Under the proposal, the Justice Department would oversee antitrust actions in a broad range of industries where IT plays a central role: Internet, software, electronic media such as over-the-air television and cable, as well as advertising and publishing. FTC would keep jurisdiction over computer hardware, health care, and biotechnology.
The plan progressed to the point of scheduling a press conference on 17 January to make the announcement, but the parties had to abruptly cancel it even after reporters had assembled at the FTC to hear the news. The Washington Post cited a spokesperson for Senator Ernest F. Hollings (D, SC) who said Hollings complained about the deal, and especially for not being consulted on it. Hollings chairs the Senate Commerce Committee that has jurisdiction over the FTC, and the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding of the Justice Department.
A Dow-Jones news wire story cited a staff member of the Senate Judiciary's subcommittee on antitrust, whose chairman, Herb Kohl (D, WI) also objected to the plan. The FTC has kept a close watch on the AOL/Time Warner merger, especially the requirement to open its broadband transmission facilities to non-AOL Internet service providers, an important issue to Kohl.
Democrats: media content oversight centralized under Justice Department
The FTC has five commissioners, three Republicans and two Democrats, and both Democrats objected publicly to the agreement. Mozelle Thompson, one of the Democrats on the commission, said the agreement resulted from private discussions between Republican FTC chairman Timothy Muris and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Charles James, and claimed not even seeing a copy of the agreement until a day before the scheduled announcement. "This lack of transparency," said Thomson, "makes it difficult for the other four Commissioners to discharge their obligation to determine whether consumers would actually benefit from such a significant change at this agency."
Thompson added that the agreement would have transferred all matters involving media content under the Justice Department. With new electronic media creating many novel issues in the antitrust field, the proposed plan would deprive consumers of the independent and bipartisan oversight of the FTC. To support the argument, Thompson cited several FTC media cases in addition to its work with the AOL/Time Warner merger, notably book publisher Random House, MSC Software in the computer-aided engineering field, Hearst's pharmaceutical databases, and Sony's compact disk pricing policies.
Go To Page: 1 2
