Ownership

President Donald Trump’s campaign-style rallies have found a receptive audience at Fox News Channel, which unlike the other cable news networks often carries his speeches live and in their entirety. Four times in the past few weeks, Fox has set aside its usual prime-time programming to air the president speaking live to supporters at events in South Carolina, Minnesota, North Dakota and West Virginia. The network also promised live coverage of a Trump rally July 5 in Montana, where Sen Jon Tester (D-MT) faces a tough fight for re-election.

Change is coming to HBO, now that it is part of the AT&T corporate family. John Tankey is a longtime AT&T executive who now oversees HBO in his new role as chief executive of Warner Media. He told employees that HBO would have to become more like a streaming giant to thrive in the new media landscape. Stankey described a future in which HBO would substantially increase its subscriber base and the number of hours that viewers spend watching its shows.

There once was a legendary troll, and from its hideout beneath an overpass of the information superhighway, it prodded into existence the internet we know, love, and increasingly loathe. That troll, Ken ZZ03, struck in 1995. But to make sense of the profound aftereffects—and why Big Tech is finally reckoning with this part of its history—you have to look back even further. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, states that platforms are not liable for the content they host—even when, like Good Samaritans, they try to intervene. Ken ZZ03 would be its first test.

Sinclair was vigorously defending its proposal to buy Tribune's stations against all comers July 5, responding to critics by telling the Federal Communications Commission that it is being asked to make decisions based on subjective disagreements over Sinclair content or views of a marketplace that no longer exists.

Germany’s top telecommunications regulator has set its sights on US technology groups such as Google and Facebook, insisting that providers of messaging and email services should be regulated just like ordinary telecommunications companies. “What we are seeing is that the line between traditional telecommunications services and web-based services like [Google’s] Gmail and [Facebook’s] WhatsApp has become very blurred.

Google, YouTube and Facebook could escape having to make billions in payouts to press publishers, record labels and artists after European Union lawmakers voted to reject proposed changes to copyright rules that aimed to make the tech companies share more of their revenues.

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

The good news is that, after years of having to pay per gigabyte, unlimited plans are now the norm at all of the major US wireless carriers. The bad news is that, somehow, those same companies have managed to create different categories of unlimited. At the low-end, some have data caps before speeds are throttled. At the high-end, many come with premium video services (the latest battleground).

AT&T: The biggest challenge with AT&T's unlimited plans is that the options and combinations keep changing.

Imagine if, ahead of HBO’s next “Westworld” premiere, AT&T sent a 5-minute video recap to millions of users it knows watch science fiction. The mobile giant could target young women with the latest trailer of Warner Bros.’s upcoming romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Asians.” Or analyze users’ interests to create customized CNN news clips for customers to watch on their lunch breaks.

[Commentary] The Supreme Court recently delivered the most significant antitrust opinion by the Court in more than a decade --  Ohio v. American Express -- one that made it extraordinarily more difficult for the government to rein in certain companies that abuse their market power. In it, the Court dealt a huge blow to the ability of government and private plaintiffs to enforce existing antitrust laws, making it easier for dominant firms — especially those in the tech sector — to abuse their market power with impunity.