Diebold Finally Dumps E-Voting Division... But Sells It To Equally Problematic ES&S

from the that-makes-it-better? dept

Ah, Diebold. One of the "big three" e-voting providers out there, its name was the first one that got associated with the problems of e-voting machines, despite problems being found across the board in players in that space. I could never understand why the company continued to fight and deny problems with its machines after so much evidence was presented against them. The smart move would have been to admit that the machines had problems, work with security experts to solve them, and come out with better, safer machines. But that's not what happened. Instead, it stonewalled, denied problems, mocked those who exposed security flaws and kept pushing out questionable machines. Eventually, the stories got so bad, that Diebold realized it was having a seriously negative impact on its other lines of business (including ATMs), so it renamed the e-voting division "Premier Election Solutions" (as if people would forget) and went about trying to sell the thing off -- though, for years it couldn't find any takers.

It took a while, but Diebold has finally found a buyer. ES&S has purchased Diebold's e-voting business for a mere $5 million plus some outstanding revenue. In classic Diebold fashion, the company has announced that it "would not be answering questions about the sale" -- because that's how you go about rebuilding trust.

Meanwhile, it's not like ES&S is any better. It, too, has had massive problems with its e-voting machines, while the company has a history of stonewalling attempts by gov't officials to review their code. Oh, and there's this: company memos showed that the company knew about some of the problems with its voting machines that were used in elections. And the most fun of all? When we questioned why e-voting companies didn't allow independent security researchers to examine machines, an ES&S employee showed up in our comments to call us all idiots.

Now, with the combined ES&S/Diebold/Premier, a ridiculous large percentage of the country's e-voting machines now belong to one company, with an amazingly long family tree of faulty machines and a history of attacking anyone who points out those flaws.

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Musicians Lobbying For Approval Of Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger Forget To Mention Massive Conflict Of Interest

from the funny-how-that-works dept

You may have heard, recently, that some top name musicians went to Congress in support of the proposed Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger that has many people in the industry worried. Eddie Van Halen, Seal, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins and the four members of the band Journey wrote letters to Congress favoring the deal. But, none of them mentioned a rather important fact, that Bruce Houghton is pointing out: every one of those musicians is managed or co-managed by Irving Azoff, who just so conveniently happens to be CEO of.... Ticketmaster. Doesn't that seem like a bit of a conflict of interest? Or, at the very least, something worth admitting to prior to pushing for the deal to be approved?

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Is The FCC Just Toying With XM And Sirius Now?

from the and-next...-we-want-you-to-clean-our-offices-with-just-a-feather! dept

The 18-month saga of XM and Sirius trying to merger just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. Yesterday, we pointed to all of the silly hoops the FCC was trying to make the companies go through, that often had absolutely nothing to do with antitrust issues, and today comes the news that the FCC has fined the companies nearly $20 million for technical violations as some sort of precursor to merger approval. What do these technical violations have to do with the antitrust questions the FCC is supposed to be deciding? Absolutely nothing. Instead, it appears that the FCC is simply using its position as the decider over whether or not the merger goes through to get whatever licks in that it can against the two satellite radio companies, knowing that they'll have to obey quietly. Its like hazing. Because XM and Sirius need the approval of the FCC, it can just do anything it wants to them, such as adding bizarre requirements or even asking them to hand over $20 million.

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FCC's Adelstein Drags Out XM-Sirius Review Even More

from the unbridled-discretion dept

As we predicted last month, the FCC's approval process for the XM-Sirius merger continues to drag on. This is becoming absurd. The merger was announced almost 18 months ago, which should have been more than enough time for the FCC to reach a decision, or at least come up with its merger conditions for the companies to consider. Yet it was only last month that Chairman Martin came up with his initial proposed conditions, and now Commissioner Adelstein is proposing even more restrictions as a condition of approving the deal. As I've pointed out before, the way antitrust law is enforced is problematic because of the unbridled decision it gives to government bureaucrats.

Adelstein's laundry list of merger conditions appears to have no particular connection to preventing the abuse of monopoly power, the supposed purpose of antitrust law. For example, he would require a 6-year freeze on price increases. If he believes the merged company would have too much market power, then he should vote to deny the merger. If, on the other hand, the merged company would not have too much market power, then a price freeze isn't necessary because competition will be sufficient to keep prices down. But the idea that they have too much monopoly power today, but won't in 6 years, doesn't make a lot of sense. His other major requirement, more minority-owned and non-profit channels, has even less connection to limiting the firm's market power. More minority-owned radio stations may or may not be good policy, but it has nothing to do with antitrust law, and it seems problematic for the FCC to impose those sorts of requirements as part of the merger review process.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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