internet non-discrimination -- don't mean, as well as what they do mean.
The word "open" has 88 different definitions per Dictionary.com and the word "open" has even more different connotations depending on the context. While the term "open" generally has a positive connotation to mean un-restricted, accessible and available, it can also have a negative or problematic connotation if it means unprotected, unguarded or vulnerable to attack.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2009-09-18 11:05
With due to credit to "Ripley's Believe it or Not!®," so much odd and bizarre is happening in Washington in the "name" of "wireless innovation" and competition that the topic calls for its own collection of: "Believe it or Not!®" oddities.
Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstom, the co-founder of illegal-music-downloading site Kazaa, who had to avoid entering the U.S. because of copyright-infringement liability... is now seeking a U.S. court injunction to shut down eBay's Skype for alleged copyright violations!
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2009-09-10 18:53
There's been scant analysis of how the Google Book Settlement process has been altered going forward given recent major developments:
- The "hornet swarm" of objections to the Google Book Settlement, and
- Google's recent preemptive concessions on:
To date the discussion of outcomes has been largely binary, will Federal District Court Judge Chin approve or disapprove the proposed Book Settlement?
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2009-08-26 12:34
Analysis of the potential pitfalls of wireless innovation regulation is a necessary complement to the FCC's upcoming Notice of Inquiries into wireless competition/innovation and the DOJ's review of wireless competition, in order to ensure policymakers get a balanced view of the big picture.
What are the Top 10 Pitfalls of Wireless Innovation Regulation?
#1 Pitfall: Losing focus on universal broadband access.
"Wireless innovation" appears to be the latest rebranding iteration of "net neutrality" and "open Internet" as the net neutrality movement searches for more mainstream support of their views. Pages
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