Why the US Gov Going after Google is Not a Good Idea

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 151, in which I argue that the U. S. government pursuing anti-trust action against Google is not a good idea.   My reasons range from media evolution, which responds to human needs, taking care of information monopolies as it did regarding Microsoft's near-monopoly in the 1990s, to Trump's real reasons for going after Google.

Links to articles and books mentioned in the podcast:

• Google Abuses Its Monopoly Power over Search, Justice Department Says in Lawsuit
• Leave Poor Microsoft Alone
• I'm a Progressive Libertarian
• Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media

Other relevant podcast episodes:

• Trump Ban of TikTok Violates the First Amendment 
• Why I Am Against Net Neutrality

Check out this episode!

First Amendment and Public's Right to Know Could be Put to the Test: ByteDance rejects Microsoft Bid for TikTok

The news just broke that ByteDance just rejected Microsoft's offer to buy TikTok*.

This is big news, with profound First Amendment implications.  Trump has threatened to ban TikTok in the United States.  Were it owned by Microsoft, an American corporation, banning any of its media would be an obvious, ipso facto, violation of the First Amendment, and its provision that "Congress [i.e, the Federal government] shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press".

But what about TikTok, now owned by the Chinese company ByteDance?   Some would argue that the First Amendment pertains only to American media.   I (and others) would argue otherwise.  The First Amendment is designed to protect the public's right to know -- Congress is prohibited from banning or restricting media because that seriously interferes with everyone's right to know what's going on.  How else can a democracy function?

I'm glad that ByteDance said no to Microsoft. I have nothing at all against Microsoft -- in fact, I defended Microsoft against our government's foolish threats to break up their alleged monopoly back in the 1990s -- but I'm glad that ByteDance's action will put Trump's blustering to a legal test.  If that happens, if he doesn't back down, it will ultimately be up to the U. S. Supreme Court to determine whether the First Amendment protects the public's right to have access to international media, which is becoming increasingly important in our interconnected world.

You never know for sure about any Supreme Court decision before it's rendered, but I'm always glad to see an issue like this, which gets at the First Amendment and its foundation of our democracy, put to the judicial test.

*PS: And news just came through that ByteDance decided to make Oracle, a U. S. firm, as its partner for Tikok.  Will that qualify for TikTok as being an American firm?

The Enemy Within 1.4: Microsoft AI

My wife and I have been watching The Enemy Within and enjoying it - always good to see Dexter's Jennifer Carpenter - but I haven't yet a chance to review it.  Tonight's 1.4 had such an impressive ad for Microsoft AI - woven so well into the story - that I figured, hey, why wait.

First, the overall set-up of the series is good - in fact, a wrenching moral dilemma, or series of interlocking dilemmas.  Erica Shepherd (Carpenter) decides that, in order to save her daughter, she has to betray a whole bunch of American agents, who are killled by the mastermind terrorist Tal.  One of the agents killed is FBI special agent Keaton's fiancee, who was with the CIA.  Three years later, Keaton (played by Goliath's Morris Chestnut, who's always excellent) is focused on getting Tal, and to do so, he brings Shepherd, shackled, onto the team.  The rest of the team is split on whether that's a wise thing, and the team also has at least one active Tal mole.  The storylines and action are sharp.

But what stuck me tonight was the way that Kate the technical analyst uses Microsoft AI to help the team foil the kidnapping of a Senator and his daughter at the airport.  As she explains to Keaton after we see her deftly weave her way through three-dimensional images on her and our screen, Microsoft AI allows her to "stitch" together images from the airport to create a clear flow of three-dimensional images that show exactly what lies below and ahead of where the agents are running.   And right after that cool demonstration in narrative action and subsequent explanation in character, we get a real commercial for Microsoft AI and what it can do for human pursuits other than crime fighting - like display of sheer beauty.

Hey, The Enemy Within is on a commercial TV network - NBC - so, if  you have a commercial sponsor, like Microsoft, why not flaunt it by putting it right into the plot?  I'm all in favor, and I'll be back here sooner or later with another review.

 

Why the Government Should Always Keep Its Hands Off Media

The news that the Trump administration is suing to block the merger of AT& T and Time Warner - presumably stemming from Trump's pique over CNN's truthful reporting of news about Trump, which he deems to be "fake news" (CNN has long been part of Time Warner) - is unsurprising, and sadly demonstrates a point I've been making for decades: the government should keep its hands entirely off media, including not bringing to bear anti-trust laws.

I was never much in favor of anti-trust laws, anyway - the marketplace is a better regulator of business than the government - but when applied to businesses that have nothing or not much to do with communication, they are not unconstitutional.   In the case of media, any attempt to regulate - whether its content, its corporate structure, any aspect of media - is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, and its provision that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

And even when well-intended, such anti-trust laws are unnecessary when applied to media.  As I argued in my 1998 article in The Industry Standard - "Leave Poor Microsoft Alone" (not my title) - all the handwringing over Microsoft dominating the personal computing industry back then was not needed, and ignorant of media evolution.   As I point out in my Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media, history has shown that we humans bend media to what we want as consumers, not what corporations may try to dictate.  And sure enough, as the hue-and-cry against Microsoft in the late 1990s was reaching a crescendo, Apple was already on the way to staging a comeback with their rehire of Steve Jobs - a comeback which reversed the dominance of Microsoft, and left Apple in the powerful position it still has today.

The bottom line of all this is the Founding Fathers were right in what they put in the First Amendment.  For democracy to function well, government should have zero control of media - zero, whether Trump, Clinton, Obama, anyone in between.  (Which, by the way, is why I'm also no fan of so-called net neutrality.)