FCC

The US-EU “competition” of protectionist digital industrial policies -- U.S. Title II net neutrality vs. the EU’s emerging “platform neutrality” plans -- creates an ironic backdrop to negotiations for the US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) “free” trade agreement. Heightening the irony, the Obama Administration, not the European Commission, has been the protectionist digital industrial policy leader, trailblazing the political path for the EU’s Single Digital Market to follow.  

At least on the digital markets front, TTIP will be much less a commercial “free” trade negotiation and much more a political “fair” trade negotiation.    

The U.S. has long set the tone and trajectory for this digital “fair” trade dynamic in championing net neutrality to protect its Silicon Valley national champions, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, etc., and by skewing antitrust enforcement to benefit Google and Silicon Valley.

Please don't miss my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "FCC-villle's Kangaroo Court."

It puts into perspective the extent of the FCC's arbritrariness and capriciousness in its reclassification of the Internet as a Title II telephone monopoly.

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FCC Open Internet Order Series

Part 1: The Many Vulnerabilities of an Open Internet [9-24-09]

Part 2: Why FCC proposed net neutrality regs unconstitutional, NPR Online Op-ed [9-24-09]

Part 3: Takeaways from FCC's Proposed Open Internet Regs [10-22-09]

Just when Google needs it most, its political bag of tricks to dodge antitrust enforcement may be running out.

Reports that the EC is likely to issue a Statement of Objections ruling soon -- that Google is >90% dominant in search and search advertising and has illegally abused that dominance by promoting Google’s content and demoting competitors’ content -- indicates Google finally may be facing a global antitrust inflection point.

A tough EC SO would be a game-changer for Google, like the 2000 U.S. District Court case that ruled Microsoft an anti-competitive monopoly, proved to be a game-changing, global antitrust inflection point for Microsoft.  

Substantively on the merits of the EC antitrust case, Google appears to have little room to maneuver. The EC effectively agrees with the FTC’s staff antitrust conclusions per the leaked FTC staff report. That finding is highly problematic for Google because: EU competition law is much tougher than America’s; Google’s relative >90% market dominance in Europe is much greater than in the U.S.; and Google doesn’t have the dominant political influence over Europe that it does with the U.S. Executive Branch.

The New York Times’ editorial, “Global Threats to Net Neutrality,” scolds the world for not following the FCC’s nationalistic concept of net neutrality.

They feign shock and indignation that Europe and India would dare think of politically doing what the FCC has done and impose their own national industrial policies -- under the convenient political cover of “net neutrality.”

America’s elites naively imagine that other countries’ authorities don’t “get the joke” of the FCC’s politically-contrived net neutrality policy.

Other countries’ authorities are not as gullible and pliant as American elites imagine them to be.  

They know “net neutrality” has become an increasingly vacuous political slogan, whose definition conveniently changes meaning like a chameleon changes colors.

They know the FCC is pressuring them to do as the FCC says and not as the FCC does on net neutrality.

Please read my latest Daily Caller op-ed entitled: “FCC Detours Innovation to Government Slow Lane.”

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FCC Open Internet Order Series

Part 1: The Many Vulnerabilities of an Open Internet [9-24-09]

Part 2: Why FCC proposed net neutrality regs unconstitutional, NPR Online Op-ed [9-24-09]

Please read my latest Daily Callerop-ed entitled: “Unnecessary Collateral Damage from FCC Title II Internet Regulation.”

It explains why collateral damage will begin to pile up because the FCC’s Title II Internet regulation is so destructive and unnecessary.

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FCC Open Internet Order Series

Part 1: The Many Vulnerabilities of an Open Internet [9-24-09]

How Consumers, Innovation & Business Will be Collateral Damage of FCC's
Title II Utility Regulation of the Internet -- Why Only Congress Can Resolve Net Neutrality Legitimately

Date: March 26, 2015

Location: House Rayburn Building 2218

Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Moderator: Scott Cleland, NetCompetition
Panelists:

I.   Summary

Expect the FCC’s new Open Internet Order’s assertion of Title II authority ultimately to be rejected in court (90%), because of its core illegal confiscatory purpose and its serial ends-justify-the-means trampling of due process. 

The FCC’s Title II legal defense is a “modern” day version of “the Emperor has no clothes” fable, where the vain FCC confidently parades in public clothed in the legal fabric that utopian legal alchemists have convinced the FCC is invisible only to those who are “hopelessly stupid” or “unfit for their positions.” Sadly, this emperor (the FCC) has no clothes (sustainable legal case).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                           

March 12, 2015    Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

History Will Judge the FCC’s Regulation of the Internet as the FCC’s Biggest Mistake Ever

The FCC’s Order is Unlawful, Unconstitutional, Unwarranted, Unnecessary & Unworkable

WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:

On February 26^th, the FCC executed President Obama’s call to “implement the strongest possible rules” to regulate the Internet as a telephone utility under “Title II” of the Telecommunications Act.

Legally, the result of this “reclassification” was for President Obama and the FCC to assert regulatory jurisdiction over the Internet ecosystem, creating a de facto American “Digital [Internet] Single Market” industrial policy, like the European Commission is in the process of creating for the European Union.

Legally, America now has a single digital telecommunications/Internet market/ecosystem because the FCC is effectively reclassifying Internet traffic as Title II telecommunications and Title II is a holistic, end-to-end, 1934 regulatory regime designed for the FCC to decide most everything in the assumed monopoly telecommunications ecosystem from originating and terminating local access, long distance, phone and network equipment manufacturing, directories, etc.