October 2017

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced that Jamie Susskind has joined his office as Chief of Staff and Legal Advisor for wireline issues. Susskind joins Commissioner Carr’s office from the United States Senate, where she served as Chief Counsel to Sen Deb Fischer (R-NE). In that role, Susskind managed the Senator’s priorities on the Senate Commerce Committee, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Prior to joining Senator Fischer’s office, Susskind was detailed from the FCC to serve as Counsel to the Senate Communications Subcommittee. Previously, Susskind worked in the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, where she held various roles, including Legal Advisor to the Bureau Chief and Acting Assistant Division Chief of the Pricing Policy Division. Earlier in her career, Susskind was a Judicial Law Clerk for the Honorable Mary J. Schoelen on the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. She graduated from the Antonin Scalia Law School and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. Commissioner Carr also announced that Nathan Eagan, who has been serving as Acting Legal Advisor for wireline issues while on detail from the Wireline Competition Bureau, will be rejoining the Bureau.

[Commentary] Italy’s antitrust chief Giovanni Pitruzzella feels so overwhelmed by the amount of information on the internet that he has called for government regulation to fight fake news. Pitruzzella builds his case by contrasting the First Amendment with the European Convention on Human Rights, which he argues provides no constitutional protection of “fake news.” This is due to an interpretation of the limits of protected speech that says that the distribution of “fake news,” in Pitruzzella’s words, violates Europeans’ “right to be pluralistically informed.” Yes, our digital era and the explosion of speech and communication on social media are unique.

But the introduction of the printing press in the 15th century and its impact on the world in the ensuing centuries may serve as an instructive analogy from which Pitruzzella may take a lesson or two. In the 16th and 17th century, access to the press triggered waves of fake news and dissemination of wild conspiracy theories about witches and millenarian crazes. Religious fanaticism was printed side-by-side with scientific discoveries. During the first century after Gutenberg, print did as much to spread lies and false information as enlightened truth.

[Flemming Rose is a WorldPost contributor and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Jacob Mchangama is director of the Copenhagen-based think tank Justitia.]

The American Cable Association wrote Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai Oct 3 to ask him to add retransmission blackouts to the list of off-limits bad-faith bargaining. The FCC has rules that require bargaining in good faith, but under Democratic chair Tom Wheeler, it chose not to add blackouts to that list when asked by the ACA and others to do so. It is unlikely that Chairman Pai will go where a Democratic predecessor did not, but ACA cited Lilly Broadcasting's brief blackout on Dish in a Hurricane Maria-affected market as the kind of "intolerable" situation that needed FCC remedy, as well as pointing to Pai's concerns about that blackout.

The European Union will order Amazon to pay several hundred million euros in back taxes on Oct 4. The EU’s enforcement arm, the European Commission, opened up an investigation three years ago into a partnership between Amazon and Luxembourg that allowed the e-commerce giant to shield some of its assets from taxation. The fine would be the latest action Europe has taken to try to rein in American tech giants. In a similar move in 2016, the EU ordered Apple to pay 13 billion euros in back taxes. The company allegedly benefited improperly from tax laws in Ireland.