In the internet economy, traditional antitrust doctrines and nostrums are much less helpful than we would wish. We need new thinkin' and new legislatin' here. Not that I know what we need, exactly, but we do need it: Ben Thompson: AT&T, Time Warner, and a Framework for Neutrality: "Unfortunate[ly]... a bad case by the government has led to... a merger... never examined for its truly anti-competitive elements...
...at worst, bad law that will open the door for similar tie-ups. To be sure, it is not at all clear that the government would have won had they focused on zero rating: there is an obvious consumer benefit to the concept—that is why T-Mobile leveraged it to such great effect!—and the burden would have been on the government to show that the harm was greater. The bigger issue, though, is the degree to which laws surrounding such issues are woefully out-of-date. Last fall I argued that Title II was the wrong framework to enforce net neutrality, even though net neutrality is a concept I absolutely support; I came to that position in part because zero rating was not even covered by the FCC’s action. What is clearly needed is new legislation, not an attempt to misapply ancient regulation in a way that is trivially reversible. Moreover, AT&T has a point that online services like Google and Facebook are legitimate competitors, particularly for ad dollars; said regulation should address the entire sector...
#shouldread
