Public Knowledge, one of the Dark Lords of the Progressive Sith, filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to deny confidential treatment of a joint operating agreement between Verizon and SpectrumCo and Verizon and Cox. Verizon wants to purchase spectrum from these two entities in exchange for the cross selling of each other’s services.
Public Knowledge believes that the FCC should not apply confidential treatment to information about the companies’ governance structure under their joint agreement. Public Knowledge argues that the information does not consist of trade secrets or any other information that if released would harm either of the companies’ competitive positions.
My take is, how does removing confidential treatment help the FCC make a better decision about the optimal use of a natural resource. Public Knowledge argues that keeping the information confidential may stifle innovation, and stifling innovation threatens of the public interest. Public Knowledge is probably taking some comfort in hiding behind a concept, the public interest, that has successfully avoid a concrete definition for decades if not the past couple centuries.
This comfort is more apparent when you consider that Public Knowledge, the group bringing the assertion, brings no quantitative analysis to justify its position. How do we know that keeping a joint operations agreement confidential will drive up costs for consumers? Will making its details public increase the likelihood of broadband adoption?
So quick is Public Knowledge to cite the Freedom of Information Act, it feels like they are simply happy to forego the consumer welfare analysis good public policy requires. First address quantitatively or qualitatively the consume harm. Then move to analyzing any barriers to market entry failure to act may cause or help maintain. Jumping to a FOIA analysis, though acceptable by jurisprudential warriors, only tells me that Public Knowledge is more interested in being overly nosey.