Big Tech
Register for the July Broadband Breakfast Club Event: “Over the Top: Broadband Video’s Impact on Future TV”
Washington, Friday, July 12th, 2013 – BroadbandBreakfast.com will hold its July 2013 Broadband Breakfast Club event:
“Over the Top: Broadband Video’s Impact on Future TV” on Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 at Clyde’s of Gallery Place, 707 7th St. NW, Washington, DC 20001 from 8 am – 10 am.
Registration at: http://broadbandbreakfast.eventbrite.com
“Over the Top,” or video distribution directly over broadband networks, is the new way video is increasingly being consumed by a younger generation of internet users. What are the needs and preferences of this new generation, who watch films and programs on smart phones, tablets and laptops — but not on necessarily on televisions or through cable or broadcast programming? Apple’s iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Aereo and a range of other companies have begun to pave a new direction for what’s being called “future video” and “future TV”. What are the impacts of these new viewing patterns and video viewing options upon pay-television and broadcast providers? Are the new players in the broadband landscape able to purchase rights to also offer pay-television content? And is the traditional consumer “bundle” of television, telephone and broadband service no longer desirable for the typical consumer? These and other questions will be addressed by a panel of experts and moderated by Drew Clark, Chairman and Publisher of the Broadband Breakfast Club.
Details and Registration are available at:
http://broadbandbreakfast.eventbrite.com
Panel:
John Bergmayer
Senior Staff Attorney
Public Knowledge
John Bergmayer specializes in telecommunications, internet, and intellectual property issues. He advocates for the public interest before courts and policymakers, and works to make sure that all stakeholders–including ordinary citizens, artists, and technological innovators–have a say in shaping emerging digital policies. He is a member of the Colorado bar and a graduate of the University of Colorado Law School.
Daren Miller
Director
Content Partner Management
Centurylink
Daren Miller is a 30 year veteran of the telecommunications, cable and media industries. He currently serves as head of programming for CenturyLink. Miller’s responsibilities include content licensing and management for CenturyLink’s consumer video product platforms, including its wire line video service, PRISM, as well as its broadband portal. Prior to joining CenturyLink (formerly through Qwest Communications), Miller served in a number of senior management roles with TCI, Liberty Media and Fox Sports affiliates. He was the principal architect and manager of TCI’s, subsequently Liberty Media’s, portfolio of 15 regional sports networks and related businesses, now known as Fox Sports Nets. Miller has held roles in cable MSO programming licensing and television network management and operations for those affiliates. He has extensive experience in the negotiation of sports television programming as well as multiplatform pay television distribution rights. Miller is currently based in Denver, Colorado.
Michael E. Drobac
Senior Policy Advisor
Patton Boggs
Michael Drobac helps clients from the technology and telecommunications sectors define public policy objectives, develop strategic messaging in support of those objectives and define and execute outreach strategies. He advocates before Congress and federal agencies in support of policy objectives. Prior to joining Patton Boggs, Mr. Drobac was director of government relations for Netflix. He established and served as the first director of the company’s Washington DC office. Mr. Drobac also brings nearly ten years of experience in legislative affairs on Capitol Hill, acquired during periods of service to the offices of three United States senators. For Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Mr. Drobac reviewed all legislative items for the senator, with a primary focus on telecommunications and technology as well as judiciary matters, serving as lead policy advisor on Internet and technology issues for the Senate Commerce Committee.
Sharon Peyer
Founder
HitBliss
Sharon Peyer is a co-founder and VP, Business Development of HitBliss. In this capacity she oversees efforts related to the licensing of content distributed in the HitBliss store, efforts to attract third party brands to HitBliss Earn and HitBliss’ consumer marketing efforts. From 2004 until 2007, Sharon held similar responsibilities at Pixamo, a photo sharing and social networking startup that she co-founded and successfully sold. Prior to Pixamo, Sharon worked in a variety of entrepreneurial capacities primarily within the investment and venture capital industries in the United States and Europe. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown University and a Master degree in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.
Eric J. Wolf
Executive for Technology Strategy and Planning
PBS
Eric Wolf is PBS’ Vice President for Technology Strategy and Planning. He spends much of his time at the intersection of media, technology, public policy, and the future. He’s currently working on issues as varied as the upcoming spectrum auctions, PBS next generation of content distribution, and unified asset management tools for PBS’ internal departments. Prior to PBS, Eric spent 9 years with AOL leading groups that built products used by tens of millions of people around the globe. Earlier in his career Eric held technology and organizational leadership roles at Peter D. Hart Research, a public opinion research boutique, and Symbolics, Inc. He holds 3 U.S. patents in the realm of interactive communications and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Political Science from Brown University.
Additional speakers have been invited
Moderator:
Drew Clark is the Chairman and Publisher of the Broadband Breakfast Club, the premier Washington forum advancing the conversation on broadband. Additionally, under his leadership as Executive Director of Broadband Illinois, he has helped unite the Land of Lincoln around a vision of Better Broadband, Better Lives. Illinois’ State Broadband Initiative has become the national model for public-private collaboration. Broadband Illinois provides the tools that citizens, communities and businesses need to get online and to get more out of their internet use. Clark earned his Bachelors of Arts (with Honors) in Philosophy and Economics from Swarthmore College, his Master of Science from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and his Juris Doctor from George Mason University School of Law. He has written widely on the politics of technology, entertainment and telecommunications for Ars Technica, GigaOm, National Journal, Slate, the Washington Post, and the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property. He also serves on the board of the Rural Telecommunications Congress. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter.
American and Continental breakfasts are included. The program begins shortly after 8:30 a.m. Tickets to the event are $45.00 plus a small online fee.
The Broadband Breakfast Club is sponsored by Comcast, Google and US Telecom.
The Broadband Breakfast Club series meets on the third Tuesday of each month (except for August and December).
The upcoming event schedule can be viewed at
http://broadbandbreakfastseries.eventbrite.com
Read our website for broadband news and event write-ups
http://www.broadbandbreakfast.com
Videos of our previous events are available at:
https://broadbandbreakfast.com/category/broadband-tv/
Background on BroadbandBreakfast.com
BroadbandBreakfast.com is in its fifth year of hosting monthly breakfast forums in Washington on broadband policy and related subjects. These events are on the record, open to the public and consider a wide range of viewpoints. Our Broadband Breakfast Club meets on the third tuesday of every month (except for August and December).
Our elected official keynotes have included Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Diane Watson (D-CA), James Clyburn (D-SC), Joe Barton (R-TX) and the former Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA).
Our agency and commission official keynotes have included Deputy Undersecretary for Agriculture Dallas Tonsager; FCC Wireless Telecommunications Chief, Ruth Milkman; former RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein, Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill; former Deputy Assistant Secretary NTIA Anna Gomez; and former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, among others.
Our moderated discussion panels are comprised of leaders from a wide variety of organizations including government, industry, law firms, academia, nonprofit, journalism and many others. Our audiences are equally diverse.
For More Information Contact:
Sylvia Syracuse
Director of Marketing and Events
BroadbandBreakfast.com
Sylvia@broadbandcensus.com
646-262-4630
Free Speech
Improved Age Verification Allows States to Consider Restricting Social Media
Constitutional issues leading courts to strike down age verification law are still present, said EFF.

WASHINGTON, November 20, 2023 — A Utah law requiring age verification for social media accounts is likely to face First Amendment lawsuits, experts warned during an online panel Wednesday hosted by Broadband Breakfast.
The law, set to take effect in March 2024, mandates that all social media users in Utah verify their age and imposes additional restrictions on minors’ accounts.
The Utah law raises the same constitutional issues that have led courts to strike down similar laws requiring age verification, said Aaron Mackey, free speech and transparency litigation director at the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“What you have done is you have substantially burdened everyone’s First Amendment right to access information online that includes both adults and minors,” Mackey said. “You make no difference between the autonomy and First Amendment rights of older teens and young adults” versus young children, he said.
But Donna Rice Hughes, CEO of Enough is Enough, contended that age verification technology has successfully restricted minors’ access to pornography and could be applied to social media as well.
“Utah was one of the first states [to] have age verification technology in place to keep minor children under the age of 18 off of porn sites and it’s working,” she said.
Tony Allen, executive director of Age Check Certification Scheme, agreed that age verification systems had progressed considerably from a generation ago, when the Supreme Court in 2002’s Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, struck down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. The law had been designed to shield minors from indecent material, but the court ruled that age-verification methods often failed at that task.
Andrew Zack, policy manager at the Family Online Safety Institute, said that his organization he welcomed interest in youth safety policies from Utah.
But Zack said, “We still have some concerns about the potential unintended consequences that come with this law,” worrying particularly about potential unintended consequences for teen privacy and expression rights.
Taylor Barkley, director of technology and innovation at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, highlighted the importance of understanding the specific problems the law aims to address. “Policy Solutions have trade-offs.” urging that solutions be tailored to the problems identified.
Panelists generally agreed that comprehensive data privacy legislation could help address social media concerns without facing the same First Amendment hurdles.
Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 – Social Media for Kids in Utah
In March 2023, Utah became the first state to adopt laws regulating kids’ access to social media. This legislative stride was rapidly followed by several states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi, with numerous others contemplating similar measures. For nearly two decades, social media platforms enjoyed unbridled growth and influence. The landscape is now changing as lawmakers become more active in shaping the future of digital communication. This transformation calls for a nuanced evaluation of the current state of social media in the United States, particularly in light of Utah’s pioneering role. Is age verification the right way to go? What are the broader implications of this regulatory trend for the future of digital communication and online privacy across the country?
Panelists
- Andrew Zack, Policy Manager, Family Online Safety Institute
- Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO of Enough Is Enough
- Taylor Barkley, Director of Technology and Innovation, Center for Growth and Opportunity
- Tony Allen, Executive Director, Age Check Certification Scheme
- Aaron Mackey, Free Speech and Transparency Litigation Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast
Panelist resources
- Utah Protecting Minors Online, State of Utah web site
- Opinion: Does Utah’s social media law respect teens’ rights?, Stephen Balkam, Deseret News
- Twitter thread by Taylor Barkley
- Good Digital Parenting Resources, Family Online Safety Institute
- Coming to Terms with Age Assurance, Family Online Safety Institute
- Making Sense of Age Assurance: Enabling Safer Online Experiences, Family Online Safety Institute
- Social Media and Minors, Center for Growth and Opportunity
- Clicks and Codes: Social Media Awareness Legislation in the States, Center for Growth and Opportunity
- What Should Policymakers Do about Social Media and Minors?, Center for Growth and Opportunity
- Internet Safety 101– Enough Is Enough’s designated website to educate, equip and empower parents and caregivers
Internet Safety 101 Downloadable Parent Quick Guides and Resources, Enough is Enough
- Rein In Big Tech, 30 second shararable clip from Enough is Enough
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Rein in Big Tech for the sake of our children, Donna Rice Hughes, Washington Times
-
Treat Big Tech like Big Tobacco to protect our kids, Donna Rice Hughes, Fox News
- To Address Online Harms, We Must Consider Privacy First, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Andrew Zack is the Policy Manager for the Family Online Safety Institute, leading policy and research work relating to online safety issues, laws, and regulations. He works with federal and state legislatures, relevant federal agencies, and industry leaders to develop and advance policies that promote safe and positive online experience for families. Andrew joined FOSI after five years in Senator Ed Markey’s office, where he worked primarily on education, child welfare, and disability policies. Andrew studied Government and Psychology at the College of William and Mary.
Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO of Enough Is Enough is an internationally known Internet safety expert, author, speaker and producer. Her vision, expertise and advocacy helped to birth the Internet safety movement in America at the advent of the digital age. Since 1994, she has been a pioneering leader on the frontlines of U.S. efforts to make the internet safer for children and families by implementing a three-pronged strategy of the public, the technology industry and legal community sharing the responsibility to protect children online.
Taylor Barkley is the Director of Technology and Innovation at the Center for Growth and Opportunity where he manages the research agenda, strategy, and represents the technology and innovation portfolio. His primary research and expertise are at the intersection of culture, technology, and innovation. Prior roles in tech policy have been at Stand Together, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Tony Allen a Chartered Trading Standards Practitioner and acknowledged specialist in age restricted sales law and practice. He is the Chair of the UK Government’s Expert Panel on Age Restrictions and Executive Director of a UKAS accredited conformity assessment body specialising in age and identity assurance testing and certification. He is the Technical Editor of the current international standard for Age Assurance Systems.
Aaron Mackey is EFF’s Free Speech and Transparency Litigation Director. He helps lead cases advancing free speech, anonymity, and privacy online while also working to increase public access to government records. Before joining EFF in 2015, Aaron was in Washington, D.C. where he worked on speech, privacy, and freedom of information issues at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law
Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.
As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.
SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.
Antitrust
Premium Shipping and Anti-discounting Policies Central to FTC’s Amazon Lawsuit
The FTC may be able to convince the district court that Amazon is sustaining a monopoly markup, said Herb Hovenkamp.

WASHINGTON, October 20, 2023 –While the Federal Trade Commission may have a hard time proving that Amazon has monopolistic power, some of its policies could be construed as anticompetitive.
That was the message antitrust experts delivered on Tuesday at an Information, Technology and Innovation Foundation panel on the FTC’s lawsuit against the online retailer in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington.
The agency’s complaint argues that the Amazon exerts unlawful monopoly power by forcing third party sellers to fulfill orders on Amazon and by preventing third parties selling products on Amazon from charging lower prices on other platforms.
The first policy coerces third-parties to fulfill orders on Amazon in order to get the e-commerce giant’s premium two-day shipping, the FTC has argued.
The second policy, dubbed anti-discounting, can be used as a form of price control despite having pro-competitive benefits like discouraging free riding and encouraging investment, said Kathleen Bradish, president of the Antitrust Institute.
Because Amazon requires merchants to maintain a price point on its marketplace, it can create barriers to entry when other marketplaces cannot attract merchants to sell their products at a lower price, she said.
A debate about anti-discounting
Steve Salop, professor of antitrust law at Georgetown University, added that “what Amazon does is it has algorithms that scrape all the relevant websites and if it discovers that the merchant’s product is being sold at a lower price anywhere else it contacts the merchant and says [that it has to] lower the price to [Amazon] or raise the price to” the consumer.
Herb Hovenkamp, an antitrust professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that anti-discounting policies “only work on a product-by-product basis.”
When you look at each product Amazon sells, there may not be anticompetitive power impacting each product, said Hovenkamp.
Amazon sells almost 12 million products on their e-commerce site and its individual market shares for all those products varies, he said. That means it is hard to argue that Amazon holds a monopoly for every product it sells.
Hovenkamp noted that while Amazon may succeed in areas such as streaming – which has no offline alternative – it struggles in “markets like try on clothing, tires, groceries…. Product by product, the question of how much competition Amazon faces from offline sellers varies immensely,” he said.
Bilal Sayyed, senior competition counsel at TechFreedom, a non-profit tech policy group, echoed this point: Anti-discounting policies can have anti-competitive consequences, but that they can also have pro-competitive benefits.
Sellers may not switch to other fulfillment companies because it does not make sense to do so given the “scale that Amazon has,” Bradish said, even if they prefer to use another e-commerce platform. But she acknowledged that having witnesses testify that those policies have impacted their behavior could favor the FTC’s point.
The role of Amazon’s fulfilment services
Amazon’s fulfillment services apply to several products it sells. But the FTC will need to demonstrate that monopoly prices are a result of those fulfillment services, said Hovenkamp.
“The hard part is going to be for the FTC to convince the fact finder that that’s a grouping of sales that’s capable of sustaining a monopoly markup,” he added. “It may be able to do that.”
While a large-scale operation like Amazon might have a cost advantage with fulfillment services, monopoly power will have to be determined by a finding of fact, he said.
By contrast, Sayyed argued that there is a clear pro-competitive justification for sellers using Amazon’s fulfillment services. That comes from the company’s reputation for quickly delivering goods to consumers.
“This idea that parties should be able to take advantage of the platform and the Amazon brand, but then [sell] their merchandise [through] a third party that may or may not meet the same fulfillment and delivery standards, really strikes me as very dangerous ground for the agency” to argue, said Sayyed.
Antitrust
FTC Chair Warns Artificial Intelligence Industry of Vigorous Enforcement
The FTC’s statute on consumer protection that ‘prohibits unfair deceptive practices’ extends to AI, said Kahn.

WASHINGTON, October 2, 2023 – The chair of the Federal Trade Commission warned the artificial intelligence industry Wednesday that the agency is prepared to clamp down on any monopolistic practices, as she proposed more simplistic rules to avoid confrontation.
“We’re really firing on all cylinders to make sure that we’re meeting the moment and the enormous and urgent need for robust and vigorous enforcement,” Lina Khan said at the AI and Tech Summit hosted by Politico on Wednesday.
Khan emphasized that the FTC’s statute on consumer protection “prohibits unfair deceptive practices” and that provision extends to AI development.
The comments come as artificial intelligence products advance at a brisk pace. The advent of new chat bots – such as those from OpenAI and Google that are driven by the latest advances in large language models – has meant individuals can use AI to create content from basic text prompts.
Khan stated that working with Congress to administer “more simplicity in rules” to all businesses and market participants could promote a more equal playing field for competitors.
“It’s no secret that there are defendants that are pushing certain arguments about the FTC’s authority,” Khan said. “Historically we’ve seen that the rules that are most successful oftentimes are ones that are clear and that are simple and so a regime where you have bright line rules about what practices are permitted, what practices are prohibited, I think could provide a lot more clarity and also be much more administrable.”
Khan’s comments came the day before the agency and 17 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, which is accusing the e-commerce giant of utilizing anticompetitive practices and unfair strategies to sustain its supremacy in the space.
“Obviously we don’t take on these cases lightly,” Khan said. “They are very resource intensive for us and so we think it’s a worthwhile use of those resources given just the significance of this market, the significance of online commerce, and the degree to which the public is being harmed and being deprived of the benefits of competition.”
Since being sworn in 2021, Khan’s FTC has filed antitrust lawsuits against tech giants Meta, Microsoft, and X, formerly known as Twitter.
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