The antitrust lawsuits were announced by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The satellite provider will pay a historic civil penalty that tops the total penalties paid to the government by all prior violators of the Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule.
The filings from more than 40 attorneys general and the U.S. government will allege the tech giant engaged in unlawful tactics to buy or kill off its rivals and solidify its dominance in social networking.
The head of the agency that oversees Voice of America removed the international broadcasting service’s interim director on Tuesday, in a move apparently aimed at asserting greater control over its editorial operations. Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who has made sweeping and controversial changes at VOA and its sister broadcasting networks, pushed out Elez Biberaj, a VOA veteran whom Pack had appointed as the head of the service on an interim basis in June.
Exclusives
The Senate on Tuesday confirmed the FCC nomination of Nathan Simington, a senior Trump administration official who has helped lead a regulatory effort seeking to rein in social media companies at the agency. His appointment will lead to a 2-2 partisan deadlock on Jan. 20, when Republican Chairman Ajit Pai steps down and leaves the agency.
A divided Senate has begun the process of voting on Nathan Simington’s nomination to the FCC, expected to draw plenty of floor pushback from unhappy Democrats before a final vote later in the day.
Two Senate Democrats — Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut (l) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) — and a coalition of digital rights groups are hoping to derail the confirmation of telecom lawyer Nathan Simington to the FCC, arguing that his appointment during the lame-duck session would hamper President-Elect Joe Biden’s policy agenda.
Four Massachusetts legislators have called on Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and Hearst President Jordan Wertlieb to negotiate in good faith and resolve their carriage dispute so that ABC affiliate WCVB Boston stays on Comcast’s system serving Bristol County, Mass., residents.
Comcast executive and longtime Philadelphia political power player David L. Cohen is hoping to join President-elect Joe Biden’s administration as either commerce secretary or a high-profile ambassador, according to former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
The White House did not extend a Dec. 4 deadline for the Chinese internet company ByteDance to sell TikTok.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) will return as chairman of the powerful Energy & Commerce Committee after he was re-elected by the House Democratic Caucus Thursday (Dec. 3). Pallone pledged to push an aggressive agenda to modernize infrastructure, protect privacy, and to “rebuild and restore critical functions of key agencies under the committee’s jurisdiction that were dismantled over the last four years by the outgoing Trump Administration.”
When President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January, it’s likely to reignite an old debate over who should police the internet.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) becomes the ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, the first woman to serve in that post.
“LinkedIn has systematically inflated ad metrics in its favor, which has enabled it to overstate the quality of its audiences, the quality of its ad inventory, and the engagement from its audiences,” tech company TopDevz and recruiting platform Noirefy allege in a class-action complaint.
The Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday voted 14-12 along party lines to advance the nomination of controversial telecom lawyer Nathan Simington to the FCC. If confirmed by the full Senate, President-elect Joe Biden will begin his term with the FCC evenly split between Democrats and Republicans — which could hamper his goal of restoring net neutrality rules.
On Twitter Tuesday night, Trump took aim at Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects companies that can host trillions of messages from being sued into oblivion by anyone who feels wronged by something someone else has posted — whether their complaint is legitimate or not. He wrote: “If the very dangerous & unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill.”
In something of a blast from the past for those who have followed the peripatetic course of New York Post-related waivers, Fox Television Stations has asked the FCC for a permanent waiver of the newspaper-broadcast crossownership rule for WWOR Secaucus, N.J. It already has a permanent waiver to own WNYW New York, dating back to 1993, but only a temporary waiver to own WWOR, which it bought in 2001.
The SenateCommerce Committee plans to vote Wednesday on the nomination of Nathan Simington for the Republican FCC seat being vacated by Michael O’Rielly at year’s end, according to a group opposed to his confirmation. If Simington is confirmed by the full Senate, still an open question, the FCC will be at 2-2 when chairman Ajit Pai leaves Jan. 20, putting pressure on the Biden Administration to nominate, vet, and confirm a third Democrat so they have a majority.
A federal judge partially accepts a complaint from Stan Kroenke’s Altitude Sports over a negotiating impasse with Comcast over a regional sports network.
The chairman says “It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve at the Federal Communications Commission, including as chairman … over the past four years. I am grateful to President Trump for giving me the opportunity to lead the agency in 2017, to President Obama for appointing me as a commissioner in 2012, and to Senate Majority Leader McConnell and the Senate for twice confirming me.”
The FCC will soon shift to Democratic control, and speculation has already begun about who will assume the chairmanship under the Biden administration. Jessica Rosenworcel, the senior Democrat on the commission, is widely considered to be one of the leading candidates to succeed Ajit Pai in the powerful regulatory post. She has been vetted twice and would likely have a smooth path to confirmation, which would be a key consideration assuming the Senate remains in Republican hands.
A looming vacancy on the Federal Trade Commission has created a dilemma for the agency as it decides how to pursue its expected antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, contributing to a delay in the launch of the case, three people familiar with the discussions said. While the five commissioners had been expected to file the suit by the end of this month, the agency’s commissioners are now grappling with the prospect that Republican Chairman Joseph Simons’ likely departure before the next administration could lead to 2-2 splits in future votes.
Turns out Jan. 19 will be an inauguration day of sorts — inaugurating the Supreme Court’s first consideration of an appeal of the FCC’s media ownership rule deregulation. It will be the fourth oral argument of the January session, with one hour of argument scheduled, though that could spill over depending on how the arguments and Justices’ questioning goes.
The halcyon days of an adoring Washington are unlikely to return for America’s tech companies when Biden takes the oath of office in January, with mounting legislative and regulatory challenges to the industry — including stronger enforcement of antitrust laws — nearly certain to outlast the tenure of President Donald Trump.
Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, was granted another 7-day extension from the U.S. Treasury on Wednesday afternoon to divest from its American assets. TikTok was given a two-week extension earlier this month to have its divestment plan approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, but that was set to expire on Friday.
The FCC is seeking comment on a National Association of Broadcasters petition to clarify the application of the FCC’s ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) rules to multicast streams. Those are the extra channels broadcasters got in the switch to digital.
The FCC’s Video Division yesterday issued a Notice of Apparent Liability to WUTB Baltimore for airing a commercial for a Hot Wheels product in eight showings of the program Team Hot Wheels. The commission has, for almost 30 years, had a policy against what they term “program-length commercials” — programs that feature characters who are also featured in a commercial that runs during the program.
