PrecursorBlog is on hiatus for vacation.

In a remarkably ill-advised and irresponsible blog post, Mr. Feld of Public Knowledge attacked the State Department's Ambassador Phil Verveer for apparently veering from the strict orthodoxy of FreePress/Public Knowledge's view of net neutrality. 

• Ambassador Verveer was merely doing his job and speaking freely and forthrightly that other countries will obviously be watching what the FCC does, given that the U.S. has led communications-competition policy for two decades. 

First, everyone who knows Phil (and I have had the pleasure of knowing him for almost twenty years), knows Ambassador Verveer to be one of the most honorable, wise, measured, and capable professionals and public servants they know, period, full stop.

Wow. The evidence Viacom unearthed in discovery in their $1b copyright infringement suit against Google is surprisingly damning. The evidence shows willful, premeditated, deceptive, and organized efforts by YouTube, Google and Google-YouTube to infringe copyrights for anti-competitive and financial gain.

• Read the quote summary first here, then review the copious evidence/history in the 86 page Viacom Statement of Facts here, and then review Viacom's Summary Judgement memo of law here. 

So what are the broader antitrust implications of all this new and serious evidence of illegal activity and misconduct by Google-YouTube?

First, DOJ really blew it for not even asking for a second request of information on Google's acquisition of YouTube.

First there was one-to-many broadcasting, then many-to-many Internet narrowcasting... now it appears we are moving next to a one-to-many GoogleNet unicasting future...

• ...where every company and individual may simply become a subordinate channel on the Googleopoly advertising network, 
• and where content largely would be found only via Google's mono-search guide...

To better understand this troubling ongoing transformation, connect the dots below...

Google's unprecedented mass-accumulation of material non-public information may force a re-thinking and broader definition of the concept of insider information/trading and related securities laws/regulations, in order to continue to ensure the integrity of public markets.

A very important investigative scoop by Appitalism's Simon Buckingham (that has been submitted to the FTC's Google-AdMob antitrust investigators) uncovers how Google unilaterally, not-openly, and without advertisers' permission, changed the default settings in all of Google advertisers' accounts, which effectively "duped advertisers out of hundreds of millions of dollars."  

In a nutshell, Mr. Buckingham's investigation found that  two years ago, Google quietly changed the defaults of all its advertiser clients' accounts so that their ads were served not only to all desktop pcs/laptops, but also to all IP enabled mobile devices too.

Entropy Economic's Bret Swanson has another great, clear-thinking op-ed that I recommend you read, this time in RealClearMarkets.com entitled: "Entrepreneurial Innovation and the Internet."

Bret incisively captures the amazing and dynamic nature of innovation in the currently unregulated Internet ecosystem, and cautions against Washington imagining that the Federal Government can do better than free market competition can with top-down innovation micro-management from slow-moving bureaucracies.

His piece also helps spotlight the huge disconnect over where innovation comes from. 

A potential flood of very illuminating documents and information about the inner workings of Google are likely to be released soon by the Federal Court hearing Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google-YouTube, despite strong Google opposition to the court's release of the information Viacom found in "discovery."

Kudos to Larry Downes for his excellent guest column on CNET: "What's in a Title? For broadband its Oz vs. Kansas." I recommend reading it.

It is a very readable, informative overview of the great folly it would be for the FCC to reclassify broadband services from unregulated information services to regulated common carrier telecommunications services.

Mr. Downes' piece makes it abundantly clear that any Title II reclassification by the FCC would be a monumentally bad idea.

The FTC is now very likely to file an injunction in Federal Court to block Google's proposed acquisition of AdMob, if Google does not walk away from the deal, given that Bloomberg reports that the FTC is "seeking sworn declarations from Google Inc. competitors and advertisers."