[Infowarrior] - Columbia Law's Tim Wu to Advise FTC

[Richard Forno]

Columbia Law's Tim Wu to Advise FTC

By SPENCER E. ANTE And THOMAS CATAN

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703313304576132310943386724.html

Silicon Valley has a new fear factor. Columbia University Law School professor Tim Wu, an influential academic and author who popularized the term "net neutrality," has been appointed senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission.

Mr. Wu, 38, will start his new position on Feb. 14 in the FTC's Office of Policy Planning, and will help the agency to develop policies that affect the Internet and the market for mobile communications and services. The FTC said Mr. Wu will work in the unit until July 31. Mr. Wu, who is taking a leave from Columbia, said that to work after that date he would have to request a further leave from the university.

In Mr. Wu's view, which he laid out in a book published last year called The Master Switch, new information technologies follow a predictable cycle in which open and free systems eventually become controlled by a single corporation or cartel. Mr. Wu believes the Internet may follow a similar pattern, as a few companies emerge to dominate key sectors: Google in the online search market, Amazon.com in retail, Apple in digital media and Facebook in social networking.

"There is a sense that the Internet is becoming more consolidated," said Mr. Wu.

Mr. Wu, an offbeat academic who has attended the popular Burning Man festival several times, says the next big technology policy issue is figuring out the rules of the road for these emerging platforms, and that is what he will focus on. "I would be satisfied with getting together the rules for the Internet platform," he said.

A Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Mr. Wu has had a surprisingly large influence on telecom policy on Capitol Hill. In 2006, he was invited by the FCC to help draft the first-ever net neutrality rules that were attached to the merger of AT&T and BellSouth. They required the company for 30 months to allow consumers to access any content or service of their choice, while barring AT&T from providing faster service to any content or service provider.

In 2007, the FCC adopted two of Mr. Wu's proposals for an upcoming auction of wireless airwaves. The rules required network operators to support any device or application on the spectrum they buy.

At the FTC, Mr. Wu will help carry out its mission to regulate consumer protection, antitrust and privacy issues. The agency is jointly responsible with the Justice Department for enforcing federal antitrust laws.

One company is likely to take a keen interest in news of Mr. Wu's appointment is Google Inc., where Mr. Wu briefly worked as an unpaid fellow in 2008.

Both sides of the FTC have investigated Google practices in recent years. FTC officials have suggested that they intend to scrutinize Google closely for any signs of anticompetitive behavior.

The FTC's consumer protection bureau has probed Google's collection of wifi data through its Street View cars. It's also taken a keen interest in internet privacy issues, including "tracking" by advertisers and the use of personal data by social networks. It recently proposed a "do not track" system to allow people to opt-out of having their actions monitored online, prompting objections from the online-advertising industry.

The FTC has also handled competition issues relating to Google and other Silicon Valley firms. It performed an exhaustive review of Google's acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob, and before that, its purchase of DoubleClick. It ultimately cleared both transactions.

The agency has investigated whether Apple's tight control of applications sold through its App Store acts as a restraint on competition, according to people familiar with the matter. And it has probed whether the existence of interlocking boards at several Silicon Valley companies broke antitrust laws, prompting among others the resignation of Google's Steve Schmidt from Apple's board.

It isn't clear how much Mr. Wu will be focusing on Google at the FTC, but in recent comments he's expressed some concern about its growing grip over the Internet. Discussing his book at Google's Washington offices in November, Mr. Wu said the search giant was close to a tipping point in which, he argues, "information empires" move from being benign monopolies to being anticompetitive impediments to innovation.

"I don't think anyone can deny that Google has a monopoly over the search engine market," he said, sitting on stage next to a Google executive on the day that the European Union launched an antitrust inquiry into the company. "It is reminiscent in my mind of AT&T in the 1920s."

AT&T, he said, later suppressed inventions like the tape recorder for fear that it would challenge its telephone business. The company was eventually broken up by the Justice Department in a landmark antitrust suit.