I covered the AOL/Time-Warner merger back in the day for a major research advisory firm, although I don’t have specific legal background in anti-trust.

The arguments that were used for imposing the restrictions that they did centered around using subscriber information to tip technology in a certain direction, which would lead to a de facto market dominance by AOL. At the time, this concern was aimed at instant-messaging technology, specifically the idea of “presence”. Network awareness of subscribers’ presence online is central to a wide range of business models. At the time, Instant Messaging and future enhancements were the main technologies in question. AOL/TW was required to make their IM technology inter-operable if they made substantial improvements to it, such as video-conferencing.

I’m not familiar with the vertical-integration in the broadband industry any more, but that’s the other major avenue for FTC and FCC regulation. The concern is that companies that own both content production and content distribution avenues should be regulated such that these branches are mostly decoupled. This goes back to when movie studios owned movie theaters, so you could only see movies from one studio unless you had a competing studio’s theater in your town.

Thus, an anti-trust challenge to net-neutrality could take one of several forms:

On the telco side, it could be on the basis of using infrastructure designated as “essential facilities” to deliver discriminatory services. I purposely avoided this discussion because it’s very arcane, and deregulation may have changed the circumstances as I understood them. Basically, the idea is that telecommunications is viewed as a technology that is essential to society, and that it makes no sense to have competing standards, so there are regulations involving interoperability, and subsidies for rural coverage (ie, “universal service”). Essential Facilities are, pretty much by definition, content-neutral. They’re regulated on a statewide basis, and companies offering services have to file tariffs with the state regulatory authority, and the telco has to deliver a certain level of service to any company using the ‘essential facilities’.

So, an anti-trust challenge might be on the basis of misuse of ‘essential facilities’ to restrict access to certain websites.

It could also take the form of market dominance in a particular area, so that if cable modems were only available from one company, and that company restricted access to websites based on proprietary technology standards (as in the AOL-IM restrictions), that would be grounds for an anti-trust challenge.

Finally, the vertical-integration issue is a time-honored regulatory avenue in the media industry. Any time a company controls both the content production and content distribution over a geographic area, the circumstances are ripe for federal regulation on anti-trust grounds. If Comcast is the sole provider of cable-modem Internet access in an area, than regulators could look closely at websites where Comcst has an investment vs. websites where Comcast doesn’t have an investment, just as they look at TV networks in which Comcast has an investment.

sorry, please delete one of those posts

there is no such thing as “reducing taxes” there are only loans taken against future return

it is PERFECTLY FINE to TARGET a TAX INCENTIVE.

THIS IS NOT A TAX REDUVTION

tax incentives are not gifts, they are economic strategy to inspire growth in a particular ecomonic segment

THOSE ARE LOANS, AND THE LOAN HAS TO BE RETURNED FROM THE SEGMENT IT TARGETS

THAT’S the way we have to present our position on lowering taxes

we have to make it CLEAR we are FOR tax incentives and we have to make it CLEAR those insentives will be goinng to the economic segments NEED to be promoted

like ALTERNATIVE FUELS.

and we make it CLEAR the money gets RETURNED by the segment that the tax strategy targets

hmmm

I like it so far, will work on more at another time

i caint hardly wait fer november, witch thays a heap of wurk yet to be dun ere then …

… witch thats jes whut yer all a’doin.

kudos!