Leo Laporte claimed today on Twitter that Facebook had censored Texas radio station, KNOI Real Talk 99.7 by banning them from Facebook “for talking about privacy issues and linking to my show and Diaspora [a Facebook competitor]. Since Leo has a twitter audience of 193,884 followers and an even larger number of listeners to his This Week In Tech (TWIT) podcast, this charge of censorship (allegedly involving another station, KRBR, too) will doubtless attract great deal of attention, and helped to lay the groundwork for imposing “neutrality” regulations on social networking sites—namely, Facebook.
Problem is: it’s just another false alarm in a long series of unfounded and/or grossly exaggerated claims. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded:
The pages for KNOI and KRBR were disabled because one of our automated systems for detecting abuse identified improper actions on the account of the individual who also serves as the sole administrator of the Pages. The automated system is designed to keep spammers and potential harassers from abusing Facebook and is triggered when a user sends too many messages or seeks to friend too many people who ignore their requests. In this case, the user sent a large number of friend requests that were rejected. As a result, his account was disabled, and in consequence, the Pages for which he is the sole administrator were also disabled. The suggestion that our automated system has been programmed to censor those who criticize us is absurd.
Absurd, yes, but when the dust has settled, how many people will remember this technical explanation, when the compelling headline is “Facebook Censors Critics!”? There is a strong parallel here to arguments for net neutrality regulations, which always boil down to claims that Internet service providers will abuse their “gatekeeper” or “bottleneck” power to censor speech they don’t like or squelch competitive threats. Here are just a few of the silly anecdotes that are constantly bandied about in these debates as a sort of “string citation” of the need for regulatory intervention: Continue reading →
Over the weekend, I published an op-ed in The Des Moines Register encouraging the FCC to heed the lessons of the first national broadband plan, the one Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin sent to Congress in 1808.
Gallatin was a remarkable figure in the early history of the federal government, and his accomplishments include being the longest-serving Treasury secretary (1801-1812) to date. His report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals, completed at the request of Congress, remains one of the seminal documents in the history of American infrastructure. It is a masterpiece of dispassionate policy-making and clear-headed writing.
Alas, the document is available nowhere online, and the only in-print copy I can find is published by the aptly-named Dodo Press. This is indeed unfortunate given the renewed interest in network infrastructure as a form of national technology. The NBP published in March by the FCC, despite its nearly 400 pages and thousands of footnotes, makes no reference to Gallatin or his plan. Continue reading →
The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly on the verge of suing to block Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob. The deal’s antitrust implications were discussed in a panel earlier this month on Capitol Hill featuring Berin Szoka. (For other interesting perspectives on the topic, see Geoff Manne and Tom Lenard).
In an opinion essay on Forbes.com this week, I argue that the FTC should approve Google’s acquisition of AdMob without conditions:
by Ryan Radia
Google competes in many markets, but its most pressing threat comes not from a rival but from antitrust authorities. The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly on the verge of filing a lawsuit against Google to block its proposed $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob. Yet antitrust fears about Google are misplaced. Government intervention would harm the very consumer interests the FTC is supposed to protect.
As the government prepares for a potential court battle against Google, the budding mobile advertising market is evolving before our very eyes. Just two weeks ago Apple launched iAd, a mobile advertising platform aimed at the world’s 50 million iPhone users. And Microsoft is in talks to acquire Millenial Media, another major player in mobile advertising, according to Business Insider.
Meanwhile, smart phone use is increasing rapidly–and opportunities for entry in the mobile advertising market are increasing with it. Can Google, armed with AdMob’s advertising platform, succeed in gaining the top spot in mobile advertising? Perhaps — but only if Google-AdMob manages to outcompete and out-innovate rivals that have deep pockets and brilliant engineers of their own.
What tomorrow’s mobile ad market will look like if Google and AdMob join forces is anybody’s guess. Trying to predict how a proposed merger or acquisition will impact consumers is difficult, if not impossible.
Continue reading →
Check out this amazing map of the “Dogs of War” of online competition created by Gizmodo’s Shane Snow (view full size here):
For all the complaining about these three tech titans, they’re locked in fierce competition with each other. This chart doesn’t even mention other players in the vibrantly competitive online ecosystem, like Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter, and countless others. Makes you want to go spend a weekend playing an endless game of Risk, Axis & Allies or Supremacy with your best frenemies, doesn’t it? But of course, the board game analogy only goes so far, because today’s battlelines and players are only a snapshot of a long-term process of dynamic, highly rivalrous competition. But as Adam and I noted in our Forbes.com piece last fall calling for quick approval of Microsoft’s search partnership with Yahoo!:
Alas, regulators seem stuck in the past. European officials in particular seem hell-bent on continuing the antitrust crusade of the ’90s against Microsoft, myopically focused on fading paradigms (desktop operating systems and Web browsers). But instead of narrowly defining high-tech markets based on yesterday’s technologies or market structures, policymakers should embrace the one constant of the Internet economy: dynamic, disruptive and irrepressible change. Continue reading →
Friday, April 16: I’ll be moderating a PFF Capitol Hill briefing on Super-Sizing the FTC & What It Means for the Internet, Media & Advertising. My panel of FTC veterans and observers will discuss the growing powers of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As I’ve mentioned here and here, financial reform legislation passed by the House and now pending in the Senate would give the FTC sweeping new powers to regulate not just Wall Street, but also unfair or deceptive trade practices across the economy. This could reshape regulation in a wide range of areas, such as privacy, cybersecurity, child safety, child nutrition, etc. The FTC has also asserted expanded authority to regulate “unfair” competition in its lawsuit against Intel. Register here for this 12-2 pm briefing in the Capitol Visitor Center!
Thursday, April 15: I’ll be participating in Capitol Hill briefing on Google’s proposed acquisition of AdMob, a leading in-app mobile ad network, which the FTC appears poised to challenge. (RSVP here.) Geoff Manne has probably done the best job debunking arguments against the deal but, sadly, couldn’t make the panel. ITIF’s Dan Castro will moderate a panel including (besides myself):
- Simon Buckingham, who’s expressed concerns about the deal on his Appitalism blog and accused Google of leveraging Google’s desktop search dominance into the high-end mobile market”;
- Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which never passes up an opportunity to denounce Google on privacy grounds;
- Jonathan Kanter, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, who represented TradeComet.com in their antitrust suit against Google and has also represented Microsoft in the past; and
- Glenn Manishin – Duane Morriss LLP, an antitrust lawyer who’s represented Google.
Tuesday, April 27: We just announced another PFF Briefing: Cable, Broadcast & the First Amendment: Will the Supreme Court End Must-Carry?, 10:00-11:45 a.m at Hogan & Hartson LLP (555 13th Street NW, Washington, DC). Continue reading →
As the Wall Street Journal is already reporting, today eBay sustained an important win in its long-running dispute with Tiffany over counterfeit goods sold through its marketplace. (The full opinion is available here.)
I wrote about this case as my leading example of the legal problems that appear at the border between physical life and digital life, both in “The Laws of Disruption” and a 2008 article for CIO Insight.
To avoid burying the lede, here’s the key point: for an online marketplace to operate, the burden has to be on manufacturers to police their brands, not the market operator. Any other decision, regardless of what the law says or does not say, would effectively mean the end of eBay and sites like it.
Continue reading →
Please join us for this Progress & Freedom Foundation luncheon briefing on Friday, April 16, 12-2 pm in the Capitol Visitor Center, Room SVC 208/209 at E Capitol St NE & 1st St NE. I’ll be moderating a discussion of the growing powers of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and what it might mean for consumers, advertisers, media creators, and the Internet.
As I’ve discussed here, here and here, financial reform legislation passed by the House (HR 4173) and now under debate in the Senate would give the FTC sweeping new powers to regulate not just Wall Street, but also unfair or deceptive trade practices across the economy. This could reshape regulation in a wide range of areas, such as privacy, cybersecurity, child safety, COPPA, and child nutrition, affecting media online as well as offline. Unfortunately, as Adam and I have noted, there seems to be a disconnect at the FTC between concerns over the future of struggling media creators and efforts to step up regulation on a number of fronts, especially privacy. The FTC has also asserted expanded authority to regulate “unfair” competition in its lawsuit against Intel, based solely on the FTC’s Section 5 unfairness authority rather than traditional antitrust law. PFF has assembled a group of expert panelists—veteran FTC practitioners, scholars and insiders—to discuss these issues and more. Here’s our panel:
- Jack Calfee, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) & author of Fear of Persuasion: A New Perspective on Advertising and Regulation (1998)
- Maureen Ohlhausen, Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer, Consumer Protection Law and Competition Law practices, & 11-year FTC veteran
- Jim Davidson, Chair of the Public Policy group, Polsinelli Shughart PC
- Stu Ingis, Partner, Venable LLP Continue reading →
Noting that the Telecom Act has become ” irrelevant to the ecosystem that has developed,” Verizon’s Executive Vice President Tom Tauke today called for Congress to overhaul the nation’s archaic communications laws and the regulatory regime that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently attempting to pigeonhole the Internet and entire Digital Economy into. It’s an excellent speech, and I encourage you to read the entire thing (which I have embedded down below the fold in a Scribd reader).
“[T]he test for government intervention in the marketplace is to prevent either harm to users or anti-competitive activity,” he said. He rightly noted that, in an age of technological convergence and vigorous cross-platform competition, the old silo-based approach of the Telecom Act — with its various Titles for outmoded market definitions — no longer makes any sense. He noted:
by the very nature of the Internet Ecosystem, many are working together or competing in other company’s turf. Computer companies sell phones, and quite successfully. Search engines sell open operating systems. Network providers create their own apps stores. That means that the value proposition to the consumer is really a package created by many companies acting together with little, if any, regard to their previous corporate histories. So no set of companies should be immune from scrutiny.
Of course, a regulatory regime already exists that accomplishes this goal: antitrust law. But Tauke’s proposal isn’t quite that sweeping. He doesn’t call for the FCC to be dynamited the ground and to just shift everything into the antitrust bucket, which some of us would prefer. Instead, he speaks generically about the need for a more sensible process — most likely still enforced by the FCC — that would work as follows:
Continue reading →
I published an opinion piece today for CNET arguing against recent calls to reclassify broadband Internet as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act.
The push to do so comes as supporters of the FCC’s proposed Net Neutrality rules fear that the agency’s authority to adopt them under its so-called “ancillary jurisdiction” won’t fly in the courts. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments in Comcast’s appeal of sanctions levied against the cable company for violations of the neutrality principles (not yet adopted under a formal rulemaking). The three-judge panel expressed considerable doubt about the FCC’s jurisdiction in issuing the sanctions during oral arguments. Only the published opinion (forthcoming) will matter, of course, but anxiety is growing.
Solving the Net Neutrality jurisdiction problem with a return to Title II regulation is a staggeringly bad idea, and a counter-productive one at that. My article describes the parallel developments in “telecommunications services” and the largely unregulated “information services” (aka Title I) since the 1996 Communications Act, making the point that life for consumers has been far more exciting—and has generated far more wealth–under the latter than the former.
Under Title I, in short, we’ve had the Internet revolution. Under Title II, we’ve had the decline and fall of basic wireline phone service, boom and bust in the arbitraging competitive local exchange market, massive fraud in the bloated e-Rate program, and the continued corruption of local licensing authorities holding applications hostage for legal and illegal bribes.
Continue reading →
I’m quoted briefly in a story today in E-Commerce Times (see “Apple’s Patent Attack: This Too May be Overhyped” by Erika Morphy) about the patent lawsuit filed this week by Apple against rival mobile device maker HTC.
Apple, of course, produces the iPhone, while HTC makes Google’s Nexus One and other devices that run on Google’s Android operating system.
So right from the start this case looks less like a simple patent dispute and more like a warning shot over Google’s bow. The two companies are increasingly becoming rivals. In August of last year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board. Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote at the time, “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished….” Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
