November 2016

The Department of Justice sued DIRECTV and its corporate successor, AT&T, for acting as the ringleader of a series of unlawful information exchanges between DIRECTV and three of its competitors – Cox Communications, Charter Communications, and AT&T – during the companies’ negotiations to carry SportsNet LA, which holds the exclusive rights to telecast almost all live Dodgers games in the Los Angeles area.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, alleges that DIRECTV unlawfully exchanged competitively-sensitive information with Cox, Charter and AT&T during the companies’ negotiations for the right to telecast the Dodgers Channel. Specifically, the complaint alleges that DIRECTV and each of these competitors agreed to and did exchange non-public information about their companies’ ongoing negotiations to telecast the Dodgers Channel, as well as their companies’ future plans to carry – or not carry – the channel. The complaint also alleges that the companies engaged in this conduct in order unlawfully to obtain bargaining leverage and to reduce the risk that they would lose subscribers if they decided not to carry the channel but a competitor chose to do so. The complaint further alleges that the information learned through these unlawful agreements was a material factor in the companies’ decisions not to carry the Dodgers Channel. The Dodgers Channel is still not carried by DIRECTV, Cox or AT&T.

“As the complaint explains, Dodgers fans were denied a fair competitive process when DIRECTV orchestrated a series of information exchanges with direct competitors that ultimately made consumers less likely to be able to watch their hometown team,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Sallet of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Competition, not collusion, best serves consumers and that is especially true when, as with pay-television providers, consumers have only a handful of choices in the marketplace.”

On, November 8, 26 separate Colorado communities will vote on whether their local governments should build high speed fiber Internet networks to compete with or replace big telecommunication Internet service providers. So-called municipal fiber ballot initiatives have become an annual tradition in Colorado, as roughly 100 communities have voted on measures that provide legal cover to governments who want to build new networks. The initiatives are required under a SB152, a law enacted in 2008 after several lobbying efforts by CenturyLink made it illegal for municipalities to provide fiber Internet to private premises without first obtaining permission in a ballot measure. In 2015, a record 47 communities passed similar referenda; no communities voted it down.

Not every city is going to become its own Internet service provider—the law requires cities to hold referenda even if they plan on partnering with companies on public-private fiber network initiatives. “The law uses broad definitions for what cities can and cannot do,” said Christopher Mitchell, director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative. “We only know of two that have failed in the last six years,” he added. “Many of these networks are tremendously successful.” Colorado is the only state in the country that has a ballot measure requirement for locally run networks; 22 other states have different laws that restrict local broadband efforts. With so many cities overwhelmingly voting in favor of local government-run broadband, Mitchell says that Colorado’s law hasn’t quite had the effect CenturyLink would have liked.

Consumers have a lot to complain about when it comes to their cable, broadband, and wireless services. But the issue that hits closest to home is their bills - they’re too high, too confusing, and larded with hidden fees. Cable industry billing practices are a big part of how the cable industry gets away with jacking up rates at more than twice the rate of inflation over the past twenty years. It’s 2016, and this has been a problem for far too long. You know it, I know it, and the American people definitely know it.

Sen Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) office recently put out a very strong report addressing cable billing abuses and uncovering a plethora of abusive practices. And when they catch errors, not all companies fix them automatically - even when they know the bills are wrong. It’s up to consumers to catch the providers’ “mistakes” and demand refunds.

Gawker Media, which filed for bankruptcy after losing a lawsuit brought by the former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, has settled the case, bringing to a close a multiyear saga that led to the demise of the company as an independent news organization. The settlement, which court documents indicate is for $31 million, comes less than eight months after a jury awarded Hogan, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea, $140 million in damages in an invasion of privacy case lawsuit over Gawker.com’s publication of a video that showed Bollea having sex with a friend’s wife. Gawker will forgo its appeal of that judgment.

The significant financial pressure from the judgment — and the revelation that Peter Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was financing the lawsuit and others against the company — forced Gawker to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sell itself through an auction, which Univision won in August with a bid of $135 million.