Corporate Welfare

FCC’s AllVid NPRM Is Anticompetitive, Anticompetitive, Anticompetitive

WASHINGTON D.C. – The following quotes are based on NetCompetition’s submitted comments on the FCC’s AllVid NPRM and may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:

“Think for a moment. Would anyone think it “pro-competitive” if a government agency mandated an “Unlock the Big Box Stores” ruling so that WalMart, Target, or Best Buy could no longer install effective doors, locks, security guards or anti-theft devices on their store perimeters to protect the value of their inventory, all so that Google, Amazon, or eBay could take it for free and then profit from selling it online?”

“The companies that comprise the ~$200b pay TV industry are the video programming functional equivalent of Big Box stores, and the FCC’s AllVid NPRM is the functional equivalent of a looters pardon.”

“Consider how the FCC’s “Unlock the Box” looters’ mantra is profoundly anticompetitive and destructive.

Google is the only major corporation publicly pressuring the FCC to require that all owners of proprietary video programming rights give away their valuable video property for free to Google and other companies online.

It is telling that to date no other major corporation has been willing to risk their brand publicly advocating for FCC-sponsored piracy to forcibly redistribute corporate wealth from Big Content to FCC-BFF-Google.

The evidence in this analysis will show that Google is the only entity in the world that has both the long-stated mission, i.e. “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and the global monopoly power and corporate functional capabilities to fully commercially exploit this FCC-sponsored piracy proposal.

It’s the FCC-forcing-proprietary-video-to-be-free-to-Google stupid!

That’s a Jim Carville-esque paraphrase of the FCC’s AllVid commercial navigation device proposal to focus the mind.

The FCC spins its AllVid proposal as pro-competition in isolation when in reality the evidence will prove it profoundly anticompetitive overall.

Does the impartial administration of justice, the integrity of the U.S. Government, and the oath of all federal employees to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, require that private interests not be allowed to supplant the public interest?

While the PR cover story of the FCC’s AllVid proposal may be about more consumer choice and competition to reduce the cost of cable set-top boxes, don’t be fooled.

In announcing it, the FCC Chairman admits there’s already consumer choice aplenty: “American consumers enjoy unprecedented choice in how they view entertainment, news and sports programming. You can pretty much watch what you want, where you want, when you want.”

And the AllVid proposal is not about saving consumers money.

If it were, the FCC would not be shunning the obvious, best and cheapest solution of replacing the need for a set-top box entirely, by modernly and naturally transitioning them to the sector norm of easily-downloadable, cheap/free apps.

Summary

Does Alphabet Inc. -- arguably the world’s largest organization, with two billion plus users, most all the world’s information, most of the world’s top applications, limitless global ambitions, limited accountability, and self-proclaimed “don’t be evil” moral authority -- actually “do the right thing” as Alphabet publicly professes?  (Alphabet Inc. is the restructured company formerly known as Google Inc.)

If it matters to people that their leaders do what they say, to governments that corporate leaders obey the law, to the media that public leaders are honest to the public, and to the public that the leaders they trust are trustworthy, then this attempt to bring accountability to Alphabet-Google’s near unprecedented leadership, branding, and investment value has merit.

Accumulating evidence of Google’s amoral unaccountability certainly has merit and value to EU law enforcement and to U.S. State Attorneys General law enforcement, because it goes to whether or not Alphabet can be trusted to operate its business honestly and legally on its own; and to be trusted to make honest representations to law enforcement and the public.   

Please don't miss my latest Daily Caller Op-ed, “Net Neutrality Trumping Privacy Undercut the US-EU Data Safe Harbor.”

• It is proof positive of the law of unintended consequences coming home to roost for the U.S. Government.

Summary

How the DOJ and FTC handle two high-profile Google market behaviors that appear on their face to violate two different U.S. antitrust precedents, will speak volumes to the world about whether U.S. antitrust law still applies to Google, or not.

First, does the DOJ believe that the new search partnership between #3 Yahoo and #1 Google -- in the highly-concentrated U.S. search market -- is anti-competitive like the DOJ concluded previously in opposing the 2008 proposed Google-Yahoo search partnership?

The FCC’s approach to special access is all wrong because they should be doing the exact opposite of what they are doing. The FCC should be price de-regulating special access, not signaling increased micro-regulation of special access rate terms and conditions.

Like an ostrich, the FCC has its head hidden in the sand on its approach to special access regulation, hoping that no one notices that the rest of its body is fully exposed.   

If the FCC can convince everyone to join them and put their heads in the sand too, and to look at special access regulation in the dark of self-defined isolation, and ignore the broader context of the competitive U.S. communications sector visible all around them, the FCC has a reasonable chance of sounding reasonable.

However, if anyone has their head out of the FCC’s regulatory sandpit and looks around for a moment at special access regulation in the broader context of the real world, more special access regulation looks ridiculous, just like the exposed back-end of an ostrich does when it hides its head in the sand.  

The juxtaposition of Google tacitly accusing the EU with “digital protectionism” and “discrimination” as the EU’s Digital Chief, Günther Oettinger, visits D.C. and Silicon Valley, while the Google-created Internet Association this week asks for U.S. protection from ISP “discrimination” in an appeals court brief in support of the FCC’s Open Internet order – exposes exceptional hypocrisy.

Antitrust and privacy regulators around the world weren’t born yesterday. They know Google and its online platform allies want it both ways – manipulating policy to advantage them and disadvantage their potential competitors.