
AT&T Cleared by Judge to Buy Time Warner - coloneltcb
https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/att-time-warner-merger-approved-1202840369/
======
trynumber9
The DOJ had tried to stop the deal[1] but it appears that the court ruled it
could carry on [2].

    
    
      Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in a statement the DOJ was "disappointed 
      with the Court's decision today. We continue to believe that the pay-TV market will be 
      less competitive and less innovative as a result of the proposed merger between AT&T and 
      Time Warner. We will closely review the Court's opinion and consider next steps in light 
      of our commitment to preserving competition for the benefit of American consumers."
    

[1]: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-
at-t/u-s-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t/u-s-
justice-dept-att-settlement-talks-failed-court-filing-idUSKBN1E92RS)

[2]: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-rules-on-att-time-
warner-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-rules-on-att-time-warner-
merger-live-stream/)

~~~
class4behavior
The irony is, their monopoly power and the conflicts of interest could be much
less worrisome if net neutrality were in place.

~~~
ars
Wrong Time Warner. This is the entertainment part, not the internet service.

~~~
dbatten
Parent is correct. The worry is AT&T giving preferential treatment to their
new Time Warner content on their own network...

------
dang
Merging the threads now. Submitted URLs so far, besides this one:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/business/dealbook/att-
tim...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/business/dealbook/att-time-warner-
ruling-antitrust-case.html)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/att-time-warner-
ruling.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/att-time-warner-ruling.html)

[https://www.dallasnews.com/business/att/2018/06/12/att-
wins-...](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/att/2018/06/12/att-wins-
antitrust-battle-time-warner)

[http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_time_warner.html](http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_time_warner.html)

If anyone knows a significantly better URL for this submission, let us know
and we can change it again.

~~~
class4behavior
[https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/att-time-warner-merger-
app...](https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/att-time-warner-merger-
approved-1202840369/)

More details, especially where it matters. and a more analytic language.

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll change to that from
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/at-t-
wins...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/at-t-wins-
antitrust-ruling-allowing-takeover-of-time-warner). Thanks!

------
jandrese
Yet more media consolidation. And this one has the inherent conflicts of
interest you get when a distributor buys out a producer.

And of course the idea of protecting the public interest isn't a thing anymore
in DC.

~~~
paulcole
> And this one has the inherent conflicts of interest you get when a
> distributor buys out a producer.

I'm not sure I understand the conflicts. Isn't Netflix essentially doing the
same thing? Consolidating production and distribution?

~~~
paidleaf
Netflix isn't your ISP. Netflix doesn't control the means of
delivery/distribution. They rely on Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, etc to deliver
their data.

Netflix can't just decide that they don't want to compete with Hulu and
therefore throttle or block Hulu from their customers.

We know that controlling the means of production and the means of distribution
is highly anti-competitive. All you have to do is look at rockefeller and
standard oil in the 1800s. Rockefeller bought or threatened his way into
controlling the railroads which allowed him to put most of his competitors out
of business or forced them to sell to Standard Oil. Controlling the means of
delivery allowed rockefeller to monopolize the oil industry in the US.

With the repeal of net neutrality, we are getting to the point where verizon,
comcast, at&t, etc can be their own little "internet". And this really hampers
future entrepreneurs. If you wanted to start a netflix, youtube or twitch
today, but you can't rely on verizon, comcast, at&t, etc to give you fair
access to their network, then why bother and who will invest in your company?

But this is the overall direction of the internet and social media the past
few years. Less freedom, less openness and a move towards more of a corporate
tv/news format.

~~~
jimmy1
> But this is the overall direction of the internet and social media the past
> few years. Less freedom, less openness and a move towards more of a
> corporate tv/news format.

So when are we nerds getting together to make a new internet?

~~~
jandrese
Internet2[1] has been around for years, but it's very restrictive and you
aren't invited.

[1] [https://www.internet2.edu/](https://www.internet2.edu/)

------
ajonnav
> The judge indicated during the trial that he wasn’t buying Shapiro’s
> projection. After his testimony, Leon said he was "confused." Further
> explanation from Shapiro didn’t help. "I’m not sure I got it, but it’s too
> late and too hot to belabor the point any further," the judge said.

Amazing on so many different levels.

(Shapiro is the economist whose model the DOJ based their case off of).

~~~
_rpd
Absolutely shameful. AI judges can't come soon enough.

~~~
SrslyJosh
Where do you think the training data for AI judges would come from?

~~~
vokep
evaluations of historical judgements made and what the consequences were.

How to define good/bad consequences becomes the problem then, but thats the
nature of it.

~~~
sigfubar
Such evaluations are useless as a training set because they inherit the biases
of whoever wrote the evaluations. Of course, if fairness isn’t a desired
property, feel free to carry on.

------
xeromal
FYI, this isn't the internet Time Warner. This is the entertainment Time
Warner. The internet Time Warner is run by Spectrum these days.

~~~
djsumdog
Does that really matter? Just because it isn't becoming an Internet monopoly,
it's still a content+distribution mega-corp that can squeeze its competitors
and limit options for consumers.

~~~
EpicEng
It matters when ~50% of the comments are talking about net neutrality and Time
Warner Cable hasn't existed for more than two years.

~~~
s2g
This is a major net neutrality issue.

AT&T can now say all of time warner's content is free for mobile devices.
Major blow to their competitors.

~~~
LateRuin
Sounds pro-consumer to me. Whats the big deal? It will just force the other
providers to up their game and offer their own freebies.

~~~
icebraining
Great if you like the provider's content. Quite bad if you like any content
not owned by one of the few Internet providers, who can't offer such freebies.

~~~
LateRuin
Everyone agrees we are moving towards a world of platforms. Each big platform
holder will buy or ally with an isp and smaller content owners will pay 30%
rev to use those platforms, just like today with google play store, app store,
steam (for games), etc. thats reality, why be a luddite about it?

------
traek
NB this is "Time Warner the media company", not Time Warner Cable (which is
now Spectrum.) This isn't broadband consolidation but rather
media/entertainment consolidation.

The deal is most closely comparable to Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal
in 2011.

~~~
walshemj
Which is what a lot of ex telecoms monopolies are doing as they cant really
grow organically anymore another example is BT sport funny how Murdoch's press
started bashing BT after they started competing with Sky

------
niftich
The acquisition target is 'Time Warner Inc.', primarily a television and film
company, whose products and subvisions include HBO and Cinemax, the TV
networks CNN, TBS, Turner Classic Movies, TNT, and various joint ventures with
US sports leagues, and Warner Bros, which now includes DC Comics/DC
Entertainment. Meanwhile, AT&T is largely a telecom and satellite broadcast
company, which under its various subsidiaries offers bulk telecom
interconnect, and satellite television, and is a wired and wireless ISP.

Therefore, this sounds more like vertical integration of an infrastructure-
and-ISP company buying a media company in much the same vein as Comcast
acquiring full ownership of NBCUniversal in 2013, or Verizon acquiring AOL --
which in 2001 bought Time Warner, then AOL got spun out in 2009 -- and Yahoo.

~~~
xigency
The part that bothers me about each of those acquisitions is that none of
those utility companies are well-liked by their customers (instead being the
most hated companies). The fact that they all have the ability to acquire
these other large entities which aren't reviled shows that they really are
scalping their customers. And it isn't just Comcast or AT&T or Verizon, it's
all of them. That is highly irregular for them to all be so despised and
successful.

~~~
grigjd3
What do you mean highly irregular? They all have regional monopolies. Of
course they have crap service and high prices.

------
rayiner
Cognitive dissonance is interesting. For example, tech folks generally love
Japan and Hong Kong's railroads. But those systems work so well because of the
exact sort of vertical integration techies get apoplectic about when it comes
to the Internet: [https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-
inf...](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-
infrastructure/our-insights/the-rail-plus-property-model). JR and MTR not only
are private companies that own and operate the railroads, they own a ton of
the land around the rail stations. They thus can capture value from both sides
of a two-sided market--the customers going to a business near a rail station,
and the business that benefits from having a rail station near it. That
greatly increases incentive to invest in rail compared to a system where value
can only be captured from the rider.

Interestingly, vertical integration also _increases_ competition, as is the
case in urban areas of Japan. If you can leverage your low-margin transit
product to sell your high-margin real estate product, you have vastly more
incentive to compete with other firms on the transit product.

Indeed, the vastly lower deployment costs enabled by 5G suggest an alternative
vision of the future. We may end up with a system where you subscribe to
"Google 5G" or "Facebook 5G" or even "Netflix 5G" service. It will be
abhorrent to those who visualize a platonic model of infrastructure separated
from content, but may in practice work a lot better than heavy government
involvement in the infrastructure layer.

~~~
njarboe
Lots of trolly transportation systems were built in the US with the same
model. Build a line out to the cheep farmland you own near a city/town, charge
low fairs (not nearly enough to cover your capital costs and running costs),
but now you can sell lots for housing at 10x or 20x the price you bought the
land for. Once all the lots are sold, having the trolly pay for itself is
difficult, especially after people can buy cars(hello model T) and not pay
your monopoly trolly ride price. Almost all those trolly lines were shut down.

~~~
dionidium
That's a pretty simplistic conclusion that ignores one of the biggest
technological and cultural life-altering inventions in human history: the
automobile.

~~~
njarboe
"Once all the lots are sold, having the trolly pay for itself is difficult,
especially after people can buy cars"?

------
erric
>Judge Leon limited how DOJ lawyers questioned certain witnesses and expressed
visible skepticism of testimony by the government’s chief economic witness,
who presented an empirical model that predicted the deal would lead to small
but significant price increases in monthly cable bills. AT&T countered with
its own academic economist who said it wouldn’t.

Yeah, I’m sure this won’t lead to _small_ price increases for consumers.

~~~
Sacho
This is a gross oversimplification of the issue. Here is the judge's opinion
which actually explains his rationale:
[http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/17-2511opinion.p...](http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/17-2511opinion.pdf)

His rationale on this particular is over 30 pages long. It starts at page
57-ish.

------
gzu
It’s crazy to me how one judge gets to decide the fate of a 100 billion dollar
merger. Humans are fallible.

~~~
aurailious
Well, the judge has to base the decision on a whole bunch of laws. It's not
like judges get to decide this on their own.

~~~
xenihn
>Well, the judge has to base the decision on a whole bunch of laws. It's not
like judges get to decide this on their own.

This is a weird opinion to hold when you take the fact that two judges can
come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing
from the same laws.

~~~
blind_boy_grunt
Judging is the act of applying law (general) to a particular case (specific).
Since laws can't anticipate every future situation at their time of writing,
no matter what there will _always_ be some disconnect between these two --
i.e. vagueness/generality in law, leading to edge cases.

Which is why two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a
single issue, while drawing from the same laws, based on their own personal
methods of interpretation and biases.

~~~
mortdeus
Judges in the lower circuits are also held accountable to higher circuit
judges if they don't interpret the law while taking past case judgement into
consideration.

A lower district judge can't overrule a higher judge's opinions.

------
fomopop
For those who cut the cord, some things that may come out of this:

1\. AT&T announced they were launching an entertainment only live streaming
service for $15 (or free to AT&T subscribers) which will compete with Philo.

2\. They will continue to give away free or cheap HBO to AT&T or DIRECTV NOW
customers

3\. Comcast will more aggressively bid for FOX which means either Disney or
Comcast will become the majority stakeholder for Hulu

[https://medium.com/fomopop/what-at-t-time-warner-deal-
means-...](https://medium.com/fomopop/what-at-t-time-warner-deal-means-for-
cord-cutting-d68bd3f8b81)

~~~
sjs382
HBO is currently $5/mo for DirecTV Now customers, which is well below the
regular price. Also FWIW, it was free for the first year to early subscribers
of DirecTV Now.

~~~
fomopop
It's also free for AT&T Unlimited subscribers.

------
walru
>to lead the next generation in innovation.

Meanwhile I have 300k internet in Pasadena, CA. That's the fastest they offer.
My roommate doesn't care and won't upgrade to Spectrum.

Why is it whenever I read the above it means the opposite?

~~~
JAFTEM
Also have bad internet in LA. I grew up in North Dakota though, and back there
my family is getting 1 gigabit internet for $100/mo from Midcontinent.

Absolutely bizarre and ridiculous that North Dakota, a state that has far less
developed infrastructure than either coast, has better internet than Los
Angeles.

~~~
rayiner
Is it? I’ve got two fiber lines into my house in a Maryland county where most
people are on septic and well. Unsurprisingly, Big California cities have Big
California impediments to broadband deployment.

~~~
kristopolous
The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their
infrastructure. Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate
parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything. There's court
cases about it, such as
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-h...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-
has-to-remind-isps-not-to-spend-taxpayer-subsidies-booze-trips-to-disney-
world.shtml)

The _companies_ take that money and do things like buy multi-billion dollar
companies with it instead.

The market in this sense is free from competition, free to block municipal
broadband (illegal in 20 states), free from the consequences of providing
terrible service, free from the risk of losing customers, and free from the
social obligations of providing a civic service.

It's classic profiteering, capital extraction, dodging responsibility, and
engineering the marketplace that leads to California's and the US's subpar
system.

And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just
refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence, because they have a
larger commitment to their ideas of how things are supposed to be then there
reality of how things actually are.

Until people break their mythical love affair with the idea that there is no
sustained abuse or corruption in a manufactured free market, we will forever
be shackled by reading to address its glaring and obvious issues.

~~~
rayiner
> The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their
> infrastructure.

This is easily disprovable. Broadband providers invest tens of billions a year
in infrastructure. The fastest cable or wireless connection available to you
is probably 10x faster than it was a decade ago. By comparison, your Intel
laptop is maybe 3-4 times faster, maybe less. That cost gobs of money--
building cell towers, pushing fiber deeper into the cable network, reducing
users per HFC node by a factor of 10, etc. This is all incredibly labor
intensive and expensive; it's not just a matter of downloading "DOCSIS 3.1"
onto some head ends and calling it a day.

> Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on
> luxury cruises while not building anything.

Note also that the "government subsidies" are anything but. The article you
link to is talking about Universal Service Fund money, which is actually taken
from ISPs and given to other ISPs. It doesn't come out of general tax dollars.

> leads to California's and the US's subpar system.

According to Akamai, U.S. broadband is among the fastest in the world, faster
than all the large EU countries:
[https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-
of-t...](https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-
internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf). We're in the
top 10, right after Denmark, and ahead of the U.K., France, Germany, Spain,
Italy, etc. (the countries comprising 70% of the EU population).

> And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or
> just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence

Exactly the opposite is true. The actual _evidence_ shows that the 1996
deregulation has been a monumental success in terms of amount of money
invested and actual broadband speeds achieved. Proponents of heavy regulation
have to deny the actual evidence (dollars spent, speeds achieved) because it
suggests a shocking result: even deregulation that resulted in much less
competition than anticipated is still better than the prior, heavily-regulated
system. (I'm writing this as my awesome government-funded train system is
stuck between Annapolis and D.C. for no apparent reason.)

What's holding us back from being even better (and which is why I have fiber
but much of Silicon Valley does not) is state & local broadband regulation.
Red tape that makes it hard to string up fiber (or forces you to bury it, at
much higher cost), hard to create an "minimal viable ISP," etc. When I lived
in Baltimore, for example, Verizon wanted to come in and compete with Comcast.
The city literally wouldn't let them do it, and pleaded with Google to come
build Fiber instead. Which Google wouldn't do, because, quite reasonably,
Google only builds Fiber in places where cities are willing to waive
requirements municipalities uniformly require for other providers:
[https://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-
seattle...](https://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle-
broadband-internet-2).

~~~
kristopolous
There's a lot here. Thanks for responding. I'll hopefully have the time to
read that document and get back to you later.

------
stevenwoo
I had forgotten of this until I read this article on the Atlantic, but there
is an organization dedicated to breaking up the new form of monopolies like
AT&T+Time Warner, Google, Amazon, Facebook, originally funded by Google, the
Open Markets Institute

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/lina-
kh...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/lina-khan-
antitrust/561743/)

------
c3534l
The courts seem to be letting telecoms consolidate to a degree that is
unprecedented (Bell, at least, had a fairly narrow scope), because they think
the internet means these companies have competition. I think they're severely
under-estimating the power these companies have and the risk that these
mergers create to both consumers and our democracy.

~~~
kuraudo
That or they don't care. I'd be very interested to know what kind of positions
the friends & families of these judges hold related to the mergers they
approve.

------
amelius
Can't we have a system where the bigger the merger, the more compelling the
arguments for it should be?

Like a $10M merger should have 1 strong argument in favor of the consumer, a
$100M merger should have 2 strong arguments, and a $100B merger should have 5
strong arguments in favor of the consumer (and I'm being forgiving by using a
logarithmic scale here).

~~~
ReverseCold
Hot take: An $X m merger should never go through.

(I haven't thought about the downsides, but I can't see anything obvious?)

~~~
chopin
It could be split up into several mergers below $X.

~~~
ReverseCold
I'd assume there would be a rule to prevent structuring

------
mikece
This is a distribution company -- internet, cable TV, satellite -- acquiring a
content company (the communications portion of Time Warner was spun off as
Spectrum). Isn't this just a vertical integration?

~~~
SippinLean
Time Warner's cable business was spun off as _Time Warner Cable_ , which
Charter Communications later acquired. Charter's cable/internet/tv brand is
Spectrum.

~~~
mikece
You are right -- I stand corrected.

------
jadedhacker
Media consolidation infographic from 2011. Back then, six companies controlled
90% of the market. I wonder where we're at now?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-
control-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-
control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6)

~~~
mxschumacher
through the rise of original content production from Amazon and Netflix and
the overall shift to internet delivery (including Youtube and Podcasts) I'd
argue we're in a less concentrated situation today.

~~~
jadedhacker
Yes and no. I agree 100% for podcasts. However, while Youtube and Netflix are
encouraging more producers they retain veto power on their platforms. This is
key.

In the case of Netflix, it's obvious they only host what they want on their
platform. In the case of Youtube, they are increasingly banning videos.

This isn't my particular hobbyhorse issue, but it was the first result for
"youtube ban political videos" and it has a huge constituency.

"Youtube to Ban Videos Promoting Gun Sales"

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/business/youtube-gun-
ban....](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/business/youtube-gun-ban.html)

VICE Motherboard chronicles Youtube's history of escalating censorship.

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59jgka/a-brief-
hi...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59jgka/a-brief-history-of-
youtube-censorship)

On a decentralized platform (i.e. the real web) this would be impossible or
nearly so.

You might disagree with or laugh at the people losing money or literally being
censored on one of the biggest public squares in the world, but it's not
democratic and media consolidation will never ever result in something
compatible with the free and open exchange of ideas.

------
vpribish
Got some sharp legal minds at work in this discussion. Really digging into the
relevant parts of vertical vs horizontal anti-trust enforcement in a free
market for media and a regulated one for content delivery. I especially love
the nuanced extrapolation into healthcare and social media. Super work, just
super.

------
etaioinshrdlu
Why does the date on the article say 2016?

~~~
Xixi
The article is probably the original announcement. The merger was approved
today [1].

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-is-set-to-decide-
whether-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-is-set-to-decide-whether-at-t-
and-time-warner-can-merge-1528832942)

------
rjurney
Great. More and bigger monopolies forming in networks/media.

------
sureaboutthis
Anything related to ATT is doomed. I've dealt with that company both
professionally and personally and it's a mess. How it's managed to get this
big and survive is beyond me. Their services are horrible, expensive, and you
spend more time fixing their billing errors and getting a rep on the phone
than you do anything else.

It's a sad day for the modern age.

------
roflc0ptic
In the context of net neutrality ending, this looks like AT&T acquiring the
means to exploit discriminatory traffic routing. It seems like there will be a
gold rush of sorts, towards building walled gardens, segmenting the Internet
into fiefs.

Does ending NN allow an ISP to completely block a website? I.e. to what extent
does this also open up the door to overt political censorship?

~~~
jhall1468
Time Warner the ISP was bought years ago. This is Time Warner the
entertainment company.

~~~
tacomonstrous
AT&T is an ISP. They also own DirecTV, and now CNN and associated media
entities.

~~~
jhall1468
I'm well aware. My point was that people were talking about the issue like it
was Time Warner the ISP. It isn't.

------
zanny
Perfect time to rename the company to "usher in a new era of innovation". How
about calling the new AT&T Bell? Because this merged company will be way worse
an anticompetitive monopoly than the exploitative operator of the US switched
phone network ever could have been.

------
ksk
It seems like every commercial actor wants to _be_ the platform (add "value"
as an integrator/provider), and avoid being abstracted out under the platform.

"Internet is just a dumb pipe" "Why dont all PCs ship with just a vanilla
Windows install" OR "Why don't all smartphones just install vanilla Android"
"The programmer is irrelevant" "The OS is irrelevant" "The browser used is
irrelevant" "Cable providers are irrelevant"

etc.. etc

~~~
i_am_nomad
In many cases that’s known as “commoditizing your complement.”

[https://www.gwern.net/Complement](https://www.gwern.net/Complement)

------
Waterluvian
Neither of these companies really affects me as a non-American. But it feels
like it just paves the way for mergers of companies that do.

I started thinking of international examples, which got me thinking about
Google and Apple. Who in a way feel like they're post-colossal-merger
companies already. And I mean... It kind of sucks but it's not nearly as awful
as I feared it might look like.

------
circa
The only good that can come of this all is that the Time Warner name will
finally go away. (yes i know this is the media company vs. the cable company
but this is the end of it!) the rest of the deal, is not so great.

edit: not vs.* but 2 different entities with similar names.

------
Bucephalus355
I want to give an unconventional view that supports this decision.

The two companies merging are walking into a trap.

Their size makes them an attractive target for nationalization. ATT started
off as a private company. It’s size however lead to it being effectively taken
over by the government. The resulting monopoly came to employ 1 million people
at its height. Adjusted for population growth, that’s be like the entirety of
all the military branches today.

Before anyone mentions anything about automation though, let me say, there are
plenty of jobs. If any of you have had the pleasure of a company giving you a
secretary, you know that many jobs that have supposedly been automated, we are
just doing without.

Also as cyber security becomes more of a concern, none of these jobs can be
outsourced. Can you imagine whatever company builds our 5G network having
their NOC in say Costa Rica (assuming world relations continue to
deteriorate), or customer support outsourcing to the Philippines?

I know my views are wrong in some areas, but I hope they open a few new ways
of viewing things.

~~~
s2g
> Their size makes them an attractive target for nationalization

Sure, except this is America.

------
kregasaurusrex
Link to the court's ruling:
[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4502506/U-S-v-
AT-...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4502506/U-S-v-AT-amp-T-
Decision.pdf)

------
dv_dt
So is anyone actually trying to write legislation to bar ISPs from co-owning
content creation companies? Is there a basis for this? Or is there some other
type of anti-media/connectivity consolidation on the horizon even as a thought
experiment?

------
a-dub
"we want the cca deal stopped now! we want the cca deal stopped now!"

meanwhile, didn't trump make a campaign promise to prevent this exact merger?
interesting timing.

~~~
Sacho
The plaintiff trying to block the merger is Trump's administration's DOJ.

------
jshap70
consumer protection: what is it

~~~
komali2
[https://i.imgflip.com/2c40f3.jpg](https://i.imgflip.com/2c40f3.jpg)

(I know, I'm sorry)

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fermienrico
Then don't post it. Sigh.

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DeepYogurt
Looking like AT&T needs to be broken up again.

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nullbull
Anti-trust is truly dead. We're re-doing the gilded age everyone, strap in.
This'll be great this time, we promise.

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seymour333
"AT&T Cleared by Judge to Buy Time Warner, Judge Buys Boat"

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oli5679
Does anyone have a link the the analysis done by Carl Shapiro?

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sriku
Hot on the heels of FCC repealing net neutrality?

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dschuler
It's interesting that the Trump administration was eager to block this deal
(Trump has made statements in favor of preventing this merger), while
enthusiastically repealing net neutrality. Maybe expecting consistency here is
reading too much into the tea leaves.

At the same time, AT&T stock is down in after hours trading. Does this mean
that investors believe this merger will be bad for AT&T, or at least for
short-term profits?

Maybe tomorrow's reaction will be different as the entire market will weigh in
on the decision.

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makomk
The fundamental philosophy at play here, I think - so far as there is one - is
that government regulation cannot and should not be used to try and regulate
away the negative effects of lack of competition, that instead it should
ensure that a competitive marketplace exists and let the market take care of
it.

If I recall correctly, there's an explanation of this position from Ajit Pai's
FCC, which in particular references the NBC Universal-Comcast merger and
explains why the FCC no longer wishes to allow such mergers.

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dschuler
That makes sense. Thanks for the insight.

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trumped
Since the government already logs the content of all internet pipes, I think
that they should nationalize all ISPs... it would be much cheaper.

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bradleyankrom
this is from 2016, when the terms of the merger were agreed upon but still
required government approval.

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casefields
“AT&T’s Time Warner Takeover Wins Judge’s Approval in Defeat for Justice
Dept.”

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/business/dealbook/att-
tim...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/business/dealbook/att-time-warner-
ruling-antitrust-case.html)

What does that sound like to you bud?

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jaequery
i wonder what this means for our privacy. could this somehow be a step toward
national surveillance?

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JustSomeNobody
Good grief. Why can't we stop all this consolidation already?

This is only good for shareholders. The cons clearly outweigh the pros for
consumers.

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shmerl
So, will anti-trust please bust this monster? And split Comcast along the way
too (media from ISP), for good measure.

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djsumdog
No, this is the result of that failure. ATT/TW wanted to do this in 2016 as
the other comments state. This was the approval.

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shmerl
Anti-trust is so royally messed up in US. It hurts the economy.

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fallingfrog
Nationalize'em.

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transfire
Hello, Ma Bell.

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rosser
I'm so glad the end of Net Neutrality has ushered in an era of unprecedented
competition in the broadband market.

EDIT: Yes, this acquisition is of the content division of Time Warner, not the
ISP, which was previously acquired — _by another broadband provider_ , mooting
my general point how, again?

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opencl
This has nothing to do with the broadband market. Time Warner Cable was spun
off from Time Warner in 2009 and subsequently bought up by Spectrum in 2016.

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rosser
It has plenty to do with the broadband market, if you happen to be an AT&T
subscriber, and especially if they're your only choice. This, coupled with
their no longer being restrained from the kinds of shenanigans that NN barred,
positions them to force preferential choices on their subscribers and wring
more money out of them for the privilege of accessing competing services.

This is only good for people holding T and TWX, and probably not even _most of
them_.

~~~
opencl
I would certainly agree with that but your original comment was specifically
about _competition in the broadband market_ , which this deal has absolutely
zero effect on and your post seemed to be based on the common misunderstanding
of TWC still being part of TW.

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rosser
Sloppy and emotionally-driven phrasing on my part, sorry. I hope my edit and
follow-up to yours have clarified my position.

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toufique
Dislike

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mortdeus
Maybe this will cause Trump to retaliate by bringing back net neutrality?

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static_noise
Mergers like this are required to keep competition and the free market alive.

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dang
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

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imbokodo
Lenin wrote about the inevitability of monopoly in 1916. He would not have
been surprised that the 1911 break up of Standard Oil would be undone in 1999
with the ExxonMobil, nor the slow reconsolidation of the Baby Bells, nor the
other monopolies bringing us back to the gilded age.

[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-
hsc/ch0...](http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm)

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delbel
Funny, at the same time he took money from the Warburg family to fund his
revolution that killed millions, the Warburg family went on to be part
ownership of Standard Oil during the same period.

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staunch
Technology will help the citizenry destroy these evil megacorps. It's just a
matter of time and some improvements in technology. The world where
ABC/CBS/NBC/NYTimes/Time/etc could control what people think is over. In the
near future we will have a much more educated populace. They will flex their
power in ways that seem unimaginable now. When the information revolution
finally arrives, these megacorps will be the first against the wall

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allthenews
You put too much faith into the average person's desire for education.

Most people don't know and/or don't care.

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awat
This is sadly my experience too. Both my parents are educators and life long
learners.

It still floors me how many conversations they had with my younger siblings
friends parents (I was present) were it more or less went. Friend parent makes
baseless or incorrect assertion my history buff father retorted and they just
said well I don’t care anyways.

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efficax
This is nuts. This means there is now only one last-mile broadband provider in
plenty of big markets. Milwaukee, for example, now no longer has any
competition in the broadband space.

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amyjess
Despite the name, Time Warner doesn't own Time Warner Cable. They split years
ago.

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chimeracoder
Here's a neutral article (as opposed to a press release) with some more of the
history and significance:
[https://www.dallasnews.com/business/att/2018/06/12/att-
wins-...](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/att/2018/06/12/att-wins-
antitrust-battle-time-warner)

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davyson
That link is not available from Europe #GDPR.

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amyjess
I made an archive link for you:
[https://archive.fo/qVRU1](https://archive.fo/qVRU1)

