The US’ Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced that it will not challenge a proposal by MyWire Inc. to form the Global News Service, an online subscription news aggregation service. The service would provide interconnections among different publishers' online content - such as news articles and video and audio clips - that relate to the same topic.
Based on representations made by MyWire, the DoJ said that the news service is not likely to reduce competition among Internet publishers and could provide pro-competitive benefits to both publishers and consumers. The DoJ’s position was stated in a business review letter to counsel for MyWire from Christine Varney, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department’s Antitrust Division.
The service would provide Internet publishers with a ‘related-item’ content block that a publisher would add to its web page. The block would contain hyperlinked abstracts of content from other participating publishers' websites. By clicking these hyperlinks, consumers would be able to browse among related material from different publishers' websites.
MyWire intends to enter into non-exclusive bilateral content licensing agreements with numerous Internet publishers. The agreements would not prevent the publishers from joining competing online news aggregation services. MyWire would operate independently of Internet publishers and would set its own consumer subscription rates for access to all publishers' fee-based content within the MyWire network. Consumers would also be able to use the service for free to access publishers' free content.
Under the DoJ’s business review procedure, an organisation may submit a proposed action to the Antitrust Division and receive a statement as to whether the division currently intends to challenge the action under the antitrust laws.
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