Today, the Federal Communications Commission released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Declaratory Ruling to reduce barriers to competitive broadband choices for consumers living in multi-tenant buildings, like apartments. Public Knowledge has long supported efforts to remove barriers to deployment and facilitate greater choice for residents of these buildings.

The following can be attributed to John Bergmayer, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

“While the Commission has historically recognized the importance of access to competitive broadband providers for all Americans, its policies over the years have typically fallen short of ensuring full competitive access to multi-tenant buildings. By permitting exclusive marketing and wiring arrangements and only prohibiting certain kinds of contractual arrangements, the Commission has undermined competition while purporting to promote it.

“Better policies would prioritize the needs of tenants over the financial interests of landlords and incumbent service providers. But rather than revisiting its approach, the Commission here proposes to double down, making it clear that for many tenants, access to competitive providers will remain a purely theoretical right, while asserting that its policies preempt state or local laws that seek to give a tenant's right to competitive providers more substance. In particular, the Commission has declared that a San Francisco ordinance giving competitive providers access to existing wiring is preempted. 

“Cities like San Francisco are working to close the digital divide and ensure affordable and reliable internet access to all of their residents, especially low-income and minority populations who are already struggling to find affordable housing and necessities. Giving tenants meaningful broadband choice where it is available and the opportunity to pay lower costs is a key part of this effort, and the FCC should be working with cities to achieve the public interest, rather than against them. Unfortunately, this latest Commission action is consistent with its recent efforts to preempt states from enacting meaningful net neutrality rules, and to limit state and local authority over small cell permitting.”

Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking public comment on the creation of a “Connected Care Pilot” program that would provide Universal Service Fund support to help health care providers defray the cost of broadband service, allowing low-income and veteran patients to access telehealth services. Public Knowledge applauds the FCC for taking this step to learn more about how to make health care more accessible and affordable for vulnerable communities and areas with shortages of health care providers.

The following can be attributed to Phillip Berenbroick, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

“Telemedicine plays an increasingly important role in how health care is provided in the United States. The FCC is correct to acknowledge that even though telemedicine can help make health care more accessible, the lack of affordable, robust, or reliable broadband access often means patients cannot take advantage of the benefits of telehealth services. Importantly, this NPRM makes clear that the sky-high price of broadband not only impacts consumers’ wallets and takes a toll on their access to vital health information, but also imposes costs on their health. As the FCC found in its most recent International Broadband Data Report, U.S. consumers pay among the highest prices in the developed world for fixed and mobile broadband. 

“In addition to the NPRM’s worthy goal of defraying the cost of broadband to make telemedicine more accessible for patients, the FCC should address the extremely high cost of broadband in the U.S. Consumers often cite affordability as a leading reason why they don’t subscribe to broadband. In addition to reducing patient access to telemedicine, the high cost of connectivity also poses a barrier to economic participation, access to education, and civic engagement. The FCC should work to close the digital divide by making broadband more affordable for all.

“We commend the FCC for focusing on improving access to affordable health care, and look forward to working with the Commission and other stakeholders in this proceeding to help make broadband and telemedicine applications more affordable and accessible for low-income families and veterans, as well as those in areas with few health care providers.”

Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve a Report and Order to eliminate one of the last non-commercial, educational wireless set-asides, the Educational Broadband Service (EBS). The Order eliminates the educational set-aside and creates procedures designed to encourage existing educational licensees to sell their licenses to commercial providers. The Commission will also auction unassigned educational spectrum to commercial carriers in the future.

Tribal governments and hundreds of other rural organizations, educational institutions, community non-profits, public broadcasters, and public interest organizations asked the FCC to preserve the educational requirement and open one last “window” for local non-commercial and educational entities to apply for licenses to provide broadband using new 5G technologies. The U.S. Department of Education also filed to oppose the FCC’s Order, arguing that numerous local K-12 schools, colleges and other educational licensees were providing much needed broadband service in areas that would otherwise be unserved. Although the FCC agreed to open a window for Tribal entities, it rejected opening a new window for education and community-based institutions wanting to provide broadband in their communities.

The following can be attributed to Harold Feld, Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge:

“Once again, the Ajit Pai FCC takes spectrum out of the hands of rural communities to satisfy the demands of big wireless carriers that have no interest in serving rural America. Once again, this FCC’s disdain for would-be providers unable to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for wireless licenses widens the digital divide. Once again, Commissioners grandstanding for the press on the ‘race for 5G’ means leaving tens of millions of rural Americans further behind. While Public Knowledge applauds the FCC for opening an application window for Tribal nations, the FCC should have extended a similar opportunity to other unserved and underserved communities.”

Today, Public Knowledge joined 21 other rural, education, and public interest groups in a letter urging Congress to ensure that the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to reallocate spectrum in the 3700 to 4200 Mhz band (the “C-Band”) benefits rural and low-income Americans struggling to access broadband. 

In the letter, the groups argue that permitting foreign satellite operators to privately sell the public’s airwaves will achieve little more than windfall profits for satellite operators. However, a public auction of the C-Band presents Congress with a unique opportunity to fund broadband infrastructure and help close the digital divide by directing “$10 billion or more in auction revenue to pay for broadband infrastructure in underserved areas and to authorize the use of spectrum in that band for high-capacity fixed wireless service in rural and less densely populated areas on a shared basis.”

Public Knowledge filed comments with the FCC alongside the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition and the Broadband Access Coalition supporting a public auction of C-Band spectrum to fund rural broadband deployment, as well as spectrum sharing in the unsold portion of the band to support broadband access and maximize efficient spectrum usage.

The following can be attributed to Phillip Berenbroick, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

“It is time for Congress to take action to ensure the FCC’s proposed reorganization of the C-Band serves the public interest and complies with the Communications Act. The FCC’s proposal for the C-Band should be premised on a public auction of spectrum to support robust next-generation 5G mobile broadband networks, fund deployment of rural broadband infrastructure, and ensure shared use of unsold spectrum to enable high-speed fixed wireless broadband service in unserved areas. 

“A private sale of the C-Band would merely serve to enrich a handful of foreign satellite companies that have already conceded they hold spectrum far in excess of what they need to serve their customers. Allowing this spectrum to remain underutilized or permitting a private sale will not serve the public interest or help achieve pressing national goals, such as closing the digital divide.

“A public auction of the C-Band will ensure the proceeds can be allocated by Congress to bring high-speed broadband to rural areas and other unserved and underserved communities. Further, authorizing shared use of un-auctioned spectrum will ensure scarce spectrum resources are used efficiently, and bring affordable broadband to areas where broadband is unavailable or unaffordable.” 

You may view the letter here.

Today, ACA Connects – America’s Communications Association (“ACA Connects”), Competitive Carriers Association (“CCA”), and Charter Communications presented a proposal to the Federal Communications Commission that would free up C-Band spectrum for mobile broadband use. Public Knowledge supports the proposal’s requirement that the C-Band be reallocated for mobile use via a transparent, public FCC auction.

The following can be attributed to Phillip Berenbroick, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

“Today’s proposal by ACA Connects, CCA, and Charter is an important contribution to the discussion regarding how best to open up underutilized C-Band spectrum for mobile use, including next-generation 5G mobile broadband networks. Importantly, the proposal would provide for a public FCC auction of the cleared C-Band frequencies. 

“A public auction will ensure the process is transparent, and that the Commission can provide appropriate oversight to make certain the auction plan promotes competition and widespread deployment of mobile broadband networks -- including unserved and underserved rural and low-income communities. A public auction, unlike proposals by the C-Band Alliance to privately sell public airwaves, is consistent with prior FCC precedents and the Communications Act, and will ensure reallocation of the C-Band is not needlessly delayed by litigation.”

There’s nothing wrong with saying that you “own” data. Public Knowledge has supported data ownership as a colloquialism that reflects an intuition: Data about us provides information regarding the intimacies of our very identity and existence. Speaking in this way, we should certainly “own” or have control over that data to protect our fundamental right to privacy.

But it’s a different matter to say that the law should treat data as a property, as a thing to be owned, in the same sense as a car, a bag of chips, or copyright. Such a data ownership regime is not practicable, and would not protect individual privacy as effectively as any number of other approaches.

The idea of data ownership is not new, but it has recently seen some airtime in the debate around federal privacy legislation. On Capitol Hill, senators have expressed interest in data ownership as a way to give individuals control over their personal data and for them to be compensated for commercial uses of that data. This conception of data ownership is not a figure of speech where “ownership” is used to express the principle of user control. Rather, the issue here is an individual’s right to literally own personal data in the same way that an individual can own other forms of personal property. While ownership is an increasingly foreign concept in the world of consumer goods where you are much more likely to license the thing you “buy” from a vendor, many commercial data practices already exchange data as if it were some kind of personal property.

Treating data as "property" in the legal sense raises some puzzling questions. For example, you might not want Facebook to use certain data it knows about you in various ways, and a property right in that data might be a way to accomplish this. But what if your spouse knows the same things about you? And what if he or she tells your mother-in-law? Is that trespassing? And can you use the traditional tools of property rights enforcement to put a stop to it? Does it infringe on your property rights for third parties to learn something about you by happenstance, or as a result of your interactions with them, or is it just the use of data about you that you are concerned with?

It is the nature of property rights that they apply against everyone. If there is some right you want that applies to entities like Facebook or AT&T, but not to your cousin or anyone else, it's not "property" as traditionally understood. Property is widely understood to be an exclusive right given to individuals against everyone, not one that conditionally applies sometimes against some other parties but not other times and not against everyone. (That's not to say that a property owner can't choose who to give permission to, and under what circumstances.) The actual goals of most privacy advocates and ordinary people who want greater privacy protections have little to do with the legal rights and tools that “property” systems provide.

The purpose of this blog post is to illustrate in more depth a few reasons why it is problematic to use data ownership as the foundation of a comprehensive federal privacy legislation. To the extent that data ownership even addresses the privacy problem -- a tenuous connection -- data ownership should not be grounded in copyright law, and new (sui generis) data ownership rights are likely to create a practical and legal mess that will not meaningfully protect consumer privacy. Privacy is a basic consumer protection issue best resolved through comprehensive federal privacy legislation. To achieve the worthy goal of data sharing to promote competition or scientific research, lawmakers should instead look at imposing data portability and interoperability mandates on certain online platforms to give users true choice and control over what to do with their data.

What Is Personal Data Anyway?^[1]

Before we dive in, it might be useful to think about what types of data exist. Or, to put it another way, if we had the right(s) to own our own data, what would we own? In his book, “The Data Revolution,” Rob Kitchin notes that data can be broadly categorized as representative data (like a person’s name and age), implied data (data that exists in the absence of other data), and derived data (such as data that is created through artificial intelligence or other algorithm-driven processing). These are important distinctions because personal privacy in the online world is threatened by a host of data processing activities that are driven by automated decision making, most of which takes place “behind the scenes” of the user experience.

While personal data will typically fall into the category of representative, implied and derived data provides economically valuable information about a person, often at the expense of individual privacy, and it certainly should fall within the scope of personal data. It’s important to note that any data that is related to individuals and groups will reflect our inherently flawed human behavior, including biases and conflicting norms. We’re seeing this play out with artificial intelligence (AI), where predictive analytics has generated outcomes that are biased against marginalized and minority communities.

Further, personal data has some important characteristics that impact potential ownership frameworks. First, unlike physical goods, data is non-rivalrous, meaning that more than one entity can possess the same data at the same time. Second, it is generally non-excludable, meaning that it is easily shared, so restrictions and limitations on sharing must be imposed to avoid widespread dissemination of data. This is particularly relevant with digital data on the internet. Third, data can be reproduced with often negligible or zero marginal cost, meaning it’s usually very cheap to create copies of data.

What Does This Have to Do With Privacy?

Proponents of data ownership argue that property rights in personal information allow consumers to retain control over how information about them is used because negotiating such rights through private contracts could (in theory) allow an individual to limit corporate (and government) uses of personal data. They also argue that contracting could facilitate compensation arrangements under which consumers may sell or lease their data for commercial uses, instead of the current system where you receive ad-supported services in exchange for use of your data.

This overlooks the fact that the asymmetric information and power imbalances that plague the current data ecosystem would persist under a data ownership regime. Individuals would not have the information to understand what they are selling, or the bargaining power to get a fair price. Aside from the means of compensation, it’s hard to see how this is any different from the current failed “notice and choice” privacy regime. Consumers are already faced with the impossible task of reading and understanding countless privacy policies (read: contracts) that outline the scope of how their information is used by the companies that profit off of data, many of which we don’t have any direct contact with. Note that individuals have zero leverage to negotiate these privacy policies and terms of use. Would this change under a data ownership regime? More on this later…but the short answer is, almost certainly, no.

If the goal of data ownership is simply to get paid in money for your data rather than with a service, this looks a lot more like some kind of federal statutory personality or publicity right -- a mechanism whereby you may monetize your identity -- than a privacy right. Discussing the merits of creating a federal right of publicity, for example through the Lanham Act, which governs trademark protection, is outside the scope of this post. In general, however, Congress should not be creating incentives for individuals to accept payment in exchange for signing over their personal data, which could include incredibly privacy-invasive information (such as biometric, health, and precise geolocation data) as well as seemingly non-sensitive information that could be used by trained algorithms to infer intimate information. Such arrangements could lead to disparate impacts affecting members of low-income and other marginalized communities who might not be so privileged to sell or lease their data sparingly. We can be confident that pay-for-surveillance will be popular among data-hungry businesses. Companies have been more than happy to pay users, including teens, to collect data on them, and they have the leverage to change the terms of the contracts at their whim, almost always to the detriment of users.

Keep Copyright Law out of This

Copyright law often gets implicated in discussions surrounding data ownership, typically because creative works share the non-rivalrous and non-excludable characteristics of data. But even if personal data was covered under copyright (which it is not), the policy goals of copyright differ from those of privacy in important ways, making copyright the wrong approach to a privacy law based on data ownership.

To be clear, you likely do not, and definitely should not, have ownership in your personal data under copyright law. Under the Copyright Act, copyright protection exists, “in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression,” but, “in no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery.” Common sense tells us that facts about a person in the form of data points are not original works of authorship, and indeed it’s well-settled as a matter of law that facts are in the public domain.

Note also that copyright protection doesn’t extend to procedures, processes, or systems. But what about the implied or derived data that is created by those systems? Even assuming that the algorithm or AI can be an author, a dubious proposition to say the least, is the data or data set that is created sufficiently original to receive copyright protection? Courts that have grappled with these or similar questions have held that data created by committee or machine is not eligible for copyright protection. This is how it should be. In no way should the law be changed to take facts out of the public domain, even if those facts are generated by AI. A robust public domain is critical to provide raw materials for the creation of new knowledge and to fulfill the constitutional purpose of copyright, “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.”

Despite the shared characteristics of data and creative works as outlined above, the policy goal of copyright is to incentivize artists and creators to create new works and to give them control over the commercialization of their work. Contrast this goal with that of privacy, which is to protect individual privacy rights from the panoply of harms that arise through unauthorized uses of personal information. The goal is not to incentivize the creation of more data, it is to protect an individual’s privacy interests in their personal data that already exists or could be created through implication or inference later. This fundamental distinction makes copyright the wrong regime for privacy protection.

A New Personal Data Property Right Would Do Little (If Anything) to Change the Status Quo

A personal data economy already operates in which data is treated in a manner similar to personal property like tradable financial assets. In an article published last year in the Boston College Law Review, Professor Stacy-Ann Elvy illustrated how both privacy policies and financial frameworks like Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the Bankruptcy Code commodify consumer data with detrimental effects. For example, an Internet of Things (IoT) device company that collects a vast trove of biometric and precise location data from its customers can use such a database as collateral to finance its operations, and in the event of a default, a lender can generally do what it wants with that database to satisfy the debtor’s obligations. Such aggregate data is valuable on the secondary market and could readily find its way into the hands of bad actors like predatory lenders or stalkers. It might also be used to train AI to identify new members of a group based on seemingly unrelated information. Even if the data is de-identified, such data (including metadata) may be re-identified.

This personal data economy could be organized around data ownership. While property rights in personal data don’t exist under U.S. law, lawmakers have the power to create them from whole cloth. In fact, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act provide a right to data portability, which operates as a quasi-ownership right. Despite this, a number reasons cut against adopting data ownership to protect user privacy.

First, data ownership presents thorny questions of law, not the least of which is determining questions of ownership -- particularly when multiple potential authors are implicated. Take, for example, biometric data related to a person who has had reconstructive surgery on his face. If a company seeks to purchase this data for AI training on facial recognition, who owns the data? Is the doctor a co-owner? When Cambridge Analytica created psychographic profiles of users, would they have partial ownership over those profiles? How does the ownership get divvied up? Questions of ownership are complex and highly contentious in all areas of the law, but if you need a related example, look no further than copyright law where the issue has been highly litigated. Any such issues in a data ownership regime would be significantly amplified in our connected world of IoT where over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated each day.

Second, the information and transaction costs involved in administering the data ownership economy would be staggering. Imagine having to negotiate individual agreements for every exchange of data that affects you online. Do I have to obtain a license from an athlete to use his homerun and batting average statistics in my fantasy baseball league? How could I be expected to oversee every microtransaction that involves my data? And how could I ensure that further transactions weren’t taking place among third, fourth, and nth parties? This is where the non-rivalrous and non-excludable characteristics of data really rears its ugly head. It’s an unworkable situation that borders on the comical when we fold in the reality of multiple data owners described above.

More importantly, these negotiations would often entail the same significant information asymmetries and power imbalances that leave consumers with no choice but to “consent” to the sharing of their data in our current online ecosystem. The data ownership contracts would probably look a lot like this license “agreement” that Amazon’s Ring doorbell users enter into, signing away the copyright they have in their images:

You hereby grant Ring and its licensees an unlimited, irrevocable, fully paid and royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide right to re-use, distribute, store, delete, translate, copy, modify, display, sell, create derivative works from and otherwise exploit such Shared Content for any purpose and in any media formats in any media channels without compensation to you. You shall not use [...]

Further, the actual value of data is an open question, and determining such value (or getting such value wrong) for purposes of negotiation imposes costs on the contracting parties. Care must be taken when addressing questions of data valuation because it risks transforming privacy, a human rights issue, into an economic exercise. Senators Mark Warner and Josh Hawley have recently introduced the DASHBOARD Act, which requires commercial data operators to file an annual report on the aggregate value of user data that they have collected. Such transparency reporting requirements can be helpful for consumers and regulators to better understand the value proposition that data operators offer to their users, but it should not be used to justify a data ownership regime, or its mirror image: A pay-for-privacy regime.

Data is important and can be used in myriad ways that benefit society and the public interest. To achieve the worthy goal of data sharing to promote competition or scientific research, data portability and interoperability mandates on certain online platforms is the best policy solution. Such mandates must, however, be integrated into a robust, consumer protection privacy regime starting with comprehensive federal privacy legislation.

This week, Congressman Pascrell (D-NJ), Congressman Pallone (D-NJ), and Senator Blumenthal reintroduced the BOSS Act in a renewed attempt to bring transparency and fair practices to the online market for event tickets. Public Knowledge applauds the Act, which looks to end the worst abuses of the consolidated ticket sale/resale market while maintaining an individual ticket holder’s right to do what they want with the ticket they purchased. 

The shenanigans afflicting ticket sales came to Congressman Pascrell’s attention in 2009, when thousands of Bruce Springsteen fans experienced an error message on Ticketmaster’s official site and were then directed to TicketsNow to buy the tickets at a huge mark-up. This led to a rebuke of Ticketmaster by “The Boss” Springsteen himself and a public outrage that reached all the way to the halls of Congress. 

This newest version of the BOSS Act has three main approaches. First, the Act would end hidden fees by requiring both primary and secondary sellers to disclose the full price at the time of selection. Second, it would equalize resale markets by prohibiting venues, primary sellers like Ticketmaster, and their affiliates from knowingly reselling tickets at a higher price. Third, it would set up protections from fraudulent practices that lead to the same seat being sold twice and eTickets being sold but never delivered. These protections are helpful for long-abused buyers of eTickets. 

Some have proposed banning reselling entirely to try to fix ticket markets. This would address not only schemes by the venues and large promoters like Ticketmaster but also the scalping bots that have infected the market. Some artists oppose resale because they want to be able to sell tickets below market value to ensure access for diehard fans. State governments have taken varied statutory approaches. States like Colorado and Missouri statutorily protect the right to resell tickets in an effort to protect consumers, while other states target professional scalpers by severely restricting resale.

Bans on reselling and ticket transfers are the wrong approach. Public Knowledge is a staunch defender of customers owning what they buy, and this includes the ability to sell, or give away, event tickets. Limiting resales would prevent consumers from unloading tickets to events they can no longer attend and even make gift-giving more difficult.

The idea that consumers should own the things they buy, with all that entails, seems noncontroversial. But many things that people pay for today are characterized as “licenses,” which can be limited in various ways, and digital technology has made it easier than ever for companies to impose fine print and one-sided agreements on consumers. But whether thought of as conditions on a license or terms of a contract, these terms (and related methods such as digital locks, or tying a product to a specific online service) can significantly restrict consumer rights. Not only can they prevent resales, they can limit repairs, require that consumers buy overpriced add-ons and supplies, transform simple contract violations into copyright violations, or even take away things consumers thought they had.

This is why Public Knowledge has called for principles such as Digital First Sale, and the right for consumers to be able to unlock and transfer devices, such as cell phones. The same principles should apply to ticket sales, and it’s not necessary to restrict ordinary consumers to put a stop to ticket-buying bots and commercial scalpers.

Restricting consumer resale also exacerbates one of the worst problems in the ticketing market: A lack of competition. In recent years, concert-goers have experienced an increase in hidden fees and the underhanded sales tactics that prompted the original 2009 proposal. Some observers point out that these problems seem to get worse as the online ticket market becomes increasingly consolidated. After the merger of the two largest ticket sellers in 2010, the Live Nation-Ticketmaster union controls 80 percent of the market for ticket sales. Ticketmaster also owns TicketsNow, the second-largest secondary online reseller and the site behind the Springsteen debacle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the Government Accountability Office released a report in 2018 documenting increasing ticket sale abuses in recent years. Lack of competition often leads to higher prices and the proliferation of abusive practices. This principle of causation is nothing new. However, the weakened antitrust paradigm of recent decades has allowed the familiar problem to rear its ugly head, as airline passengers, prescription drug users, and now concert-goers can attest.

That is why heavy-handed schemes to address problems like scalping by banning resale are bad news for ticket markets. Not only do consumers have a basic right to resell tickets they bought and can’t use, but with only one real commercial seller game in town, individual resales are one of the few venues left where competitive pricing forces can still operate. 

The BOSS Act will not break Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s market dominance. It will not solve every unique challenge in the ticketing market, some caused by bots, many stemming from artists’ admirable desire to keep tickets affordable for ordinary fans without creating opportunities for unfair arbitrage. However, by mandating pricing transparency and preventing Ticketmaster from participating in collusive resale schemes, the BOSS Act would bolster competitive sales practices and thwart the bad behavior that sparked the original Springsteen outrage. And importantly, it will do so without stifling the free exchange of tickets among individual purchasers.

We have seen the world of online ticket sales become a mess of intertwining problems. The Federal Trade Commission followed up the aforementioned GAO report with a recent workshop to examine the different problems, including bots, restrictions on consumer resale, and pricing schemes. However, Public Knowledge believes the BOSS Act is a good start. Pascrell’s Springsteen statute would balance the two sides of the consumer rights coin, both of which are equally important to ensure a healthy market for live entertainment in the Internet Age.

Image credit: "My Surprise Road Trip" by AngieSix, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Today, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), introduced the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act. The Act would increase merger filing fees for large mergers reviewed by the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission, and use the additional funding to increase budgets for the two enforcers.

Public Knowledge applauds Sens. Grassley and Klobuchar for their leadership in helping our antitrust enforcement agencies keep up with the increasing number of mergers and costs of the merger review process.

The following can be attributed to Charlotte Slaiman, Competition Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

“I want to thank Senator Grassley and Senator Klobuchar for introducing this important bill. The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act will provide the DOJ’s Antitrust Division and the FTC with additional resources to do the increasingly complex and important work of analyzing mergers -- and in some cases, suing to block them.

“While it is much more than a lack of resources that prevents these agencies from successfully addressing fully the problems of concentration in our economy, increasing merger filing fees for large mergers to increase funding for these agencies is an important and common-sense step forward that deserves broad support.”

This week, Public Knowledge joined the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance in an amicus brief filing in a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission’s action to weaken local authority to manage streets and public property. The brief was filed in City of Portland v. FCC before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The FCC’s September 2018 Order on “Next Generation Wireless Infrastructure” concerns 5G and “small cell” deployment procedures where companies place wireless equipment on public property. This move forces localities to rent out space on traffic and light poles for well below market value, and jeopardizes local and state authority to ensure wireless deployments do not jeopardize public safety and are equitably deployed. Dozens of cities and counties have sued the Trump administration in response.

The following can be attributed to Phillip Berenbroick, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:

“Localities across the U.S. are doing important work to promote deployment of next-generation fixed and wireless broadband networks, including 5G, by ensuring that these networks are deployed equitably and are available to everyone. The FCC's action undermined local oversight of small cell deployments and replaced local decision-making on public safety, aesthetic, and the historic character of communities with the judgement of three FCC commissioners.

“The FCC should work with -- not subvert -- state, county, and municipal government efforts to provide broadband access for everyone, and especially to low-income, rural, and minority communities on the wrong side of the digital divide. Unfortunately, the FCC’s power grab is likely to delay small cell deployment and create unnecessary uncertainty regarding small cell deployments, and impede state and local efforts to ensure everyone has access to high-speed mobile broadband. The 9th Circuit should vacate the FCC’s Order.”

You may view the amicus brief here.