ACA, Dish, Incompas Backing FCC in Petition To Reconsider Confidential Information Rules
Describing the FCC's protective order for confidential information as "an appropriate balance between the competitive concerns and the more general public interest," American Cable Association (ACA), Dish Network and Incompas are opposing a petition for reconsideration of those rules. Some…
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content companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce earlier this month petitioned the agency to vacate its order allowing confidential contract information to be shared with third parties during the merger review process (see Ref:1510130065]). But the arguments they used citing the Trade Secrets Act and the FCC standards under the Freedom of Information Act don't prevent the FCC from such confidential materials rules, ACA, Dish and Incompas said in their opposition posted Monday in docket 15-149; the "persuasive showing" standard isn't required when the Communications Act allows such disclosure, and the Trade Secrets Act comes into play only when disclosure is not authorized by law, but federal law authorizes the agency to permit such disclosures. Data about negotiations, programming practices and the business arrangements of Charter, Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable "is particularly important in this proceeding," the three said. Charter/TWC/BHN will have "an increased incentive and ability to strong arm third party programmers" into shutting out competing over-the-top services, plus "increased ability and incentive" to deny such affiliated content as Discovery and Starz to competing video distributors, the three said. Since the FCC on Sept. 11 issued an order setting new rules for the handling of confidential information, numerous entities have filed in docket 15-149 indicating they seek access to the confidential and highly confidential information filed in the proceeding, including ACA, Charter Communications, Dish Network, Free Press, Hawaiian Telecom Services, Incompas, New York State Public Service Commission and Zoom Telephonics.