[jaredklewis]

Well let's not grab our pitchforks just yet.

I'm sure if this was a thread discussing Judge Leon's 2013 opinion that NSA metadata collection violated the 4th amendment, HN would be singing his praises. But in this case he's approved a merger we don't like so he must be a total idiot or (as is being suggested further down in the thread) was bribed and has family members that will be getting board AT&T seats pretty soon. Such is HN's fickle heart.

Unsurprisingly, the case involved more nuance than could be contained in a Bloomberg article, so if you really want to understand the arguments involved, you'll have to slog through the 200 page opinion: http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/17-2511opinion.p...

I'm generally depressed by the state of broadband competition in the US, but that doesn't automatically mean that Shapiro's "increased leverage harm" theory that vertical content-programmer-distributor integration will raise prices is correct. And even if it is intuitively correct or turns out to be right, it doesn't mean that we currently have sufficient supporting data for it to be a convincing argument to the courts.

[mortdeus]

I should point out that this doesn't really change the broadband ISP landscape. Time Warner Cable is not apart of Time Warner anymore. All this does is give AT&T a better chance at entering the "original content" space and to take advantage of the fact that streaming providers like Youtube TV and Netflix would need to now pay AT&T for their content.

Honestly I don't think this is all that bad of a move. I'd rather AT&T absorb Time Warner than Comcast.

[ajmurmann]

It's catastrophic. Companies should be allowed to either own the pipe or what flows through the pipe. Any attempts to own both need to be stopped and punished. The pipes must remain neutral so that small competitors can come up and disrupt and slay the big players once they get moribund.

[jaredklewis]

> It's catastrophic. Companies should be allowed to either own the pipe or what flows through the pipe. Any attempts to own both need to be stopped and punished.

Not producing content doesn't magically make an ISP a neutral provider and I don't see how vertical integration (owning the pipe and some of what's going through it) gives ISPs more leverage than they already have.

For example, take an ISP that is just the pipe with no content production arm. That ISP could charge premiums to content providers to be put in a "fast lane" and then slow down the content of everyone else. This would be to the advantage of big players at the expense of small competitors, just like you say, and doesn't involve vertical integration in any way. AT&T doesn't need Time Warner to do this.

What's catastrophic is that we don't have net neutrality. There are plenty of good arguments against this merger, but preventing vertical integration doesn't get us any closer to net neutrality.

[skywhopper]

Not having a direct interest doesn’t guarantee they are neutral, true. That’s what net neutrality rules are for. But giving them interest in the content guarantees they _arent_ neutral, and will always have conflicting interests, regardless of regulation.

[jaredklewis]

If there was regulation, it doesn’t matter if they have a conflict of interest, because it would be illegal to prefer their own traffic.

If there is no regulation, AT&T has the exact same incentive to abuse their market position to make more money whether or not they own Time Warner. Whether they own Time Warner or not, they can make more money by being a non-neutral provider. Will they suddenly have a greater interest in money after they acquire Time Warner?

[simplify]

Yes, because there will be more money to make?

[tracker1]

This is how I feel about Sony being both a media company, and a technology company. (BluRay, etc).

[rayiner]

The same is true for Google and Apple, who make hardware, the operating system running on the hardware, the software running on the operating system, and the app store on which the software is sold. They compete directly with the software makers on their platform. (And the market concentration in the mobile OS space is even higher than with ISPs. There is basically no choice left but iOS and Android.) Yet, the results in the mobile space have not been "catastrophic."

[jedberg]

AT&T owns DirecTV and has a strong incentive to make it very expensive to stream things that aren't from DirectTV and very cheap to stream things that are.

[s2g]

We can still pull out the pitchforks based on the notion that he didn't understand the "expert" opinion presented and just decided not bother?

[jaredklewis]

I didn't find the exchange particularly extraordinary. The judge is expressing his opinion that he doesn't buy what Shapiro is selling. The judge will have already studied Shapiro's written arguments before the trial. During the oral arguments, the judge has a chance to clarify things from the written arguments. I haven't read the full transcript, but I imagine Leon didn't feel fully convinced by the written arguments, asked Shapiro to address some of his concerns, continued to feel unsatisfied and decided to move on. That's how it goes sometimes. Time is not unlimited and there are always too many things to cover.

At the very least, Shapiro's argument is complicated and novel (it has never been used as a part of an anti-trust case before). Tellingly, the Bloomberg article doesn't not even attempt to explain or summarize the economic theory. It's not like Leon is pigheadedly refusing to accept some widely accepted, basic economic principle.

If we are going to criticize the ruling, let's do so by discussing the substance of the judge's opinion, not courtroom banter.

[blind_boy_grunt]

Oral argument is usually just for clarifications/questions over the written briefs. Judge Leon likely later read the written briefs on his own time (that is his job, after all).