By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 12-21-22 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has rejected China Telecom’s appeal of its designation as a supplier of suspect tech that the U.S. government will not fund with subsidies for new broadband buildouts, and that must be ripped and replaced from existing networks. That is [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 11-17-22 Senate Democrats are massing along a new front in the war with Big Tech and Elon Musk is in the line of fire. A powerful group of senators led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate potential consumer-protection laws by Twitter, which [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 11-15-22 FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel has told Congress she would welcome the chance to work with it to better protect consumers during retransmission-consent disputes, a point she has made before in discussing retrans-related blackouts. She expressed her view in a letter to Rhode Island’s congressional delegation, whose members had [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 10-24-22 Computer companies and edge providers are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue of whether state governments can impose what the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is branding must-carry for online platforms and a “road map” for those wishing to fill the Internet [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 10-18-22 Invoking YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Twitch, and others, as well as fringe site 4chan, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James are calling for a government crackdown on online platforms, saying they contributed to the Buffalo mass shooting that left 10 dead and three injured. [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-19-22 Big Tech is a threat to liberty and a big mole that needs whacking, a la the arcade game where the object is to bash as many of them on the head as possible.  That was the message of the Justice Department’s antitrust chief in a fiery speech [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-16-22 In a loss for Big Tech and its ad base, a federal appeals court has concluded that corporations do not have a “freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” and so has paved the way for a Texas law (HB 20) that restricts how social media [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-17-22 The Federal Trade Commission is hosting a public forum on its proposed rulemaking targeting what it calls “commercial surveillance and data security practices that harm consumers and competition,” by which it means, among other things, data collection for online targeted advertising. The September 8 forum will be virtual [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-11-22 The Federal Trade Commission has signaled it could impose new rules on “commercial surveillance,” by which it means “the business of collecting, analyzing and profiting from information about people.” Such rules have obvious implications for the targeted online advertising that undergirds the free content model. The FTC Advance [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-11-22 Cable operators are telling the FCC that it should continue to require broadcasters transitioning to ATSC 3.0 to deliver a signal in the current ATSC 1.0 standard, and that the programming on that signal must still be substantially similar to their ATSC 3.0 signal. The FCC sought input [...]