Top Disney Lawyer To Become Top Copyright Office Lawyer, Because Who Cares About The Public Interest?

from the mickey-mouse-operation dept

People at the Copyright Office seem to get mad at me every time I suggest that the Copyright Office is captured by Hollywood, and pointing out how top officials there all seem to bounce back and forth between the Copyright Office and Hollywood.

That's not to say there aren't some good people there, because there are. But the organization is dominated by former (and, if the past is any indication, soon to be again), lobbyists and lawyers of the biggest copyright abusers on the planet. So it's difficult to take the Office seriously as a steward for the public good (as they are supposed to be), when it's currently headed by the former top lawyer at IFPI, who, before that, was the top IP lawyer for Time Warner. And, when she then decides to hire Disney's top "IP lawyer" to become General Counsel of the Copyright Office (as has just been announced), it becomes really difficult not to be cynical.

This is what regulatory capture looks like.

But even worse, actions like this are why the public doesn't believe in copyright. Over and over again all we see is abuse of copyright, and then the government puts the same people who have abused copyright in charge of copyright at the Copyright Office, it makes the public cynical and (reasonably) distrustful of the intentions of the Copyright Office. That's disappointing, as there are plenty of people who have expertise in copyright law who would be great for the Copyright Office. But, for some reason, they never get hired into the top jobs unless they've spent time working for one of the giant Hollywood or recording industry organizations.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, corruption, public interest, regulatory capture, shira perlmutter, soft corruption, suzanne wilson
Companies: disney

The Corruption Is In Congress: When Your New Bill Exempts The Biggest Employers In Your State, Perhaps There's A Problem

from the look-at-that dept

Karl wrote a bit about how the new antitrust bill from Amy Klobuchar and Tom Cotton pretends that the only industry that has competition issues is the internet industry -- despite evidence suggesting other industries are much worse off -- and briefly mentioned the fact that their bill conveniently excludes Walmart and Target. But the setup of the bill and those particular exclusions are so nefariously done, and so obviously corrupt, that they deserve a second post to call it out.

First off, when the House version of this bill came out, we highlighted that the $600 billion threshold seemed curiously specific, since it seemed specifically drawn just above a ton of politically powerful companies -- including Walmart, Disney, AT&T, Verizon, Visa, Mastercard, JP Morgan Chase, Disney, Bank of America and others. But notably the House version of the bill would put down the $600 billion line as a marker, and if those companies reached that threshold, then they too would be subject to the same rules, and prevented (or, significantly hindered) from buying other companies.

And that's where the Senate version is so nefarious. Under the terms of the Klobuchar/Cotton bill, it only applies to companies who are over the $600 billion line on the day the bill is signed. In other words, while the House version would eventually impact Walmart (largest employer in Tom Cotton's state) and Target (largest employer in Klobuchar's state), Klobuchar and Cotton conveniently changed the rules in the bill so that they would not impact the biggest companies in their home states.

There is no way to look at that other than as corrupt.

And, as Pat Hedger points out, Walmart has been growing like crazy over the last five years or so (which seems odd, considering we keep hearing that Amazon has "monopolized" commerce and is driving out all the competition):

So, as I type this Walmart is valued at a little over $400 billion. That might seem far off from $600 billion, but as recently as 2016 Walmart was valued below $200 billion. $600 billion in the next few years is not at all out of the question. And if this bill passes, it won't matter for Walmart.

Target is somewhat smaller, but also has been growing like crazy:

So both of those companies -- which compete fairly directly with Amazon -- have been growing like gangbusters, and their own Senators are introducing a bill that will block Amazon from acquiring companies, but has a built-in exemption that keeps both of these competitors from being limited in the same way Amazon is being limited.

Is there honestly any way to view this setup other than out and out corruption by Klobuchar and Cotton? Protecting the largest employer in each of their states by shackling the major competitor to each, and making sure their own companies are exempted from the law no matter how large they grow?

Filed Under: acquisitions, amy klobuchar, antitrust, arkansas, corruption, favoritism, mergers, minnesota, soft corruption, tom cotton
Companies: amazon, target, walmart

States Wouldn't Be Pushing Inconsistent Tech Laws If Congress Wasn't So Corrupt

from the cycle-of-stupid dept

You might recall after the telecom lobby convinced Congress to obliterate both privacy and net neutrality rules (despite both having bipartisan public support), there was a lot of industry whining about the various state replacement efforts that popped up. For example when California popped up with its own net neutrality rules, AT&T whined incessantly about how a "discordant network of state laws" would harm puppies and innovation. Ignored, of course, is that states were simply rushing to fill the consumer protection void created by federal apathy, itself a direct result of lobbying (aka corruption).

The same thing happened with broadband privacy guard rails. In 2015, the FCC proposed some fairly basic broadband privacy rules largely focused on making sure what was being collected and sold would be transparent to consumers. But the telecom lobby was easily able to lobby the GOP-controlled Congress to use the Congressional Review Act to kill those rules before they could even take effect. And again, giants like AT&T whined about the discordant landscape of imperfect state legislative efforts that popped up in its wake, hoping you'd ignore that they helped create the problem by attacking even the most basic federal protections.

The same thing of course is now playing out in the broader tech sector as well. For years, the tech, healthcare, marketing, insurance, and telecom sectors have worked to uniformly battle any meaningful federal privacy protections on the federal level. Not just the bad proposals. All of them. And, unsurprisingly, after years of this, states have started filling the void with their own solutions, many of which are less than perfect. This, as we saw with telecom, is causing all manner of consternation and constipation at major tech companies:

"There's little question state and local policy moves get the attention of both tech companies and Congress. David Edmonson, vice president for state policy and government relations at the trade group TechNet, said that the "impact of a 50-state patchwork" is among the group's highest concerns.

The group, which is known for its state-level advocacy work, said it worries about the compliance costs and impact of patchwork regulation on small businesses — although its membership is primarily midsize and large companies. It also fears the potential impact on consumers who may be confused about their rights or who remain completely uncovered because of where they live, according to Edmonson."

"A 50-state patchwork of state-based privacy laws creates more problems than it solves both for consumers and the digital economy," he said. "A single federal standard that applies to all 50 states is better for both consumers and businesses."

AT&T and Comcast are both members of Technet, it should be noted, and are both particularly guilty of this practice of lobbying against all federal consumer protections, then whining incessantly about the resulting escalation in state proposals. So basically, large companies work tirelessly to fight pretty much any meaningful federal consumer protections, then complain via their proxy groups about the end result, namely an inconsistent patchwork of discordant state consumer protection rules. At no point is there any awareness that their own actions may have contributed to the outcome they're now complaining about.

Yes, there's some valid business concerns about having to comply with a massive patchwork of often inconsistent legislative solutions. And there's certainly ample concerns with how many of these laws are written, as California's often problematic privacy law can attest. And yes, there's also plenty of valid concerns that legislating many of these problems is well beyond the core competency of many modern q-anon-era elected officials.

But what I've noticed missing from any of these conversations is how this is all largely a byproduct of Congressional corruption. Or, quite often, any mention that the very problem companies are complaining about (states passing discordant legislation) was the direct byproduct of their lobbying influence on federal lawmakers.

Congress is so broken and corrupt, even very popular proposals (see: net neutrality) can't survive for long. And that's particularly true of policy issues that see broad, cross-industry opposition like privacy. There's an army of industries, all with near unlimited budgets, laser-focused on not just opposing bad federal privacy rules, but any federal privacy rules at all. It's virtually impossible for activists, academics, and truly solution-focused, objective experts to combat efforts backed with those kinds of resources. Again, we can call that specific problem a lot of things, but it's predominately a byproduct of corruption.

Those with the power and resources to truly dictate U.S.tech policy very much like the current unaccountable adtech paradigm that involves over-collecting data, selling access to it to any nitwit with a nickel, failing repeatedly to secure it, then occasionally getting a piddly wrist slap from underfunded and understaffed U.S. regulators as a modest cost of doing business.

If you look at the steady drumbeat of hacking, location data, and other scandals, that approach isn't working out that well for the rest of us. And yet we still somehow can't seem to get even a basic federal privacy law on the books (one that mandates some very basic transparency requirements, or erects some very clear but meaningful penalties for companies that refuse to secure their networks and servers). The primary reason for that is clearly corruption, but again, that's often rarely mentioned in discourse.

At some point you'd think many of these large companies would realize that it would be better to concede on some issues and support basic, decent, federal solutions even if there's a revenue hit. But because they know Congress is ethically malleable, they know they don't have to do that.

So instead, as we saw in telecom, you'll have a company like AT&T lobby to kill meaningful federal and state consumer protections (privacy, net neutrality), then try to push their own shitty federal proposals written by their lawyers. Proposals so filled with intentional loopholes as to be useless beyond one core function: supplanting better, stronger, consensus-driven federal and state legislative solutions. But whether it's Facebook or AT&T, if they truly claim to want consistent federal guidelines, maybe, I don't know, stop throwing millions of dollars at lawmakers who then fight tooth and nail against absolutely every effort to do that?

Filed Under: broadband, congress, corruption, privacy, regulations, soft corruption, states

Biden Still Hasn't Picked An FCC Boss, But He Just Tagged A Comcast Lobbyist As Ambassador To Canada

from the priorities-priorities dept

Consumer groups have grown increasingly annoyed at the Biden administration's failure to pick a third Democratic Commissioner and permanent FCC boss six months into his term. After the rushed Trump appointment of unqualified Trump BFF Nathan Simington to the agency (as part of that dumb and now deceased plan to have the FCC regulate social media), the agency now sits gridlocked at 2-2 commissioners under interim FCC head Jessica Rosenworcel.

While the FCC can still putter along tackling its usual work on spectrum and device management, the gridlock means it can't do much of anything controversial, like reversing Trump-era attacks on basic telecom consumer protections, media consolidation rules, or the FCC's authority to hold telecom giants accountable for much of, well, anything. If you're a telecom giant like AT&T or Comcast, a gridlocked agency remains a policy gift.

It will take months to appoint and seat a third commissioner and permanent FCC boss. It will take additional months to get that person settled in place to even start working on serious policy proposals. In other words, by the time the FCC is fully staffed, a full year may have been wasted that could have been spent on tackling the not insubstantial problems in the telecom space. While Biden certainly has been aggressive on other fronts (appointing Lina Khan head of the FTC), fixing the mess in telecom clearly hasn't been a top priority.

What has been more of a priority? Appointing former Comcast lobbyist David Cohen to the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, apparently. Cohen held the very first fundraising dinner for Biden's Presidential campaign back in 2019, and has now been amply rewarded for his loyalty:

"Biden has nominated David Cohen, a former senior executive vice president at NBCUniversal owner Comcast, to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Canada. Cohen is currently a senior advisor to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts."

Comcast historically gets very angry when you call Cohen a lobbyist, despite the fact he spearheaded the company's lobbying and policy efforts for the better part of the last decade. After the U.S. updated its feeble lobbying rules in 2007 to require lobbyists to register if they spent any more than 20% of their time lobbying, Comcast simply called what Cohen did...something else. More specifically the company's "Chief Diversity Officer," despite Cohen's actual lack of any, you know, diversity. Cohen was a huge architect of gaining government approval of Comcast's massive 2011 merger with NBC Universal.

Making an aging telecom retiree and loyal fundraiser happy in his twilight years certainly isn't the end of the world. But it's still not a great look when you've prioritized rewarding telecom lobbyists over properly staffing the agency that oversees telecom.

Previous FCC boss Ajit Pai spent four years studying how the FCC worked as a Commissioner, then when appointed agency Chairman by Trump, set about using that knowledge to ruthlessly dismantle not just consumer protections, but state and federal oversight of telecom in general. Usually, Pai operated in perfect symmetry with large regional telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast, embracing some extremely ruthless behavior along the way. Reversing those policies requires a certain level of urgency from team Biden that so far really hasn't been particularly apparent.

How tough Biden will be on telecom remains an open question. While his executive order contained some interesting promises, most can't be accomplished without a properly staffed FCC, or an agency head with a backbone. I can still see things going either way here. I can see him appointing a tougher, Lina-Khan esque type interested in genuine reform. But I can also see him making a safe pick that chirps all the right notes (5G is great! damn that digital divide!) but, like so many in DC, isn't willing to truly acknowledge monopolization and corruption are the primary causes of U.S. telecom dysfunction.

Filed Under: ambassador, canada, competition, david cohen, fcc, joe biden, political favors, soft corruption

What A Coincidence! Same Day Senator Burr Dumped His Stock, So Did His Brother-in-Law!

from the what-an-amazing-stroke-of-luck! dept

Senator Richard Burr's potential insider trading issues, for which he's being investigated, may have gotten quite a bit worse this week. A new report notes that on the same day Burr sold off a "significant percentage" of his stock holdings (while also telling the public not to worry about COVID-19), it turns out his brother-in-law just coincidentally decided to dump a bunch of stock too. Amazing!

Sen. Richard Burr was not the only member of his family to sell off a significant portion of his stock holdings in February, ahead of the market crash spurred by coronavirus fears. On the same day Burr sold, his brother-in-law also dumped tens of thousands of dollars worth of shares. The market fell by more than 30% in the subsequent month.

Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, who has a post on the National Mediation Board, sold between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of shares in six companies — including several that have been hit particularly hard in the market swoon and economic downturn.

Could this actually be a coincidence? Sure. Maybe. But the timing (the very same day...) does seem notable. As the ProPublica report notes, Fauth "is not a frequent stock trader." Burr insists that his sales were based on public information, though it's difficult to see how he could simply ignore the classified briefings he got concerning the rising pandemic issues, and base decisions entirely on public information. Indeed, this is why government officials should be required to hand off any equities like this to a blind trust where they have no visibility into how it's traded.

Even if this is all legal (which is not certain either way yet...), it again reinforces the belief that the powerful live by different rules and are able to game the system for personal advantage, even as they're supposed to be serving the public interest.

Filed Under: gerald fauth, insider trading, public interest, richard burr, soft corruption, trust

Sketchy Gets Sketchier: Senator Loeffler Received $9 Million 'Gift' Right Before She Joined The Senate

from the seems-iffy dept

Kelly Loeffler is, by far, the wealthiest elected official in Congress, with an estimated net worth of half a billion dollars (the second wealthiest is Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte (famous for his body slamming a journalist for asking him a question and then lying to the police about it)). Loeffler may be used to getting away with tearing up the red tape in her previous life, but in Congress, that often looks pretty corrupt. In just the last few months since she was appointed, there were concerns about her stock sales and stock purchases, which seemed oddly matched to information she was getting during briefings regarding the impact of COVID-19. She has since agreed to convert all her stock holdings to managed funds outside of her control (something every elected official should do, frankly).

Now, the NY Times is noting another form of what we've referred to as "soft corruption" -- moves that might technically be legal, but which sure look sketchy as hell to any regular non-multimillionaire elected official. In this case, Senator Loeffler received what was, in effect, a gift worth $9 million from her former employer, Intercontinental Exchange (the company that runs the NY Stock Exchange, and where her husband is the CEO).

The key issue was that since she was leaving the job to go join the Senate, she had a bunch of unvested stock. For normal people, if you leave a job before your stock vests, too bad. That's the deal. The vesting period is there for a reason. But for powerful, rich people, apparently the rules change. Intercontinental Exchange changed the rules to grant her the compensation that she wasn't supposed to get, because why not?

Ms. Loeffler, who was appointed to the Senate in December and is now in a competitive race to hold her seat, appears to have received stock and other awards worth more than $9 million from the company, Intercontinental Exchange, according to a review of securities filings by The New York Times, Ms. Loeffler’s financial disclosure form and interviews with compensation and accounting experts. That was on top of her 2019 salary and bonus of about $3.5 million.

The additional compensation came in the form of shares, stock options and other instruments that Ms. Loeffler had previously been granted but was poised to forfeit by leaving the company. Intercontinental Exchange altered the terms of the awards, allowing her to keep them. The largest component — which the company had previously valued at about $7.8 million — was a stake in an Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary that Ms. Loeffler had been running.

The entitlement factor oozes out of the statement put out from her office in response to this:

“Kelly left millions in equity compensation behind to serve in public office to protect freedom, conservative values and economic opportunity for all Georgians,” said Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for Ms. Loeffler. “The obsession of the liberal media and career politicians with her success shows their bias against private sector opportunity in favor of big government.”

No, Stephen, that's not the issue. The issue is that normal people who haven't vested yet, don't get to have the board change the vesting rules as you're leaving to go legislate in order to give you a $9 million windfall you didn't earn because it hadn't vested. If it had just been a question of compensation, no one would be complaining. If she had played by the rules that everyone else played by, lived up to her end of the contract and vested the equity, then no big deal. The problem is the last minute changing of the rules to get her a pretty massive payout (perhaps not by her standards, but by anyone else's).

Indeed, the details show that this wasn't just a timing thing, like a standard vesting deal, but that Loeffler was supposed to reach certain milestones to be able to get the equity. She didn't, but she still gets it. That's the part that has people concerned.

In February 2019, Intercontinental Exchange gave Ms. Loeffler a stake in a limited liability company that owned a stake in Bakkt, according to a March 2019 securities filing. The company at the time estimated the award was worth $15.6 million. But Ms. Loeffler would be able to cash in on the award only under certain circumstances, including if Bakkt’s value soared or if it became a publicly traded company.

When Ms. Loeffler stepped down from the company less than 10 months later, she was poised to forfeit much of that Bakkt stake. But Intercontinental Exchange sped up the vesting process so that she got half of it immediately.

The company, of course, puts a nice spin on it, saying "We admire Kelly’s decision to serve her country in the U.S. Senate and did not want to discourage that willingness to serve,” but what else are they going to say anyway?

Still waiting for that supposed swamp draining we keep hearing about.

Filed Under: conflicts, equity, gifts, kelly loeffler, soft corruption, vesting
Companies: bakkt, intercontinental exchange

Is There Any Form Of Corruption Senator Burr Didn't Engage In?

from the curious dept

Senator Richard Burr, the head of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee sure seems to be engaged in a bunch of sketchy looking activities. First, there was the revelation from a few weeks back of selling off a bunch of hotel stock after being briefed about COVID-19 (while simultaneously telling the public it was nothing to worry about -- and that the US was "in a better position than any other country to respond," which now looks laughable in retrospect). The latest, as revealed by ProPublica, is that Burr sold his DC townhouse to a lobbyist who has had issues before Barr's committees, in a "private" unlisted sale for what appears to be above market rates.

Burr sold the small townhouse, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, for what, by some estimates, was an above market price — $900,000 — to a team led by lobbyist John Green. That is tens of thousands of dollars above some estimates of the property’s value by tax assessors, a real estate website and a local real estate agent. The sale was done off-market, without the home being listed for sale publicly.

Green is a longtime donor to Burr’s political campaigns and has co-hosted at least one fundraiser for him. In 2017, the year of the sale, Green lobbied on behalf of a stream of clients with business before Burr’s committees.

As with many of these things, whether or not this is legal depends on a lot of the specifics (including if this really was sold above market rate). But even if was legal, it certainly has all the appearance of fairly blatant corruption.

“This has every appearance of being a violation of the gift ban,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen. “The gift ban is one of the most basic legal frameworks for preventing corruption. Lobbyist gifts to lawmakers is akin to a bribe.”

Burr, for his part insists that the sale was for fair market value, despite what others are saying.

Tax assessors valued the Washington, D.C., home for $796,720 in 2017, more than $100,000 less than Green and his business partner paid for it. But tax assessment values in the city often come in under market prices. Burr paid $525,000 for the place in 2003.

Redfin, the real estate website, estimated the home’s value to be $813,973 in the month the house was sold, though the company’s valuations are far from exact.

Bob Williams, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent who helps buy and sell homes in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, reviewed the listing for ProPublica and said that he would estimate that in early 2017 Burr’s home would have sold on the market for around $850,000, possibly more if there were multiple competing offers.

Given that, it certainly doesn't appear to be an egregious overreach, but still one that certainly leads to significant skepticism about Burr's ethics. One thing about being a public official is that you're supposed to go out of your way to avoid situations that would make the public doubt your commitment to the public interest. Instead, Burr and some others in the article are going by the legalistic "well, the Senate Ethics Committee was notified and we followed their rules" which is a legalistic way of saying "my colleagues looked the other way for me."

Filed Under: lobbyists, richard burr, soft corruption

The Press Finally Realizing Jerry Nadler Is In Bed With The RIAA While In Charge Of Copyright Reform

from the oh-look-at-that dept

Back in December, we wrote about how Rep. Jerry Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which is in charge of any copyright reform proposals, was hosting a party for music industry lobbyists at the Grammy's this year (along with Chair of the Democratic Caucus, Hakeem Jeffries). To party with Nadler and Jeffries at the Grammys -- the recording industry's biggest event of the year -- you "only" had to pay $5,000 per ticket. A bargain.

Whether or not you believe this is outright corruption, it certainly meets Larry Lessig's definition of "soft corruption." That is activity that may be perfectly legal, but to the vast majority of the public certainly feels corrupt, and raises questions about who's influencing our elected officials. Nadler, of course, has long been deeply in the bag for the recording industry. Years back, he pushed a bill that was little more than a bailout for the RIAA, and he's attacked the idea that if people buy something, they then own it as "an extreme digital view."

But it appears that the more mainstream media is beginning to notice Nadler's conflicts. His hometown NY Daily News has a whole article that talks about Nadler's money grab at the Grammys as well as much, much more.

Jerry Nadler is rockin' and rollin' in campaign cash from the music industry and other intellectual property businesses that he oversees as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, a review of recent federal records reveals.

Nadler, who is one of the point men pounding the drums against President Trump’s various improprieties, banked at least $65,000 from corporate music industry political action committees, industry executives, and their lobbyists and lawyers, a Daily News search of Nadler’s campaign receipts found.

He also spent more than $30,000 to hold his own Grammy Awards party — at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February.

Yeah. The Daily News doesn't mention that tickets to the party were advertised to lobbyists at $5k a pop. The Daily News points out that this is all legal, but does certainly suggest it appears pretty freaking sketchy:

A spokeswoman for Nadler’s campaign insisted there was nothing improper in dropping $27,250 for a suite at the Staples Center where the Grammys are awarded, $2,290 for food and drinks, $1,835 at the Beverly Hills Hilton and another $2,650 at the Sheraton Grand, all so industry execs could fill Nadler’s campaign coffers and schmooze with the chairman.

The article notes that "in a perfect world" members of Congress who run committees regulating industries probably wouldn't be allowed to host parties at those industry events, selling expensive tickets to get in. But, hey, it's not a perfect world.

“For many Americans, our corrosive fund-raising system calls into question whether members of Congress are acting in the public interest, or for some private financial interest,” Scherb said.

You don't say.

There are still a number of important copyright issues likely to come before Congress in the near future. Does anyone actually believe that Nadler will take the interests of all sides into account? Or does he have at least 65,000 reasons to focus mainly on the views of the RIAA in determining what copyright bills are even considered?

Filed Under: copyright, copyright reform, grammys, hakeem jeffries, jerry nadler, soft corruption
Companies: riaa

AT&T Throwing FundRaiser For Senate Chair Ahead Of Privacy Hearings

from the nothing-to-see-here dept

Scandal after scandal after scandal has resulted in many finally realizing that the United States is likely going to have to craft at least some basic privacy guidelines moving forward. The problem: with so many justly wary of Congressional Luddites screwing it up, and so many wealthy industries lobbying jointly to try and weaken the potential guidelines, this isn't going to be a pretty process. If we come out of it with anything even closely resembling a decent privacy law for the digital age (one that doesn't make things worse) we'll be very fortunate.

But it's hard to craft much of any meaningful privacy rules when Congress is so grotesquely beholden to the industries they're supposed to be holding accountable. That was made pretty obvious when the telecom sector lobbied to kill some basic FCC privacy guidelines the FCC had approved before they could even take effect back in 2017. Those rules simply required that ISPs be transparent about what data is being collected and who it would be sold to, something that could have proven extremely useful in the wake of these revelations of carriers selling your location data to any and every nitwit in America.

And as Congress begins holding public hearings to contemplate what privacy rules should look like, telecom giants like AT&T are again likely to have an outsized influence on what those laws will likely look like. For example, AT&T and other telecom giants will be holding a fundraiser for Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, the night before a major hearing on privacy regulations:

"According to the invitation for Tuesday’s fundraiser, which will be supporting a group backing Wicker’s reelection called RFW PAC, it costs $1,500 to attend the event as a guest, $2,500 to attend as a sponsor and $5,000 to co-host. The next day Wicker’s committee will hold its first hearing of the new Congress on crafting comprehensive data privacy legislation — a key issue for the telecom industry."

The fact that a huge swath of folks don't see a problem here speaks to how Sisyphean the effort for meaningful privacy rules is going to be. Like so many problems (like health care or broadband availability), you can't actually fix the problem until you address government corruption. And you can't fix government corruption until you address lobbying reform. And you can't fix lobbying reform thanks to... lobbying. It would be funny in a Keystone-cops-esque way if the end result wasn't so repeatedly and painfully tragic.

AT&T is, you'll recall, a company busted charging broadband users $500 more per year just to opt-out of snoopvertising, effectively making privacy a luxury option available only to those who can afford it. It's the same company busted selling user location data to shady middlemen, covertly modifying user packets to track users around the internet, and with a long, deep history of not only sucking up to the NSA and spying on Americans, but also advising the government on how best to tap dance around existing wiretap and privacy laws.

Again, AT&T is the very last company you want having any additional leverage when it comes to crafting meaningful privacy law. Especially given that this Wednesday's hearing is already missing any objective experts or consumer groups in the testimony lineup. And yet they're likely to have more of an impact on what our looming new privacy law looks like than probably any other companies short of Apple, Facebook, and Google.

Filed Under: fundraiser, lobbying, privacy, roger wicker, soft corruption
Companies: at&t

The Revolving Door Spins Hard: FCC's Clyburn Now Lobbying For T-Mobile

from the pivot-on-a-dime dept

If you hadn't noticed by now, U.S. lobbying restrictions are the legislative and police equivalent of damp, musty cardboard. While there are some basic guidelines in place, they're so filled with loopholes as to be largely useless. One of the bigger problems is the far-too-generous definition of lobbyist we currently employ, which lets lobbyists tap dance around disclosure rules if they just... pretend they're doing something else.

One case in point is Comcast's top lobbyist David Cohen, who routinely lobbies the government, but tap dances around the rules by calling himself the company's Chief Diversity Officer. Lobbying rules updated in 2007 require that if an employee spends more than 20% of their time lobbying in DC, they have to register with the government as a lobbyist. As such, folks like Cohen just call what they're doing something else, usually obfuscating their lobbying under what superficially appear to be more altruistic endeavors that often involve lobbying state and more local officials outside of DC.

Since US rules prevent regulators and Senators from immediately jumping into direct lobbying for the first year or two post-government, they'll often just call themselves "consultants" or "advisors" as they help their new clients lobby the government. Case in point: recently departed FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn this week announced that she'd be "advising" T-Mobile as the company tries to gain regulatory approval for its job and competition-eroding megamerger with Sprint:

"I’m advising T-Mobile and Sprint as it seeks to accelerate the creation of an inclusive nationwide 5G network on how to best build a bridge across the digital divide,” Clyburn told Politico.

Clyburn left her post last year, telling media outlets at the time she would “be a better public servant not serving on the FCC."

The move caught the consumer advocacy and activist community by surprise, given Clyburn's support of net neutrality (which T-Mobile opposed), and the solid work she did at the FCC trying to rein in an utterly broken prison telco monopoly. While T-Mobile and Sprint have tried to claim that the merger will somehow speed up America's quest for faster 5G networks (a claim Clyburn's clearly piggybacking on), they themselves have even acknowledged that's not really true.

Let's be real: Clyburn's there to help T-Mobile seal the deal via concessions. Concessions that aren't likely to actually thwart the most harmful impacts of the deal, particularly the 10,000 to 30,000 jobs that are expected to be cut as the combined company streamlines operations and inevitably eliminates redundant retail, support, and middle management positions. And concessions that the FCC probably won't enforce anyway, especially in the wake of the telecom lobby and T-Mobile having successfully convinced the Pai FCC to effectively neuter its oversight authority over the broken telecom sector.

Here in reality, T-Mobile's quest for regulatory approval for its merger hasn't been going particularly well. Every single consumer group has warned that the deal will consolidate an already troubled wireless sector, reducing the number of major wireless carriers from four to three -- dramatically reducing an already muted incentive to actually compete on price. Americans already pay some of the highest prices for wireless and fixed broadband among all developed nations, and the idea that more consolidation and fewer competitors will somehow fix this is simply not supported by factual data or reality:

"“This is not that complicated,” Fight For the Future Executive Director Evan Greer told Motherboard.

“More centralization and less competition isn't good for anyone except wealthy CEOs of telecom companies,” Greer said. “Telecom lobbyists have a long history of pretending that their policy goals are somehow magically aligned with helping the downtrodden, but it's a lie. This merger will mean more expensive, crappier cell phone plans, and hit the people who can least afford it the hardest."

Clyburn may have done some important work while at the FCC, but that doesn't mitigate the fact that revolving door regulation is highly corrosive.

FCC Commissioners have a long proud history of claiming to represent the public (once in a great while even actually doing so!), then shuffling off to lobby for telecom operators who'll actively make the problem (limited competition, high prices, terrible customer service) worse. Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell was already on T-Mobile's payroll, telling anybody who'll listen this merger will be "great for America." Former FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker quickly hopped from the FCC to lobbyist spots in both the wireless sector and at Comcast. Former FCC boss Mike Powell is now the chief of the cable industry's biggest lobbying operation, the NCTA.

Efforts to actually fix the very broken US broadband sector are routinely derailed by revolving door lobbyists. And any efforts to shore up our flimsy lobbying guidelines are quickly derailed by those same dollar per holler influence peddlers. Across countless sectors we're stuck in a catch 22 where meaningful progress is routinely thwarted until public anger finally boils over, and the United States finally acknowledges it has a very real problem that will require more than just routine grumbling to resolve.

Filed Under: fcc, lobbying, mergers, mignon clyburn, revolving door, soft corruption
Companies: sprint, t-mobile