Ownership

Comcast and the Walt Disney Company have long been rivals. But Brian Roberts, who runs Comcast, has recently become the Magic Kingdom’s nemesis in chief. He waged an unrelenting fight for 21st Century Fox over the summer, forcing Disney to pay about $18 billion more than it had planned in order to secure Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment empire. Then, on Sept 22, Comcast emerged as the decisive victor in a battle with Disney for control of the British pay-television company Sky. For Robert A.

Comcast triumphed over the Walt Disney in a hard-fought battle for Sky television, by offering $39 billion for the satellite-TV service that has 23 million customers in five European countries. Sky’s independent board members must approve the winning bid  and shareholders must ratify the deal before the sale will be complete. Soon, Comcast will have a presence in some of the most prosperous countries in Europe — Britain, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy.

T-Mobile offered its clearest glimpse yet at exactly what it will offer in terms of in-home, fixed broadband internet services if the company is allowed to merge with Sprint—to become what it has called “New T-Mobile.”  T-Mobile’s chief operating officer Mike Sievert told the Federal Communications Commission that New T-Mobile “has confirmed that there is a large market for New T-Mobile’s in-home broadband offering at the anticipated pricing and service levels.” He said the company expects to offer in-home internet services to 52% of the zip codes across the county by 2024, covering 64% of

AT&T asked an appeals court to reject the Justice Department’s challenge of a federal judge’s decision approving its $85 billion merger with Time Warner. The telecom company, which closed the merger in June, responded to the Justice Department’s appeal, arguing that prosecutors failed to prove during trial that the deal would hurt competition and raise prices for consumers.

Will I go to prison for violating the terms of service? This is the question journalists must ask themselves, now, when writing data stories based on public information collected from a website, such as Facebook or Twitter. Violating a terms of service that prohibits scraping can carry with it possible criminal liability under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). No journalists have been prosecuted under this statute, but their sources have, and some journalists have been asked to stop using specific reporting tools by Facebook.

European laws and proposals meant to rein in tech giants are inadvertently empowering them. The laws — governing everything from privacy to copyright to content filtering — stem from concerns about the behavior of big platforms, like YouTube and Facebook. But big companies have more resources to comply with complicated regulations than small firms. The European Parliament recently passed a directive that would overhaul its copyright law and would force platforms to impose strict filters for copyright violations or face fines.

Marc Benioff, the billionaire co-founder of software maker Salesforce.com Inc., is making a play to project his influence far beyond Silicon Valley with the purchase of Time magazine. The 53-year-old entrepreneur and his wife, Lynne, agreed to pay $190 million in cash to Meredith Corp. for the venerable but struggling print publication, stoking comparisons to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his $250 million acquisition of the Washington Post in 2013.

The Communication Workers of America labor union, which opposes T-Mobile’s proposed purchase of rival Sprint, has written to all 50 state attorneys general to highlight potential job losses from the proposed deal as well as antitrust concerns. Attorneys general in NY and CA have reportedly begun probes into the $26 billion deal, which would see the third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers in the United States merging.

The debate over the right approach to privacy took center stage during the Federal Trade Commission’s inaugural hearing on competition. David Vladeck and Howard Beales, both former directors of the agency’s consumer protection bureau, clashed over whether the FTC requires a bigger stick when it comes to privacy enforcement. Vladeck argued the agency needs the power to impose civil penalties from the get-go. “I think that a civil penalty, for example, against Google or Facebook initially would have had a deterrent value,” Vladeck said. “Facebook is currently under investigation again.

Two days after saying an “invite will be on its way” to Google to respond to allegations of bias against conservatives, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said the plan is still in progress. “Well, I gotta sit down and talk to them about it, but there’s a number of committees that have jurisdiction, there’s three off the top of my head, and they could come and we could make it three committees, or one committee, but they need to come and testify,” he said. According to Rep McCarthy, his office has been “in communications” with Google.