The Biden administration still wants the freedom to regulate social media platforms, just not in the way Florida and Texas laws are doing it.

The Justice Department, by way of Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, filed a brief this week with the Supreme Court asking it to hear an appeal of a suit against state laws that dictate how platforms can moderate certain content and that require them to explain to users how they are moderating it.

The brief asserts that prohibiting Facebook or Twitter from removing or banning some content violates the First Amendment rights of those social-media outlets, which Prelogar says have such speech protection.

Just as a newspaper opinion page aggregates outside content, and is protected by the First Amendment, so, too is social media's content moderation.

"When a social-media platform selects, edits, and arranges third-party speech for presentation to the public, it engages in activity protected by the First Amendment," Prelogar wrote.

But the protection is not absolute, she told the court. "That activity, and the platforms’ business practices more generally, are not immune from regulation,” the brief said. “But here, the States have not articulated interests that justify the burdens imposed by the content-moderation restrictions under any potentially applicable form of First Amendment scrutiny."

President Joe Biden is on the record backing reforms, if not elimination, of the protections from civil liability social-media sites enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and the administration clearly is not opposed to regulations requiring those sites to inform users of how they are making content-moderation decisions.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are proposing tightening their merger review guidelines, citing what Attorney General Merrick Garland calls “unchecked consolidation” that “threatens the free and fair markets upon which our economy is based.”

Garland said the guidelines reflect modern market realities. One of those is the rise of the biggest of big tech, Facebook in particular. The Justice Department and FTC — under both Republican and Democratic administrations — as well as Congress have looked at Facebook with concern over efforts to buy up potential competitors before they get big enough to trigger serious merger reviews. For example, one of the new guidelines says that mergers “should not eliminate a potential entrant in a concentrated market.”

Garland said the guidelines reflect modern market realities. One of those is the rise of the biggest of Big Tech — Facebook in particular, which Justice and the FTC have targeted in both Republican and Democratic administrations — and Congress have been looking at with a concern over efforts to buy up potential competitors before they get big enough to trigger serious merger reviews. For example, one of the new guidelines says that mergers "should not eliminate a potential entrant in a concentrated market."

The FTC under chair Lina Khan had signaled it would be looking hard at big tech companies and whether they got that big via buying up to monopoly. The guidelines would put that in writing as policy going forward.

Justice and FTC divvy up merger reviews for antitrust issues, with Justice generally taking the lead on communications mergers. The Federal Communications Commission merger-review process also includes competition issues, but extends to a review of whether a merger is otherwise in the public interest.

Also Read: DOJ Investigating Search, Social, Online Sales Giants

The guidelines were last updated in 2020 during the Trump administration, but Democrats argued they kept a thumb on the scale for mergers, including by, for one, failing to identify merger characteristics that are most likely to be problematic. That is clearly not the case with the draft guidlines just proposed under the Biden Administration.

The new guidelines are in draft form, so they’ll still need to be finalized, but they will come after public comment on how the guidelines should be revised that included feedback from over 5,000 parties, the DOJ said.

The new guidelines are:

1. “Mergers should not significantly increase concentration in highly concentrated markets;
2. “Mergers should not eliminate substantial competition between firms;
3. “Mergers should not increase the risk of coordination;
4. “Mergers should not eliminate a potential entrant in a concentrated market;
5. “Mergers should not substantially lessen competition by creating a firm that controls products or services that its rivals may use to compete;
6. “Vertical mergers should not create market structures that foreclose competition;
7. “Mergers should not entrench or extend a dominant position;
8. “Mergers should not further a trend toward concentration;
9. “When a merger is part of a series of multiple acquisitions, the agencies may examine the whole series;
10. “When a merger involves a multi-sided platform, the agencies examine competition between platforms, on a platform, or to displace a platform;
11. “When a merger involves competing buyers, the agencies examine whether it may substantially lessen competition for workers or other sellers;
12. “When an acquisition involves partial ownership or minority interests, the agencies examine its impact on competition“ and “mergers should not otherwise substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.”

Those 5,000 parties, and anyone else who wants to weigh in, will now have an additional 60 days to comment on the draft guidelines, with a deadline of September 18.

The Department of Justice finally announced that it was going after Google for monopolizing the digital advertising universe.

That's all well and good, and while I suspect that the overall unpopularity of big tech with voters of both parties is a huge factor in why this is happening now, it may open up an opportunity for the television industry to steal some ad budget.

Let’s start by reviewing how we got here and why digital display advertising was able to steal so many ad dollars from TV in the first place. 

It all goes back to that old apocryphal story of the department store magnate who said, “I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which half.”

Which of course was the issue with TV: It was hard to measure, and brands had to trust that when they increased TV spending, they also upped awareness, which then spiked sales.

TV was all about reaching as many people as possible, all at the same time -- about creative executions that became part of pop culture and about creating awareness for big national brands. 

But as budgets expanded well into the nine-digit range, there was lingering fear about the half that was being wasted. 

What if there was a way around it?

Enter Google, Facebook and an army of digital publishers. Not only could they account for every single person who viewed an ad (and on mobile and digital, it was a single person, not a household full of different people) but they could also tell you exactly what each person did after seeing the ad.

All presented in slick Powerpoints filled with brightly colored charts.

If you were a brand manager with a nine figure budget, those charts were a far better CYA move than any charts the television networks could provide.

Now of course, those charts often relied on something known as “last click attribution” which posited that if someone clicked on a BMW banner and made an appointment to visit the dealership and eventually bought a 5-Series sedan, the display ad they clicked on was the reason why.

Even if the banner showed up when the user searched for “BMW dealers near me.”

Common sense said this was not actually the case, that a high value purchase like a car was not undertaken as the result of seeing a single banner ad. But common sense went out the window when you were in charge of a $300 million ad budget and could use all those colorful charts to justify the size and effectiveness of your ad budget.

So money got shifted, the “TV is Dead” drumbeat started and a whole lot of digital ad gurus and sherpas cropped up to reassure brand managers and their agencies that taking advantage of the more precise targeting that digital offered placed them among the truly enlightened. 

Not every brand skipped happily down this path -- there were many that continued to spend on TV, and were sneered at as being hopelessly out of touch for doing so, but the pressure was always there along with the headlines suggesting that digital was the future.

But then along came streaming, which was digitally delivered and could thus provide the sort of meaningful metrics that were never before possible with television advertising.

Which is why this might be the time for TV to strike back.

The DOJ focusing on how unfair Google’s ad practices are might focus brands on the folly of over-investing in digital.

Yes, it’s a good way to drive traffic and create leads. Yes, it is easily trackable. And yes, search is an amazing way to target people who are actively looking for your product. But that’s just a part of what brands need from their marketing campaigns.

They need awareness, they need an image, but most of all they need an emotional connection with viewers, which is something only TV can give them.

While it’s something of a cliche at this point, it is also very true that people can remember TV commercials they saw 20 years ago, but struggle to remember display ads they saw 20 minutes earlier.

The emotional connection -- ”capturing the head and the heart” -- is not always easy to measure or to gauge the impact of, but it is incredibly valuable over the long term. Just look at how much of a pass Southwest Airlines got from their customers after their Christmas meltdown because they’d spent years developing a positive brand image and connecting with flyers emotionally, not just rationally.

Which is the exact argument I’d use if I were pushing TV advertising -- it creates a long term connection, not a short term one, and that this is its real value, to make brands likable enough so that they can be bulletproof or relatively bulletproof if and when something goes wrong.

Something, I suspect, no digital display ad has ever done.

A judge has told the Justice Department to make public redacted copies of some documents involving the FBI search/raid on former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, which allegedly turned up boxes of classified documents that should have gone to the National Archives.

CNN et al. had asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal all documents related to the raid, including probable cause support for the warrant. The Justice Department had not wanted those documents made public as it did some other related documents.

In a hearing Thursday, Judge Bruce Reinhart said he was not convinced the FBI search affidavit should remain fully sealed, as Justice had wanted, according to CNN. ■

Citing Elon Musk's ownership of satellite internet platform Starlink, the Open Markets Institute says that the FCC, Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission all have the power to block his purchase of social media giant Twitter.

In a statement following the deal announcement, OMI, a liberal think tank that has big issues with perceived monopolies, sees Musk's Twitter takeover as just that, and says the FCC, for one, can block it based on the Communications Act of 1934 and even the Telegraph Act of 1860, given that the deal would give a single person "direct control over one of the world's most important platforms for public communications and debate."

Also: Warner Warns Musk Against Twitter Backslide

DOJ and the FTC certainly have a role in reviewing the $40 billion-plus deal, but the FCC's role is less clear, particularly since it basically shed itself of broadband access oversight -- beyond service transparency obligations -- when it reclassified internet as an information service.

OMI also says the deal would be a merger between essential platforms -- Starlink and Twitter -- that the government routinely acts to prevent.

Interestingly, the group cites for example the DOJ's effort to block the ATT&T/Time Warner deal, which actually failed after a court refused to block that merger.

OMI suggests that Starlink, which has yet to become a major internet player (though it did get a lot of press for Musk's effort to use the satellites to provide internet access to war-torn Ukraine) is comparable to the largest media operations. 

"[J]ust as we would now expect the U.S. government to block a takeover of Twitter by Google, Facebook, Comcast, or Verizon, the same rules apply to the owners of Starlink," it said in a statement.

Many Democrats are concerned that Musk's pledge of reduced content moderation on the platform -- in the name of free speech -- will lead to an increase in disinformation and misinformation. 

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who has been crticial of what Republicans see as Twitter's censorship of conservative speech, including that of former President Donald Trump, was unconvinced.

“The FCC has no authority to block Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and to suggest otherwise is absurd," said Carr in a statement. "I would welcome the full FCC making it clear that we will not entertain these types of frivolous arguments.”■

The Biden administration is looking beyond antitrust theories for input on the “first-hand impacts” of media and tech mergers to help guide its planned rethink of merger enforcement.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission, which together divvy up antitrust reviews, will co-host "listening forums," seeking input beyond antitrust experts to consumers, workers, entrepreneurs and others. The forums will be headed by Justice antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter and FTC chairwoman Lina Khan, both of whom are big, Big Tech critics.

Both agencies have sought comment on their enforcement guidelines, which they want to strengthen against illegal mergers, saying that recent evidence shows that "many industries" are more concentrated and less competitive.

Also: Sen. Amy Klobuchar Introducing Big Tech Antitrust Bill

Big Tech deals have been of particular interest in Washington as both the FTC and Congress have been trying to figure out whether the biggest of Big Tech firms got that way by buying potential competitors before they get big enough to trigger deeper antitrust reviews.

Also: FTC, DOJ Suspend Early Merger Review Determinations

The first two forums will be on the food, agriculture and health care sectors, with the April 27 forum on media and entertainment mergers and the May 12 session on Big Tech combinations. ■ 

The Biden administration signaled Tuesday (Jan. 18) that it would be updating and strengthening merger guidelines in the face of a surge of consolidation it argues has reduced competition and consumer choice.

That came in an announced “public inquiry” they said was expected to result in “strengthening enforcement against illegal mergers,” and that could potentially create new rules targeting digital markets and their “unique characteristics.”

While both agencies and Congress have been heavily focused on Big Tech and what is seen as its practice of buying up small competitors before they become large enough to trigger antitrust reviews, the Federal Trade Commission said that many industries all across the economy have become more concentrated and less competitive, “imperiling choice and economic gains.”

The agencies said a merger surge would only exacerbate the “problems” they see with consolidation.

They are seeking input — with a 60-day comment window — but not on whether to take action, but instead on what actions to take to “modernize” the guidelines and “better detect and prevent” anti-competitive deals in “modern” markets.

The FTC and the Justice Department outlined some key areas for comment from stakeholders:

1. “Purpose and scope of merger review: The agencies seek information on whether the guidelines explain and implement the statutory ban on transactions that ‘may’ substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly, and what harms are contemplated by those standards. The agencies further seek input on whether distinctions between horizontal and vertical transactions reflected in the guidelines should be revisited in light of trends in the modern economy.

2. “Presumptions that certain transactions are anti-competitive: The guidelines identify certain market circumstances that justify a presumption of competitive harm based on market concentration. The agencies seek information on whether concentration thresholds should be adjusted to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of enforcement, whether alternative metrics or qualitative factors should also trigger presumptions of competitive harm [that goes directly to the issue of buying up to monopoly], and evidence regarding the accuracy of such presumptions.

3. “Use of market definition in analyzing competitive effects: The agencies seek input on potential updates to the guidelines’ market definition analysis to better account for non-price competition. They also seek to input on when direct evidence of a transaction’s likely competitive effects, such as evidence of head-to-head competition, may eliminate the need for a separate market definition exercise.

4. “Threats to potential and nascent competition: The agencies seek input on potential updates to the guidelines’ discussion of potential and nascent competitors, which may be key sources of innovation and competition.

5. “Impact of monopsony power, including in labor markets: The agencies seek input on how to address the issue of buyer power in more detail in the guidelines. Labor markets are a key example of buyer power, and the agencies seek information regarding how the guidelines should analyze labor market effects of mergers.

6. “Unique characteristics of digital markets: The agencies seek information on how to account for key areas of the modern economy like digital markets in the guidelines, which often have characteristics like zero-price products, multisided markets and data aggregation that the current guidelines do not address in detail.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), co-sponsor of the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Act, welcomed the decision.

"As a former technology entrepreneur, I know the incredible possibilities that can be achieved when companies bring together their resources and expertise in a merger," Warner said. "However, over the past few years, with the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a small group of companies, acquisition has become the only exit strategy for most startups, as the built-in advantages are too great to overcome. I look forward to working with the DOJ and FTC to ensure that these new merger guidelines strike the right balance between fostering innovation and preventing harmful consolidation.” ■

A Washington State man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for plotting to threaten and intimidate journalists who were trying to expose anti-semitism.

Kaleb Cole, who lead the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, was convicted by a Washington District Court of threatening communications and conspiring with other neo-Nazis to commit "interference with federally-protected activities because of religion, mailing threatening communications and cyberstalking."

Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of DOJ's Civil Rights Division, said that Cole had led a multistate plot to threaten and intimidate journalists who were Jewish or of color by mailing posters or gluing them to the homes of the journalists. The posters featured images of a hooded figure about to throw a molotov cocktail at a house and said “you have been visited by your local Nazis.”

The journalists targeted had told at trial how the intimidation had affected them, including moving out of their house for a while, or buying a security system, buying a gun and learning how to use it, and one even quit the journalism business.

“The defendant sought to intimidate journalists and advocates working to expose anti-Semitism, but that effort failed,” said Timothy Langan, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “Cole’s intended victims fought back but not with threats of violence; they fought back in a court of law. The FBI will continue to do our part by aggressively investigating cases involving threats or acts of violence.” ■

The Justice Department was instrumental in taking down a trio of Amazon sellers who were trying to fix the price of DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

Morris Sutton, Emmanuel Hourizadeh and Raymond Nouvahian have pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to fix (first raise, then maintain) the prices of the videos they sold on their Amazon storefronts, dating back to November 2017 and continuing through October 2019. The Justice Department Antitrust Division’s Chicago office prosecuted the case.

Their crimes carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine, though that can increase two twice their ill-gotten gains or twice the loss suffered by their victims if either is greater than $1 million.

Sentencing will be up to a U.S. District Court judge.

“Price-fixing schemes chip away at the benefits afforded to us by a fair market system,” Michael J. Driscoll, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office, said. “Artificially inflating prices to avoid giving consumers a choice, for the sole purpose of benefitting those involved in the fraudulent scheme, is a violation of federal law. These guilty pleas should serve as a warning to other like-minded criminals.”

Steve Bannon, adviser to Donald Trump and longtime media figure, has been indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress because of his refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, which the Justice Department calls a Capitol ”Breach.“

One contempt charge is for refusing to appear for a deposition and another is for refusing to produce relevant documents. Conviction on each charge carriers a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of one year in jail and a bit of a slap-on-the-wrist fine — as little as $100 and no more than $1,000 for each.

The committee had said it had reason to believe Bannon, formerly a chief strategist for President Trump, had information relevant to its investigation. Bannon had not been a member of the administration since leaving the White House in 2017.

“Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland Friday (Nov. 12). “Today’s charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles.”

Bannon's media history, according to Brittanica.com, includes co-founding Bannon & Co., whose clients included MGM, Samsung and Polygram and which negotiated the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment, for which it received a stake in a number of TV shows including a then relatively new Seinfeld. Seinfeld has since been a gold mine in syndication, including for Bannon Inc.

Bannon became a Trump associate through his running of conservative/alt-right web site Breitbart.com, which he took over when his friend, Andrew Breitbart, died in 2012. Bannon backed Trump and was repaid by access to the president as senior counselor and chief strategist. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of only two GOP members of the Select Committee, said he hoped DOJ's action would encourage others to cooperate. “We just want answers,” he told CNN‘s Jake Tapper.

The House voted back in October along mostly party lines to indict Bannon for criminal contempt.

Bannon is no stranger to federal indictment. In August 2020 he was among a number of people arrested and indicted on charges they defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors to "We Build the Wall," a campaign to help build a wall on the southern border.

As expected, the Federal Trade Commission has voted to "withdraw" its "flawed" vertical merger guidelines, which were issued jointly by the FTC and Justice under the Trump Administration.

Vertical mergers are ones that combine different parts of the same supply chain (AT&T with its video services and Time Warner with its content production, for example), which DOJ under Trump tried unsuccessfully to block.

The vote is a signal that the commission majority will be unlikely to give as much weight to purported pro-competitive effects of vertical mergers, effects merging companies have been highlighting in pitching their deals.

That decision came at its public meeting Wednesday (Sept. 15). The vote was 3-2 along party lines.

Tech companies from Amazon to Z-Wave had been telling the FTC not to rescind the guidelines, which were adopted in 2020.

Some Democrats had argued that the merger guidelines update under Trump, which was billed as a way to better identify and challenge competitively harmful mergers, still kept a thumb on the scale for those mergers by suggesting they were generally pro-competitive.

FTC Chair Lina Khan said the guidelines had taken some positive steps toward updating policy that had become outdated and inconsistent with agency practice, but said the update also suffered from serious deficiencies, including "improperly suggesting that efficiencies or pro-competitive effects may rescue an otherwise unlawful transaction."

She also said the guidelines' "misguided" discussion of the "purported" pro-competitive effects of vertical mergers would be difficult to correct if relied on by courts. She said the FTC looked forward to working with the FTC on updating the transaction review framework.

In a statement, the Justice Department said it also had issues with the guidelines and also would work with the FTC to update them. The FTC and Justice divvy up antitrust reviews of mergers over a certain threshhold.

Commissioner Christine Wilson had procedural and substantive concerns with the withdrawal. She said the guidelines were supported by sound economics and reflected agency experience and substantial public input. She said the guidelines don't give vertical mergers a free pass, but recognize the actual pro-competitive effects that reviews should take into account.

Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips said that without sufficient public input or analysis, the agency was removing guidance, while failing to replace it.

Also Read: FTC Accuses Facebook of Surveillance-Based Ads

Also at the meeting, FTC staffers presented highlights from a report on Big Tech purchases that flew under that antitrust threshhold.

The report found that, in aggregate, the five Big Tech companies studied--Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook--purchased dozens of companies per year between 2010 and 2019 that did not trigger Hart Scott Rodino antitrust reviews. It also found that the large majority of the deals (75%) included noncompete clauses for the founders and key employees of the acquired companies.

The FTC wants to know whether those were efforts to purchase competitors, essentially buying up to monopoly.

The FTC did not break out individual companies to protect sensitive competitive information.

FTC Chair Lina Khan said the report highlighted the systemic nature of Big Tech
"buying their way out of competing." She said the FTC needs to look at whether its reporting requirements are "unjustifiably" allowing such deals to fly under the radar.

She said the FTC has begun to try and close those loopholes. She also pointed to the role of noncompetes in how firms designed their transactions. She said the FTC will look into the use, "and misuse" of those clauses generally as well as in Big Tech deals.

She also said the report could be useful to Congress in efforts to update merger related legislation.

Commissioner Rohit Chopra said the Hart Scott Rodino Act should be amended so that companies need to report more of their M&A activity to antitrust agencies, including those that fall below "today's" threshhold.

He said the FTC should also crack down on "avoidance devices," which he called tricks to keep a deal below the HSR review threshhold, like disguising the real price of a deal using future stock grants and options in an employment agreement.

Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips called the report a good example of the FTC's use of its special powers. He said that he hoped the document contributed to the broader debate about mergers, but said it was important to be frank about what the data show and don't show.

He said the study was aggregate statistics of only five Big Tech companies, so it is limited in scope. He also said it does not say whether these are representative of tech or the general market. He said that his view is the FTC should be thinking about "smart targeting" its antitrust enforcement.

"Last year’s vertical merger guidelines missed the mark," said Joshua Stager, deputy director of broadband and competition policy at New America’s Open Technology Institute," on the FTC's vote to rescind the guidelines. "They glossed over critical issues, ignored key harms in digital markets, and denied public participation. Perhaps most importantly, they were approved by the slimmest majority possible. To work effectively, the guidelines should reflect consensus. We look forward to working with the FTC to find that consensus and to make our antitrust laws work better under stronger guidelines."

Technology companies from Amazon to Z-Wave are telling the Federal Trade Commission not to rescind its vertical merger guidelines and enforcement advisory that were adopted in 2020 under President Donald Trump.

The proposal to scrap both is scheduled for a vote at the FTC's Sept. 15 public meeting, and the Democratic majority is expected to approve their exit.

In a Sept. 13 letter to the FTC, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) said those 2020 guidelines, jointly adopted by the FTC and DOJ, which divvy up merger antitrust reviews, were produced after extensive public input.

Some Democrats had argued that the merger-guideline update under Trump, which was billed as a way to better identify and challenge competitively harmful mergers, still kept a thumb on the scale for those mergers by suggesting they were generally pro-competitive.

Vertical mergers are tie-ups that combine different parts of the same supply chain, such as AT&T with its video services and Time Warner with its content production — a deal that the Trump-era Justice Department tried unsuccessfully to block.

The CTA told the FTC it opposed any move to rescind the guidance, particularly without robust notice and public input on what it said would be a sudden shift away from traditional merger reviews, a shift that would "stifle companies’ ability to plan, invest, and innovate."

"We urge the commission to reject the vote to withdraw the Guidelines and Commentary, or in the alternative, to postpone the vote and provide notice and a reasonable comment period for public consideration and input," CTA said.

The FTC under new chair Lina Khan has signaled it will be looking hard at big tech companies and whether they got that big via buying up to monopoly. That is the FTC's allegation against Facebook in a revised complaint.

The Justice Department has signed off on the first $32.3 million tranche of over $200 million in forfeited funds to FIFA and others from widespread corruption in the securing of TV and other media and marketing rights for international soccer.

Justice said well over that initial amount has been seized as part of the government's prosecution of that corruption. The money is being remitted to FIFA, the world soccer organizing body; CONCACAF, which oversees soccer in North and Central America; and CONMEBOL, which oversees South America, as well as various other soccer federations.

According to Justice, sports marketing companies paid bribes and kickbacks to soccer officials in exchange for the rights to various tournaments and events.

The $32.3 million is the beginning of the process of getting funds to the victims of the FIFA bribery scandal and out of the hands of the corrupt officials that took it.

“Not one official in this investigation seemed to care about the damage being done to a sport that millions around the world revere," said Michael J. Driscoll, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office. "The only silver lining is the money will now help underprivileged people who need it, not the wealthy executives who just wanted it to get richer. Our work isn’t finished, and our promise to those who love the game – we won’t give up until everyone sees justice for what they’ve done.”

This week's initial tranche of money comes from the forfeited assets and stems from a May 2015 indictment of 14 FIFA officials and sports marketing executives with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering, plus a follow-on indictment of even more officials.

Many of the defendants were ordered to forfeit their ill-gotten gains and Justice is authorized to distribute forfeited assets through a remission process to victims of the crimes, including to the soccer organizations defrauded by corrupt executives.

The Justice Department said Monday (July 19) that it has formally changed its policy to restrict the use of “compulsory processes” — such as subpoenas — to get information or records from members of the press on activities in the course of doing their jobs and in the “scope” of newsgathering.

The policy, effective immediately, was announced in a memo to department staff leadership by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Garland has asked a deputy attorney general to look into codifying the policy into department regulations to ensure the “durability” of the change, and added that he supports legislation that would protect the news media.

The Justice Department had already announced that it would not be issuing subpoenas for reporters' records in leak investigations.

The changes in policy followed a report in The New York Times that not only was the Biden White House continuing the pursuit of records from Times reporters, a holdover from a Trump-era investigation, but that it had issued a gag order preventing the publisher’s executives from talking about the matter, even to its own staff.

CNN also reported that the Trump administration had obtained phone records and email messages from the network’s correspondents as part of leak investigations.

The Trump Justice Department has joined the President in arguing that Twitter and Facebook's restriction of access to a story in the New York Post about Hunter Biden is evidence that social media need regulating.

That came in a letter from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee and House Energy & Commerce Committee.

Related: Justice Unveils Legislation to Regulate Social Media

The Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing Wednesday (Oct. 28) with the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google about regulating that space. House Republicans on the Energy & Commerce Committee also want to hold a hearing on the issue, as does Senate Judiciary, which has subpoenaed Twitter and Facebook CEOs.

Boyd said the department was buoyed, as it were, by what he called an emerging consensus that it was time to reform Sec. 230, which provides social media sites immunity from civil liability for how they moderate most of the third-party content on their sites, including if they take down or block content they consider objectionable.

"The events of recent days have made reform even more urgent," Boyd said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Wall Street Journal. "Today’s large online platforms hold tremendous power over the information and views available to the American people. It is therefore critical that they be honest and transparent with users about how they use that power. And when they are not, it is critical that they can be held accountable. For example, the decision by two social media companies to restrict access to news content of significant public interest from the New York Post, a widely distributed journalism publication, is quite concerning."

While Justice has recommended legislative changes to Sec 230, and the FCC is planning to 'clarify' it, Boyd said Congress may want to "start from a blank slate to account for the dramatic changes in this industry."

Boyd said he was confident there was a way to preserve the free exchange of ideas, innovation, safety and transparency. 

The Justice Department could file an antitrust suit against Google (and YouTube) parent Alphabet as soon as this month, according to The New York Times.

Google's market power and position as the dominant search engine have drawn record fines in Europe, but it has pretty much avoided similar treatment at home. 

RELATED: DOJ's Delrahim Seeks Examples of Online Platform Anticompetitive Conduct

Attorney General Bill Barr signaled at his Senate confirmation hearing that if he got the job he wanted to investigate Big Tech and how it got that way "under the nose of antitrust enforcers." The Times reported that Barr was pushing Justice to file by month's end, while others in the department were suggesting they needed more time to build their case.

President Donald Trump and the Justice Department separately have set their sites on regulating content on social media platforms as Silicon Valley draws unprecedented attention from Washington to match its unprecedented market caps and power over information. 

At a July 29 House Judiciary Committee hearing on whether Google and other giant edge providers are using their power anticompetitively, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Google is in a long tradition of American innovation, "building products that are helpful to American users in moments big and small." He talked about small businesses using Google to grow. 

As to whether Google is dominant, he said: "Google operates in highly competitive and dynamic global markets, in which prices are free or falling, and products are constantly improving. … People have more ways to search for information than ever before — and increasingly this is happening outside the context of only a search engine." he asserted.

It looks like the Justice Department does not see it that way.

There has been a lot of talk inside the Beltway about whether tech giants have gotten to near monopoly status by anti-competitively buying up competitors in their infancy before they can trigger red flags with antitrust regulators, then reaping the fruits of never-were competitors’ innovations.

Now the Federal Trade Commission is doing something about getting to the bottom of that concern, though it is facing a challenge from a critic of edge providers trying to recraft the FTC as a digital-focused investigative arm — but one no longer independent from the Trump cabinet.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), arguably the leading critic of tech companies in Congress, says overhauling the FTC and merging it into the Justice Department is the best approach to regulating edge providers.

He also said the government doesn't need to create a new "unaccountable bureaucracy" to oversee Big Tech, as some have suggested Congress should do. FTC chairman Joseph Simons agreed, saying that the FTC, with added resources and authority, is the right agency for the job.

“The FTC isn’t working,” Hawley said in announcing his new campaign. “It wastes time in turf wars with the DOJ, nobody is accountable for decisions, and it lacks the ‘teeth’ to get after Big Tech’s rampant abuses. Congress needs to do something about it.”

The senator would also get the FTC out of the merger review business, leaving that duty to the DOJ (see Below).

Almost everyone, including the head of the FTC, agrees that the agency could use more tools in its tech reg toolkit, including more money and staff. That’s particularly true now that it has the principal oversight of broadband privacy and access.

Bringing FTC to Justice

Hawley wants to help by putting the FTC under Justice and making it accountable to that agency, which would be a big change but would provide more market analysis and enforcement muscle.

Currently, the agency must sue companies to enforce its policies, rather than regulate compliance. Hawley says that means it lacks the "teeth" to go after what he calls tech's "rampant abuses."

Hawley's call for an overhaul came the same day the commission said it would start flexing what muscle it has.

It sent "special order" information requests to five of the biggest tech players — Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft — seeking information and documents to help it review the "terms, scope, structure, and purpose of transactions that each company consummated between Jan. 1, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2019."

The Trump administration has signaled it would take a retrospective look at some of the deals that may have passed under its antitrust radar as Big Tech got bigger, just to make sure they did not build those collective trillion-dollar market caps via anticompetitive means.

Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, the DOJ’s antitrust chief, has said that big, even to the extent of being a natural monopoly, isn't necessarily bad. But he has conceded the market needs a fresh look.

“One of the FTC's biggest problems is that Congress has cut its funding over the decades, leaving the agency under-resourced to do its job,” Joshua Stager, senior counsel at New America's Open Technology Institute, said. “Senator Hawley's proposal does not acknowledge this reality, nor does he acknowledge that his own institution bears at least some blame for starving the agency of resources. It is difficult to take this proposal seriously when it ignores such a core problem.”

Argued Hawley: “The reality is the FTC is not putting even its current resources to effective use because the FTC is poorly designed.”

THE HAWLEY PLAN
The following is excerpted from Sen. Josh Hawley’s outline of a new FTC under the Justice Department:

Accountability
Restructure the FTC to operate within the DOJ

— The FTC would be headed by a single director (like the FBI), instead of a multi-member commission:

• The director would report to the Associate Attorney General.
• The director would be Senate-confirmed for renewable five-year terms.
• The FTC would gain new market analysis authority to direct its enforcement, assist the Antitrust Division and inform Congress.

— Transfer all authority to review mergers and acquisitions to the Antitrust Division of the DOJ:

• Create more tools for robust enforcement.
• Create authority to enforce rules requiring interoperability, data portability and data minimization.
• Create civil penalties for first-time offenses.
• Give the FTC greater research and reporting mandates.
• Give state attorneys general concurrent enforcement authority.

SOURCE: Office of Sen. Josh Hawley

In a move that should please patent-holder Qualcomm, but not iPhone maker Apple, the Justice Department has issued a new advisory on standards-essential patents that makes clear that the requirement to patent those technologies on reasonable terms does not mean that patent holders lose legal rights to protect them.

Standard-essential patents are ones for technologies that are essential for the functioning of a baseline technology, like Qualcomm chips in smart phones.

Related: Apple, App Developers: SEP Injunctions Should Not Be Easy

“Today’s policy statement recognizes that when licensing negotiations fail, appropriate remedies for patent infringement, including injunctive relief, should be available to SEP holders," said antitrust chief Makan Delrahim. "The availability of the full range of remedies is necessary in order to preserve competition and incentives for innovation, and for continued participation in standards-setting activities, which can produce substantial benefits for American consumers.”

So, when a patent owner promises to make the patent available to competitors at reasonable rates and on reasonable terms, it still has the full legal arsenal if it thinks its patents are being misused, i.e. that there is no special set of rules. Justice said the 2013 joint statement had appeared to suggest that special, unprotected, status when it said that seeking an injunction against use of those essential patents as part of a legal challenge could potentially harm competition.

"We hope that the new policy statement helps create greater efficiency in SEP licensing by achieving a healthier balance in leverage between patent-holders and licensees," said a Justice official speaking not for attribution. "That will ultimately reduce transaction costs and fuel the speedy incorporation of cutting-edge technologies into a broader range of products. Doing so will help foster dynamic competition that benefits the American consumer."

On whether the shift now favors patent holders--like Qualcomm--they said no, arguing that courts have consistently said patent holders have the right to seek injunctive relief. He said that the new policy statement just recognizes that SEPs have that right and that exercising it "does not raise competition concerns and is not in tension with the antitrust laws."

Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim said in a speech last year that DOJ was rethinking its position on standards-essential patents (SEPs), including withdrawing from the Obama-era (2013) joint “Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary FRAND [fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory] Commitments.”

Delrahim suggested that the 2013 statement had conveyed the wrong impression of DOJ's position on when and how patent holders can exclude competitors from using their essential technologies. "Since injunctions against infringement frequently do serve the public interest in maintaining a patent system that incentivizes and rewards successful inventors through the process of dynamic competition, enforcement agencies without clear direction otherwise from Congress should not place a thumb on the scale against an injunction in the case of FRAND-encumbered patents," Delrahim said at the time, presaging this week's statement.

Apple earlier this month had asked the Trump Administration not to withdraw from the statement, arguing that it "fully allows for appropriate monetary remedies if patent infringement is proven, while also recognizing appropriate limits for exclusionary relief when the SEP owner has instead promised to grant fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licenses."

The U.S. Justice Department reportedly talked to representatives from Comcast and Charter this week about filling the void of the fourth major U.S. wireless carrier that would be created if T-Mobile and Sprint are allowed to merge.

According to Bloomberg, as a condition for approving T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion acquisition bid for Sprint, the DOJ wants the Nos. 3 & 4 wireless companies to divest wireless spectrum and enable a fourth U.S. major wireless carrier.

For their part, Comcast and Charter both have nascent mobile services through MVNO agreements with Verizon. And the cable companies collaborate on wireless business planning and technology. As of the end of the first quarter, Comcast reported 1.4 million wireless lines in deployment while Charter said it had around 310,000.

Analysts, however, suspect that after paying network leasing bills to Verizon, neither operator makes money on their respective mobile service. Bloomberg said the companies are interested in acquiring spectrum to possibly create—perhaps jointly—their own wireless network. The companies are also interested in discussing a more favorable MVNO deal, as well as any network equipment or customers that might be divested by T-Mobile and Sprint in order to facilitate approval. 

A federal grand jury has returned indictments against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 18 charges brought by the Justice Department related to his role in obtaining, receiving and disclosing national defense information in a "conspiracy" with leaker Chelsea Manning, a move Free Speech organizations say could chill investigative reporting.  

It was a superceding indictment, with 17 new charges added to the single count Justice initially charged. 

"Assange, having unauthorized possession of State Department cables, classified up to the SECRET level, containing the names of individuals, who risked their safety and freedom by providing information to the United States and our allies, communicated the documents containing names of those sources to all the world by publishing them on the internet," the indictment said. 

The counts are: Conspiracy to Receive National Defense Information (count 1); Obtaining National Defense Information (counts 2-4); Obtaining National Defense Information (counts 5-8); Disclosure of National Defense Information (9-11): Disclosure of National Defense Information (12-14): Disclosure of National Defense Information (15-17); Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion (18). 

“I continue to accept full and sole responsibility for those disclosures in 2010,” said Manning. “It's telling that the government appears to have already obtained this indictment before my contempt hearing last week. This administration describes the press as the opposition party and an enemy of the people.

“Today, they use the law as a sword, and have shown their willingness to bring the full power of the state against the very institution intended to shield us from such excesses.”    

"The indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information is an attack on the First Amendment and a threat to all journalists everywhere who publish information that governments would like to keep secret," said Committee to Protect Journalists executive director Joel Simon. "Press freedom in the United States and around the world is imperiled by this prosecution." 

"Our concerns in relation to this unprecedented indictment center on its grave implications for a free press," said Suzanne Nossel, CEO of First Amendment defenders PEN America. "Whether Assange is a journalist or WikiLeaks qualifies as a press outlet is immaterial to the counts set out here. The indictment encompasses a series of activities - including encouraging sources verbally and in writing to leak information and receiving and publishing such information - that media outlets routinely undertake as part of their role to hold government to account. By bringing charges under the Espionage Act for actions that include receiving and publishing information and documents, the Department of Justice is setting a dangerous precedent that could be wielded against journalists and used to quash methods that are at the heart of the workings of a free press in a democracy." 

Assange was arrested in London in April. 

He had been living in asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, but that asylum was rescinded.

Panasonic Corp. subsidiary Panasonic Avionics Corp. (PAC) will pay $137.4 million in criminal penalties to the U.S. government to settle charges it used consultants improperly and concealed payments to third parties, both in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

That, in turn, caused parent and electronics giant Panasonic to falsify its books, said the Justice Department, which announced the settlement.

PAC supplies in-flight entertainment systems and airplane communications. Justice said that among its transgressions was paying a consultant $875,000 over a six-year period while the consultant was employed by a state-owned airline negotiating a lucrative contract; Panasonic earned $92 million in profit from the contract.

“The Criminal Division will take all appropriate action to ensure that the investing public is able to trust the accuracy of the financial statements of companies that avail themselves of American securities exchanges," the DOJ said. 

PAC conceded it had "mischaracterized" the money as "consultant payments," which parent Panasonic then incorrectly designated as "selling and general administrative expenses."

PAC also hid $7 million in payments to unqualified sales agents, first terminating the relationships, then using them after they were re-hired by a subcontractor, DOJ said.

PAC was charged with one count of knowingly and willfully causing the falsification of the books, records and accounts of parent company Panasonic, but that was deferred with Panasonic's agreement to pay $137,403,812.  

The Justice Department is apparently OK with Liberty Interactive's proposed purchase of Alaska telecom GCI.

That came in an early termination notice released Thursday (June 8).

That means that Justice has found no reason to try and block or condition the deal, and put an early end to its Hart Scott Rodino antitrust review.

Related: Why John Malone Is Making Tracks to Alaska

The FCC must still weigh in on the deal. It goes beyond antitrust to look at the public interest impact of mergers in the communications space.

That review will not be concluded until at least next month. On May 19, the FCC created a pleading cycle for the deal, with comments due June 19 and reply comments due July 5.

The $1.1 billion deal was struck in April.

GCI has about 108,000 cable subscribers and is the state’s largest phone and wireless company. The deal was projected to close in early 2018.

The Justice Department said Wednesday (March 15) that it has indicted two members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, an intelligence agency of the Russian Federation, and two outside hackers, in the theft of about 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014.

The two Russian officials, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, "protected, directed, facilitated and paid criminal hackers [Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov] to collect information through computer intrusions in the United States and elsewhere," the Justice Department said.

“Cyber crime poses a significant threat to our nation’s security and prosperity, and this is one of the largest data breaches in history,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in announcing the multicount indictment by a grand jury of the Northern District of California. “But thanks to the tireless efforts of U.S. prosecutors and investigators, as well as our Canadian partners, today we have identified four individuals, including two Russian FSB officers, responsible for unauthorized access to millions of users’ accounts. The United States will vigorously investigate and prosecute the people behind such attacks to the fullest extent of the law.”

"People rightly expect that their communications through Silicon Valley internet providers will remain private, unless lawful authority provides otherwise," said U.S. Attorney Brian Stretch for the Northern District of California. "“Working closely with Yahoo and Google, Department of Justice lawyers and the FBI were able to identify and expose the hackers responsible for the conduct described today, without unduly intruding into the privacy of the accounts that were stolen. We commend Yahoo and Google for providing exemplary cooperation while zealously protecting their users’ privacy.”

The indictment comes as members of Congress are looking into both that hack, another Yahoo! breach and allegations the Russians hacked Democrats' email accounts to influence the 2016 election.

Yahoo! agreed to cut the price Verizon is paying to buy the company by $350 million in light of its two breaches.

The hackers targeted "accounts of Russian and U.S. government officials, including cybersecurity, diplomatic and military personnel," according to the indictment. In addition, they targeted "Russian journalists; numerous employees of other providers whose networks the conspirators sought to exploit; and employees of financial services and other commercial entities."

Ironically, the FSB unit that the indicted officials worked for is the point of contact for the FBI in Moscow for cybercrime matters.

The Committee to Protect journalists is calling on Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to commit to support guidelines that make it harder for the Justice Department to subpoena journalists' records.

At the hearing, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), whose father was a journalist, said she was particularly sensitive to the journalist's role as a watchdog and asked him to commit to guidelines Attorney General Eric Holder issued in 2015, which include releasing an annual report on any subpoenas and promising not to put journalists in jail for doing their jobs.

Sessions did not commit, saying he needed to study the guidelines.

RELATED: Trump Calls CNN 'Fake News'

Klobuchar said that while there were "a few examples of where the press and the Department of Justice haven't agreed," she believes DOJ "does have sensitivity to this issue" and that "for the most part there is a broadly recognized and proper deference to the news media."

But she added a caveat, saying, "You could have a situation in which the media is not really the unbiased media we see today and they could be a mechanism through which unlawful intelligence is obtained."

RELATED: Committe to Protect Journalists Brands Trump Threat to Press Freedom

Klobuchar said she would follow up with Sessions in written questions, but the CPJ was not waiting around.

"We urge Senator Jeff Sessions, if confirmed as attorney general, to follow the revised guidelines set out by Attorney General Eric Holder," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, in a statement. "The U.S. government should be expanding protections for journalists to gather the news and maintain confidential sources. They must not roll these protections back."

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the AT&T-Time Warner Inc., merger would be a "gross concentration of power" and called for the Department of Justice to block the deal.

Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination in this year’s presidential race, has been one of the most outspoken critics of media consolidation, so his view on the proceedings is hardly a surprise.

RELATED: CFA: FCC Needs to Rein in Media Oligarchs

“This proposed merger is just the latest effort to shrink our media landscape, stifle competition and diversity of content, and provide consumers with less while charging them more,” Sanders wrote in a letter to Renata Hesse, head of the Justice Departments antitrust division. “This merger represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the public good and should be blocked.”

He made no mention of the Federal Communications Commission, which may or may not review the deal depending on which licenses Time Warner hold. It would almost certainly provide its expert opinion to the DOJ in any event.

Sanders also did not like the prospect of Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes profiting off the deal. “[T]his proposed deal is likely to allow the CEO of Time Warner to earn hundreds of millions of dollars on the stock and options he has accrued,” he said, while the combined company would be “saddled” with $175 billion of debt."

RELATED: Sen. Grassley Promises ‘Robust’ AT&T-Time Warner Review

Sanders also warned that the deal would lead to a wave of other media mergers.

The deal has made strange bedfellows of Sanders and another presidential hopeful, Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has also said he would block the merger if he could.

The bipartisan leadership of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee have advised the FCC and Justice Department on what key issues the FCC should look at as it reviews a merged CharterCommunications-Time Warner Cable deal.

FCC staffers are apparently drilling down on potential conditions as the FCC approaches the informal shot clock deadline (the end of March) for making a decision on the deal.

In a letter to the FCC, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) (chairman) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) (ranking member), said that if the FCC has issues with a combined company interfering with competing online video services, it should "require conditions that would alleviate the potential competitive harms."

They cited HBO specifically as a former exclusively cable supplier now offering an over-the-top version that did not require a cable subscription. HBO parent Time Warner Inc. (not to be confused with Time Warner Cable) has raised OTT issues with the deal at the FCC.

They also said that the FCC should make sure that independent programmers are viable. It advised the FCC to take those into account as it reviews the deal--for public interest harms and benefits.

Recognizing that DOJ's is a strict antitrust review, they said any decision must be fact-specific and any "intervention" must be based on evidence.

In a statement responding to the letter, Charter talked about its general consumer-friendliness: "As we continue to engage with state and federal regulators on their thorough review of our pending transactions with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, we recognize the importance of demonstrating why they are in the public interest.

"Charter is a different type of cable company-committed to creating American jobs, offering the most innovative products and preserving an open internet. New Charter has received broad support from Netflix because of its online video friendly practices; independent programmers including TV1, Fuse Media and RFD-TV due to its support of independent and diverse programming; national civic organizations like National Urban League, NAN and LULAC due to its commitment to  expand diversity and inclusion; and from numerous local and state regulators including New York which recently approved the merger. These parties have taken a close, honest look at the benefits of these transactions and have all come to the same conclusion: these transactions are in the public interest."

Arris is confident that it will close its proposed $2.1 billion merger with U.K.-based Pace plc, but now believes it won’t be able to seal the deal until “late December or the first quarter of 2016” amid additional requests from the U.S. Department of Justice and other regulatory bodies that might create conditions that would require the companies to divest part of their business.

Arris and Pace have long expected to wrap up the deal by year end, but Arris said Friday (October 16) that the companies have received requests for additional information from the Antitrust Division of the U.S. DoJ as well as regulators in Brazil and Colombia. The DoJ put in its original request for more data from Arris and Pace in June. 

Arris said the Antitrust Division’s current focus “appears to be on certain optical transmission products of Arris and Pace,” adding that it it’s possible, as a condition to the approvals, that “the governmental agencies may impose requirements, conditions or limitations on ARRIS business after the completion of the transaction which may include a divestiture.”

Such a condition or requirement, Arris said, “could further delay the completion of the transaction could further delay the completion of the transaction or reduce the anticipated benefits of the combination.”

While the proposed merger would create a set-top behemoth that would enable Arris to expand much deeper into the satellite TV market and into new international arenas, the deal would also create a larger provider of access network gear.

Pace secured a stronger play in the optical transmission and cable access network market in 2013 when it acquired Aurora Networks, which had earlier picked up a cable access unit of Harmonic Inc. that made optical transmitters, amplifiers, receivers and nodes.

Arris was not overly concerned that the current focus on the pending transaction, which intends to create a “New Arris” to be incorporated in the U.K. but operate its worldwide headquarters in Suwanee, Ga.  The merged company would have pro forma revenue of roughly  $8 billion and 8,500 employees. According to an 8-K filing with the SEC, Arris is subject to a break-up fee of up to $20 million.

"While we are disappointed in the potential delay in the timing for completion, we believe that even if conditions are imposed, the transaction remains in the best interests of the shareholders," Bob Stanzione, Arris chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “Based on our current understanding of the Antitrust Division's areas of continued focus and given the opportunities for the combined business and the potential synergies, we believe that the non-GAAP EPS accretion ranges for the first 12 months following the combination, previously estimated and disclosed by ARRIS, continue to remain possible."

Regulators in Portugal, Germany and South Africa have already cleared the agreement.