Bloomberg

Watch for network neutrality arguments in future antitrust analysis of mergers, competition lawyers said. The Justice Department’s high-profile attempt to block AT&T from buying Time Warner didn’t address the possibility that the AT&T customers could see slowed internet traffic for some content. But that kind of argument could come up one day. The DOJ has looked at past merger cases on the grounds of its impact on open internet access said Ketan Jhaveri, a former trial lawyer at the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.

The House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection, in the first oversight hearing for the new slate of Federal Trade Commission members, probed the commissioners on issues like data security, the Internet of Things, privacy, deceptive advertising, and more.

Lina Khan, a prominent critic of Amazon’s business practices, is joining the office of Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra as the agency prepares to increase antitrust scrutiny of technology firms. Khan, the director of legal policy at Washington think tank Open Markets Institute, will work as a legal fellow for the next few months for Chopra, one of two Democratic commissioners at the agency, he said. "Lina is sharp as a tack and works her fingers to the bone," Chopra said.

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s bid to purchase Tribune Media hinges on spinning off TV stations to comply with US limits on broadcast ownership. Yet its proposals to sell stations from Pennsylvania to California are drawing fresh scrutiny as critics, including business rivals, say some of the transactions are designed to evade the ownership rules. In one case, two Texas stations are to be sold to a partner company that until recently was controlled by the estate of the mother of Sinclair’s controlling shareholders.