IAC

U.S. Internet policy politics has shifted.

Congress has learned that any new legal accountability for, or regulation of, Internet platforms likely won’t survive court challenge, unless the new legislation also amends a 1996 law, Section 230, that selectively immunizes Internet platforms from most government legal accountability, and federal and state regulation.

Courts have interpreted Section 230 so broadly that Internet platforms like Facebook, Alphabet-Google, Amazon, Uber, and Airbnb, grew confident that they could operate their businesses largely above the rules and outside the law that applied to everyone else.

The proof of this "Jekyll and Hyde" legal double standard, is that this week Congress had to amend section 230 to narrowly override its sweeping Internet platform immunity powers to legally enable child victims of sex trafficking to seek redress for their harms in court.

Yesterday the Senate passed FOSTA, the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act,” with 97% support (97-2). Three weeks ago, the House passed it with 94% support, (388-25). Both passed over the strong opposition of Alphabet-Google and some other members of the Internet Association. President Trump is expected to quickly sign it into law.

Summary: The substantial evidence catalogued here provides proof of the Internet’s cartelization, extreme concentration, winner-take-all tendencies, and mythical competition. The public data shows that the tacit Internet cartel of Google, Amazon and Facebook is 7-8 times more concentrated than the top three offline companies and that the top ten Internet economy companies are >10 times more concentrated than the top ten offline economy companies.

Public data that Google, Amazon, and Facebook have acquired ~350 potential competitors and the Internet Association overall has acquired ~900 potential competitors, indicates that the apparent cartelization of Internet companies’ investment, acquisition, and innovation processes ensure no innovative “garage startup” has a plausible competitive opportunity to seriously threaten the Internet cartel’s dominance.

Public data also ironically shows that almost all the Internet Association’s members are anti-competitively threatened by one of more of the Google, Amazon, or Facebook, winner-take-all online onslaughts.

U.S. antitrust authorities have enabled a cartelized and extremely concentrated Internet by taking their eye off the purpose of antitrust law -- protecting the process of competition, by first protecting the process of innovation by dominant online platforms.

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Below is my op-ed “Privacy’s Big Three” on the FCC’s pending interpretation of its newly asserted Title II section 222 privacy authority. It is a side-bar in this week’s Multichannel News cover story “Who’s Watching Whom?” Click here for the full Multichannel article.

This succinct op-ed spotlights the three biggest privacy questions the FCC must grapple with here:

1. Any privacy protection predictability?
2. Any competitive privacy policy parity?
3. An FCC Do Not Track List?    

Privacy’s Big Three

Dear Executives of Internet Association Companies,

Have you thought through the global implications of your businesses’ public lobbying for regulating broadband like a public telephone utility? 

Possibly you are unaware that “The French government said it would push for a new European law later this year to classify Google and other Web giants like public utilities, forcing them to guarantee access to all services like phone operators. … We don’t want to become a digital colony of global Internet giants” said the French Economy Minister, per Wall Street Journal reporting.

As members of the global Internet giant association, and as global companies with large majorities of your current or future revenues coming from overseas, it could be beneficial to better think through the global implications of your high-profile policy support for new broadband utility regulation in the U.S.

Please don’t miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “The De-Americanization of the Internet” -- here.  

America's dominance of the Internet has peaked. Read why and what it means. 

• It is Part 3 of my “World Changing Internet” research series.

World Changing Internet Series

Part 1: Seven Ways the World is Changing the Internet

Part 2: Twitter’s Realpolitik & the Sovereign-ization of the Internet

More evidence continues to surface that Big Internet companies expect and seek exceptional special treatment from Government that other companies simply do not expect or seek.

If the Internet Association is presumptuous enough to unilaterally deem itself “the unified voice of the Internet economy,” I guess we should not be surprised that on the same day that our duly-elected President delivered the State of the Union, the unelected President of the Internet Association would be presumptuous enough to deliver the “State of the Internet.” 

The copyright-neutering movement, which is fueled by free culture activists and Big Internet interests, regularly employs four deceptions in their lobbying efforts to weaken copyright law and change the public conversation about copyright.

The movement obviously seeks to distract political attention from the proven real-world problem of online piracy and the urgent need for more anti-piracy enforcement of online copyright-infringement and counterfeiting, to their artificially-manufactured problem that copyright itself is the problem because it limits free online "sharing" and "innovation without permission."

The four deceptions are:

1. Advocate with deceptive "free" and "open" messaging.
2. Claim copyright's power comes from industry lobbying.
3. Represent infringers as victims.
4. Rewrite the history of SOPA/PIPA.

1.  Advocate with deceptive "free" and "open" messaging.

Free culture and Big Internet interests view copyright-property-rights and enforcement of those rights as a threat and obstacle to the realization of their techtopian vision for the Internet where "free" means no cost (or online ad-funded), and "open" means taking without permission (no property online) and government regulation (net neutrality).

Please don't miss my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "Obsolete Privacy Law" -- here.

It is part 1 of a new "Privacy Theft" research series.

Google not only dominates the web, the Google Lobby also dominates Big Internet's policy agenda in Washington in part via its new proxy, the Internet Association, the self-appointed "unified voice of the Internet economy."

Since market dominance attracts antitrust scrutiny, it necessitates lobbying dominance. The FTC's antitrust investigation prompted Google to hire twelve lobbying firms in a week and to rapidly organize them and legions of law and PR firms into one of the top corporate lobbying operations influencing Washington. Tellingly, a Wall Street Journal op-ed lionized "Google's $25 Million Bargain" lobby and Politico got behind-the-scenes to explain "How Google Beat the Feds."