AT&T Is Doing Exactly What It Told Congress It Wouldn't Do With Time Warner (arstechnica.com) 139
schwit1 quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T's decision to prevent Time Warner-owned shows from streaming on Netflix and other non-AT&T services reduced the company's quarterly revenue by $1.2 billion, a sacrifice that AT&T is making to give its planned HBO Max service more exclusive content. AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content, claiming that would be "irrational business behavior." AT&T's actual Q4 2019 revenue was $46.8 billion, but the company said it would have been $48 billion if not for "HBO Max investments in the form of foregone WarnerMedia content licensing revenues."
An AT&T spokesperson told Ars that the $1.2 billion in lost revenue was primarily caused by the decision "not to sell existing content -- mainly Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince -- to third parties such as Netflix." As we've previously reported, AT&T took Time Warner shows off Netflix in order to give the exclusive streaming rights to AT&T's HBO Max, which is scheduled to debut in May 2020 for $14.99 a month. The amount of forgone revenue could grow in future quarters, as Friends just left Netflix on January 1. The Big Bang Theory and Fresh Prince were not on Netflix in the United States, so in those cases the forgone revenue is apparently from not entering into licensing deals instead of ending them. AT&T also pulled Pretty Little Liars off Netflix in mid-2019 in order to give HBO Max the exclusive streaming rights.
An AT&T spokesperson told Ars that the $1.2 billion in lost revenue was primarily caused by the decision "not to sell existing content -- mainly Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince -- to third parties such as Netflix." As we've previously reported, AT&T took Time Warner shows off Netflix in order to give the exclusive streaming rights to AT&T's HBO Max, which is scheduled to debut in May 2020 for $14.99 a month. The amount of forgone revenue could grow in future quarters, as Friends just left Netflix on January 1. The Big Bang Theory and Fresh Prince were not on Netflix in the United States, so in those cases the forgone revenue is apparently from not entering into licensing deals instead of ending them. AT&T also pulled Pretty Little Liars off Netflix in mid-2019 in order to give HBO Max the exclusive streaming rights.
"Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince" (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, want to thank AT&T for shielding my eyes from content like that.
Re:"Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince (Score:4)
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Re:"Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince (Score:5, Interesting)
So do you just watch cheaply made documentaries, or gritty black and white films from the 1920's so you feel like some sort of media expert?
I am not a fan of these shows in particular, but I wouldn't call them content that should be avoided. They are just the popular shows of their decade.
Fresh Prince for the 1990's, Friends for the 2000's, the Big Bang Theory for the 2010's. Just like pop music. It will appeal mostly to people the ages of 15-25 of that particular decade. The formulaic sitcom plot for people these ages, as they are now old enough to get the humor, and mostly relate to the style and trends of the time. After about a decade, the formula get repetitive so the new stuff isn't as interesting anymore.
However the biggest problem I see in the industry today is the reliance on Nostalgia, and I admit that I can be a sucker for it too. Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Simpsons, Family Guy, Grays Anatomy... Have been running for far too long however we gravitate to them because they are familiar, however the story is loss. Even with reboots, prequel and long delayed sequels. We may say we hate them, but they make a ton of money because we watch them.
Star Wars: Even in the Prequel when Yoda showed up, we felt at peace because we fondly remembered him. ...
Star Trek Discovery: After they brought in Captain Pike and the show started to retcon into TOS canon we started liking it better.
Doctor Who: They just need to bring back some old bad guys and we are happy
For the people who grew up to these shows, they want to watch them again. Being now they have to determine if they are going to pay an other monthly fee just for them is the real question.
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The majority of Friends aired in the 90's.
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You're probably right because the last good sitcoms ever made were M*A*S*H, WKRP in Cincinnati, and Cheers!
Carlson: As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
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>Being now they have to determine if they are going to pay an other monthly fee just for them is the real question.
The answer being no.
If it isn't on my current list of subs (Netflix, britbox, Acorn) or Amazon for one offs, then it's not going to happen.
Subscription fatigue is real - If you're starting your streaming subscription offering in 2020, you are horribly late to the party.
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^^^ This
Why AT&T spent a ludicrous sum of money for streaming rights for the aforementioned content is puzzling.
Especially since the company is actively laying off employees by the thousands in 2019 alone.
They won't publish exact numbers, but it's high.
Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy to know the company spent BILLIONS on content like this when they tell you your job is moving to India / some-where-else-istan
( oh and the requirement ( mgmt ) that you train your replacement + sign an NDA or they don't p
And these companies wonder why piracy is massive! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't understand how these companies don't realise that they are directly responsible for encouraging the piracy that they complain so bitterly about. To get all the shows you want to watch you might have to subscribe to 3 or 4 different streaming services and honestly, how many average consumers are going to do that?
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They know, but they could previously sue you into becoming another revenue stream.
Re:And these companies wonder why piracy is massiv (Score:5, Funny)
[1] actually in this case it would be justifiable homicide, but that doesn't make a good sound-bite
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Netflix had mostly put a real dent in movie piracy. Because it was cheaper (in hardware and in effort) to pay the monthly fee then it was for you to pirate and store the content.
As Studios begin to offer their own streaming content, this is going to divide our streaming budget, and make piracy a cheaper option for content.
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Piracy requires almost no effort, fire up the VPN, go to PB and download.
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Piracy requires almost no effort, fire up the VPN, go to PB and download.
Granted, a VPN has privacy uses, but if you got one solely for pirating content, then you could've used that money for a streaming service and remained legally in the clear.
Expect one VPN is a lot cheaper than multiple subscriptions.
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Which is the point. For 1 streaming service or even 2 it is cheaper and easier to be legit. For many subscriptions piracy becomes cheaper.
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You're right, but of course now the younger generation has lost those "pirating" skills, and anything harder than dabbing the "streaming" icon is beyond them.
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You're right, but of course now the younger generation has lost those "pirating" skills, and anything harder than dabbing the "streaming" icon is beyond them.
Pirating skills are the same as googling skills with the only difference being you need to know which are the good sites and at a push what a vpn is.
And Congress knew they would (Score:5, Insightful)
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What about those of us who don't do party politics? Where's the list of more than 2 viable parties that basically every other modern democracy has?
I don't particularly want to go into politics to represent myself, but I gotta say: both sides have been playing the ends against the middle. Neither party has even a sheen of honesty to it.
If you need to participate in an unregulated political structure outside the legally established one in order to have any real play in the legally established political system
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What about those of us who don't do party politics? Where's the list of more than 2 viable parties that basically every other modern democracy has?
Well, in 2016 you also had the choice of Johnson/Weld for the Libertarians, Stein/Baraka for the Greens(not eligible in 2 states), Castle/Bradley for the Constitution Party (wasn't eligible for electors in 4 states), and McMillan/Finn for the Independents (not eligible in 9 states).
People keep complaining about the 2 party system and how both parties are broken, and yet they continue to vote for them (or simply don't vote at all). And if you ask them why they don't vote 3rd party, they say it's because the
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People keep complaining about the 2 party system and how both parties are broken, and yet they continue to vote for them (or simply don't vote at all). And if you ask them why they don't vote 3rd party, they say it's because they can't win. And as long as people have that mindset, they can't. 2016 should have been a banner year for third parties given the number of people who voted based upon "I don't like candidate X, but I really hate candidate Y, so I'll vote for X", but they didn't even consider voting for candidate Z.
It's not exactly voting for the lesser of two evils. It's voting to try to prevent the unacceptable from happening. If you have a situation where X or Y is all but assured to win, and Y is unacceptable you could well be doing yourself a much larger disservice by voting for Z than by voting for X.
Now how do we make third party candidates viable in this country? That's a great question. I would love to see it, but I haven't seen a proposal yet to make it happen. Yes, the two parties have a lot to ga
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You shouldn't have to be forced into a reactionary stance on every vote.
The solution to the 2 party lock is ranked choice voting.
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You're not actually. Many local government votes often are 3 or more candidates, and those arguably matter the most. It starts with the local.
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so run against them.
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Your term paper assignment is to read up on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, and show how "ranked choice voting" preserves Arrow's fairness criteria. In detail.
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Is that missing a "realistic" or some similar qualifier? The proposal is ancient: ditch first-past-the-post for just about anything else, but most likely for a ranked choice voting system. In fact, I've just learnt that some states will be using one for their Democratic primaries this year. The problem is that to use it for votes that "matter"
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"How do we make third party candidates viable in this country?"
You CAN'T. It is NOT POSSIBLE.
Start by reading Kenneth Arrow's dissertation. If that is too tough for you, Google Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Basically, it is NOT POSSIBLE to run an election with more than two choices, that preserves certain very basic fairness criteria. The fairness criteria are things like "Voting for Clinton won't help Trump get elected (or vice versa)", "Every vote counts", "No vote counts more or less than any other
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Basically, it is NOT POSSIBLE to run an election with more than two choices,
It may not be possible in the US but has been quite possible in several countries around the world. I didn't bother to read either reference so I'm don't know if the arguments they propose are US centric or not but there are many countries that have more than 2 parties and they are working just fine (for the most part).
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Consider, if you will, the Clinton/Bush/Perot presidential election. Clinton and Bush each took about 40% of the popular vote. Ross Perot took 20%.
Clinton won.
This means that 60% of the electorate did NOT vote for him. It is not known whether he might have been the second choice of some of them, or whether they all considered him Evil Incarnate. What IS known is that, under Arrow's fairness criteria, Clinton should not have won that election. This was the point that Arrow was making.
Now consider that o
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Canada manages to have multiple parties with a first past the post system though admittedly the winner is one of two parties usually.
Besides having a Parliamentary system, other differences include splitting the elections up so the Federal election is divorced from the Provincial elections, which happen at varying times. This allows new parties to start at the Provincial level. We also have at least one regional party, the Bloc, who aren't in it to win, just influence and they've come in second before.
Here
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I think that this has gone beyond simply needing to change peoples' minds.
The level of advertising money and voter manipulation has risen to the level of, in my opinion, something like anti-competitive and monopolistic behaviors. Barriers to entry have been erected by the incumbent parties to deny practical access to the other parties. Capture, in short.
If you want evidence, compare the # of elected government figures for the 2 major parties to those of all others. We're past the point of "not popular" and
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> Barriers to entry have been erected by the incumbent parties to deny practical access to the other parties. Capture, in short.
Correct. In a plurality voting system you get two parties. Read up on Duverger's Law for the polisci. Even in plurality systems with multiple parties, they split voting blocks by region into two parties (e.g. the North of England).
To have, say, ten viable parties requires a Condorset-complete voting system. Approval Voting is the simplest one or these to implement, and since
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One problem is that your Founding Fathers expected the people to learn and rewrite your Constitution regularly and instead it has turned into a religious document that is worshiped and can't be touched (much).
This also gives your courts too much power. 1st amendment says all speech is allowed, courts say only certain speech is protected. Likewise for the 2nd which clearly allows military grade weapons to everyone.
If you're Green caucus for Bernie (Score:2)
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And if you ask them why they don't vote 3rd party, they say it's because they can't win. And as long as people have that mindset, they can't.
It is not just simply a mindset, it's a by design choice in how votes are tallied and the winner declared. Trump won Michigan with 47.6% of the vote. Clinton did a 47.3% there. Johnson did 3.6%. The fact that the winner was declared with no one actually reaching 50%+1 vote is a sign that our system is fundamentally broken for the inclusion of third parties. If you saw on Reddit during the 2016, the hard left subreddits had a good bit of folks that were advocating a vote Johnson as a middle finger vote
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It is because the US does not have proportional representation. The system is designed around the winner taking all the representation (you vote for one representative only). This prevents third parties from getting a foothold. Even in places with a ranked-choice voting system, if they still rely on one-and-only-one winner at the end then you still won't get proportional representation. The major drawback is that this sort of system encourages politicians to worry first and foremost about winning, with i
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What we are seeing is a pushback to the current DNC machine. This is just like the pushback to the GOP when the tea party took power.
We need to vote pro consumer whenever possible to take the power back from the Corporations.
Be it GOP or DNC always vote pro consumer.
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One of them said that she basically voted for the lesser of 2 evils.
That's why I voted for Cthulhu in 2016. It was the lesser evil that year.
I guess you could do worse than a Cthulhu/Coon ticket.
Re: And Congress knew they would (Score:2)
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Bernie is not a Democrat. So you could always vote for him as a stick in the eye to the establishment.
That's the same logic that got us Trump.
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Where's the list of more than 2 viable parties that basically every other modern democracy has?
I'm in the UK so lets fix that:
Where's the list of viable parties that basically every other modern democracy has?
Here, once all the fixed-minded voters have chosen the only party they'll ever vote for, only one party really stands a chance of winning without a following wind, the second party's chances have been decimated by the rise of Scottish nationalists and the third party insists on campaigning based on what would happen if hell froze over and they won an absolute majority rather than what they would do in the more feasible case of holding the balance of power in a 'hung parliamen
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Where's the list of more than 2 viable parties that basically every other modern democracy has?
I'm in the UK so lets fix that:
Where's the list of viable parties that basically every other modern democracy has?
Here, once all the fixed-minded voters have chosen the only party they'll ever vote for, only one party really stands a chance of winning without a following wind, the second party's chances have been decimated by the rise of Scottish nationalists and the third party insists on campaigning based on what would happen if hell froze over and they won an absolute majority rather than what they would do in the more feasible case of holding the balance of power in a 'hung parliament' . Vote for any other party in England (there's a bit more to it in the other UK countries) and at best you're just affirming that you're not too lazy to walk to the polling station, at worst you're contributing to some unpredictable unintended consequence of vote-splitting.
Even in countries with better proportional representation, the devil is still in what deals are done to form a majority coalition.
To quote the late, great Douglas Adams: nobody capable of getting themselves elected should, under any circumstances, be allowed to do the job.
What's kind of ironic is that, in a multi-party, coalition type system like the UK where you elect Parliament who then chooses a PM, it's almost better to be the 3rd-largest party. No party is big enough to form a government on their own, which means they have to form a coalition. To do that means compromises. If you are the 3rd largest party then you are almost always going to be approached to join that coalition, allowing you to set some terms. You have a greater chance of getting things you really wa
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It doesn't have to be a coalition, here in Canada, usually one party has a supply and confidence agreement with a third party rather then a coalition and due to the agreement certain policies get pushed. It's how we ended up with universal healthcare, the 3rd party insisted on it to support one of the main parties.
The parties have also learned the people don't like too frequent elections and will punish the one that triggers it by not compromising so the parties are motivated.
Take over the Democratic party (Score:2)
The Democrats at least have Bernie and the Justice Democrats. There's somet
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What about those of us who don't do party politics? Where's the list of more than 2 viable parties that basically every other modern democracy has?
citation needed.
Our brain is wired to prefer "X or Y" choices (fight or flee, friend or foe, us and them, etc) - all the modern democratic countries end up in duopolies (even if a side is a coalition of more than one). You only break out - and eventually end up in a different duopoly, after people get a big enough jolt to "waste" their vote to express anger.
The corporate powers that be have marketed effectively if you believe that it can't work in the USA. They have short circuited your anger by making you
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Let's face it, in the end you have the choice which crook gets to let his cronies fleece you. It sure makes a difference to the bandit who gets to rob you, but does it really make a difference to you?
That's what Primaries are for (Score:2)
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In a two party system, candidate selection will always be about power as much if not more than policy. The name of the game is building a working coalition. You have start with your base, whose vote you can count on, less because they like you and more because they loathe the other party. Then you start scrounging under the sofa cushions for people who don't pay attention to politics if they can avoid it.
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Good job politicizing the apolitical. (Score:2)
Compulsory time (Score:5, Insightful)
It is time for compulsory licensing.
Congress can work out the details, but 5 (or whatever) years after a movie premiers, or after an episode airs, any/every streaming service should have the legal right to obtain a copy (by whatever means) and stream it for a nominal fee per second streamed.
The fees and accounting requirements should be high enough that streaming services will want to enter into negotiations for a better deal, but low enough that copyright creators won't be able to hold them hostage.
By the way, this is the libertarian position. Copyright is created by government for the benefit of the public. The current rapacious scheme is not morally or philosophically superior.
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Let me tell you exactly how that will end.
"Umm *pushes fingers together like an anime girl* We lost the movie's video files."
It's fine. But the day they make it available again on whatever platform, they have to make it available to everyone.
Re:Compulsory time (Score:4, Insightful)
But if they "lost" the movie file then they wouldn't be able to show/stream the movie either and would thus be missing out on a revenue stream.
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"This is the libertarian position" ? The position that forces people to sell their content at a price dictated by the Government (or lower, if negotiated)? That... doesn't sound like the libertarian position. Netflix has a right to stream Friends at a ceiling price... "for the benefit of the public"... even though they did nothing to create it?
No. Please leave.
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I guess a true libertarian would abolish all forms of IP, and then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Either because copying is now legal, or because there'd be nothing to copy.
Re: Compulsory time (Score:2)
A true libertarian leaves it up to private parties to decide what to do with content and copyright would be an inherent right to the creator. There, simple.
Creators don't owe you anything unless you pay them. They can sell their rights to the highest bidders or decide to make it public based on their personal value system.
Why should you get to own the fruits of my labour, now or in the future?
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Why should you get to own the fruits of my labour, now or in the future?
Talk to the pirates
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Why should you get to own the fruits of my labour, now or in the future?
Because the fruits of your labour are built on others labour, the whole seeing further by standing on the shoulders of giants thing. Copyright, an artificial construct, was invented to promote learning and more content by giving a limited monopoly. The day you invent or create something with no input from society, it's your own content.
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Why should you get to own the fruits of my labour, now or in the future?
Well I can't go into your house and take your stuff but I can quote that absurd statement as many times as I like.
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A true libertarian leaves it up to private parties to decide what to do with content and copyright would be an inherent right to the creator.
There is no such inherent right, and libertarians don't support artificial privileges such as copyright which can only be maintained through the application of disproportionate force. The only inherent right creators have in this domain is the right not to publish. They can of course choose not to distribute copies of their original work to anyone who hasn't signed an NDA, but that has a number of practical limits, including the fact that most people won't be willing to enter into NDAs for trivial matters a
Yes: Compulsory time (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes it is time for regulatory intervention in one of two ways.
1) Prevent vertical integration of content producers/owners with content distributors. Do not allow there to be any parent/child relationship between the two groups. Require companies that want to distribute content to license it from content producers/owners. If you own the capability to distribute content (i.e you're an ISP or cable company) then you're not allowed to be involved in content ownership/production. This would mean that Disney and
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I can't agree with #1 strongly enough. It makes no sense to claim you have a functioning capitalist society or a functioning media, if one company owns a newspaper, a TV station, a streaming service, an movie studio, an ISP, and a cable TV company.
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That's how capitalism works, eventually one, or a few, own everything and can charge rent without having to do much. What we need is a free market to counteract the worst of capitalism and a free market requires something like government to set rules and be a referee. Of course capitalism includes purchasing the rules and referee so it is not simple.
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I think you have a good idea. Content and distribution channels should be forcefully decoupled. No company should be allowed to exclusively distribute content that it owns. It's time for RAND to become the standard for content that can be copyrighted.
By all means someone who copyrights or patents something should be allowed to profit from it. That doesn't mean that companies should be able to have a monopoly over the content itself though. Content is created for the public good and by definition all content
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I've had this same thought, and struggled with it because I don't think the government should interfere with business's licensing decisions. But something is very wrong here. Companies are choosing to sell fewer of their product, in order to get a higher price per unit, by engaging in exclusivity agreements. Is this anti-competitive?
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This also prevents the quid pro quo which plagues patent licensing (where two behemoth patent holders simply agree to cross-license their patent por
If only government worked (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T's decision to prevent Time Warner-owned shows from streaming on Netflix and other non-AT&T services reduced the company's quarterly revenue by $1.2 billion, a sacrifice that AT&T is making to give its planned HBO Max service more exclusive content. AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content,
In any sane world, Congress would be allowed to nullify the agreement, force them to sell/spin off Time Warner(and bar them from reacquiring it later), and fine them.
What's really sad is that, even in my dream world, I can't see them censuring/prosecuting AT&T representatives for lying to Congress.
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They can always push anti-trust against AT&T in response. Will the Democrats in the House explore this possibility? Hard to say. They're distracted by other things.
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It isn't solely the House of Representatives place to initiate anti-trust investigations. The FTC could initiate an anti-trust investigation and the FTC is controlled by the Republicans. So this isn't really (just) a failure of the Democrats.
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The DoJ has already taken a swipe at this merger:
https://www.barrons.com/articl... [barrons.com]
Trump doesn't like it, but he didn't get his way.
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That. AT&T chose its words very carefully. It may not have made sense at that place and time. Evidently things have changed.
Misunderstanding? (Score:2)
Now, I have no love of ATT and the massive vertical integration that seems to be happening everywhere is this sector - but wasn't this statement more of a "we're not going to restrict HBO to only ATT networks and use that as a competitive advantage for our other verticals" rather than "we're not going to launch our own streaming service for our own content in the future, when everyone else are"?
Break 'em up (Score:2)
Companies that provide transmission capability (ISP, backbone) should NOT be permitted in the content business.All the existing companies in both ends of the business should be broken up.
Companies don't know the future (Score:2)
AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content, claiming that would be "irrational business behavior."
Did they sign a Contract on a dotted line committing them to never do that? If they did not sign a contract, then their plans could have changed at any point. This is why the government should Not believe such assurances or approve anything based on those assurances, Unless they secure that assurance in some manne
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Companies can always change their plans later...the statement might have seemed 100% correct at the time made
I'm with you except for that. They promised not to do it specifically because it did make sense for the company to do it, but not for the consumer. It is the kind of thing that made the acquisition concerning.
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Reading their actual statement to congress, I'm not seeing where they "promised" anything at all.
Well, okay (Score:2)
I guess we'll just have to get along without their crap content. Whatever will we do?!
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I guess we'll just have to get along without their crap content. Whatever will we do?!
Yeah. Friends and Fresh Prince, while funny for their time, are dated now. TBBT always sucked. And my wife watched Pretty Little Liars. Literally the whole town hates one girl (who was really just a bully more than anything else) so much that they would either be willing to kill her or didn't care if someone killed her. And how exactly does 1 person finance and construct a whole underground complex without anybody in the town finding out about it? Not really big losses.
Not a reverasal at all (Score:2)
This is not "exactly what they said they wouldn't do."
The question was about combining Time Warner's assets (HBO, CNN, etc.) with AT&T's distribution assets (DirectTV, AT&T Wireless). The concern was that AT&T would restrict content to it's own distribution. Al Franken during the testimony:
Brilliant Strategy! (Score:2)
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First, I do NOT agree with what AT&T is doing and I see it as a violation of the agreement they made.
They didn't piss away 2 billion dollars in potential profit, they're betting that 2 billion dollars that they can get enough subscribers to THEIR streaming service and hopefully make that 2 billion from direct subscription instead of from licensing.
I don't understand the problem (Score:2)
AT&T isn't blocking Netflix. They have their own streaming service, and they have some shows. They wan't to make their own streaming service more attractive by keeping their shows on their service. If they were going to choke off Netflix's stream, I'd agree that there was a reason for outrage. But, the outrage over what is going on here doesn't make any sense. Should Netflix be required to share their content with HBO Max?
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Should Netflix be required to share their content with HBO Max?
If they told Congress they were going to as a condition of getting Congressional approval for a merger then yes, they probably should.
Did anyone really believe... (Score:2)
that AT&T would keep their word to Congress? History says they say what is needed to get the deal done and then do whatever the hell they want.
Did AT&T lie? (Score:2)
The scorpion & the frog (Score:2)
Congress is mentally AWOL (Score:2)
Congress has shown and argued that the only way to remove most riff-raff is to vote them or their enablers out of office. Voters are now the only real checks and balances.
No different than movie studios in the 30's (Score:2)
In the early days of Hollywood the major studios also owned the movie theaters. The theaters then would naturally only carry movies from their own studios and shunned all others. The U.S. government rightfully concluded this was anti-trust behavior and they forced the studios to divest their theater holdings. Today is no different. The content owners are once again owning the means of distribution. And the same behavior is occurring: Only the company store is allowed to stream the company's products.
It
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You did not have to "subscribe" to a movie theater, you bought viewings of movies a-la-carte. So the film trust days were actually better than the current situation.
So, are they going to jail (Score:2)
The CEO and his buddies should be tried and convicted for lying to Congress, and spend time in jail.
Forfeiture seems reasonable (Score:2)
They lied to get what they wanted. What they wanted should be taken away. They should have Time Warner taken away from them with no compensation.
Should be jail time for someone too. And a fine.
You and I would never get away with it. Why should they?
Unless there are consequences, this will only get worse.
Congress sucks (Score:2)
And congress will pull them into hearings, grill them, yell at them, then do nothing.
Congress needs to grow a pair and start breaking them up, taxing them to death, or remove their licensing. When laws or agreements are broken there should be a MASSIVE penalty to stop this behavior.
Re: (Score:2)
Were those people under oath? Do we even know if the people in question are still at AT&T? Are they involved in decision making?
Re: (Score:2)
Were those people under oath? Do we even know if the people in question are still at AT&T? Are they involved in decision making?
Those who gave written and verbal testimony to congress on this issue were very much under oath.
I would be curious to hear if the natural follow-up question was asked: "What's to stop you in the future if the environment changes?"