#BigTech#SiliconValley#Antitrust#Competition#DigitalPlatforms: "Treating platform corporations as surrogate states leads to multiple interesting follow-up insights. Lehdonvirta criticizes competition policy-based solutions to the problem of platform power. If the digital platforms’ core source of value is the provision of governance services, how exactly would increasing competitive pressures or government-enforced deconcentration benefit societies? Among the most fascinating follow-up insights is Lehdonvirta’s take on the political power of platforms. The literature on platform power has—rightly—been focused on the extremely successful ways in which these businesses were able to enlist consumers and users into political-economic alliances against public regulators and incumbents (Culpepper and Thelen, 2020; Adler, 2021). Lehdonvirta’s take is not incompatible, but slightly different. In important ways platforms have become the institutional infrastructure of core swaths of the economy. While the book does not engage with the recent literature on financial systems, its account takes the recent debate about the infrastructural power of business to a new field. Even more striking than in financial markets, however, cloud empires are not just providing the ‘fuel’ to govern markets effectively but have themselves become essential components of the institutional fabric of commercial life today. It is this infrastructural role that helps to explain why there is very little public surprise when platforms feel entitled to maintain embassies in ‘foreign nations’."
#EU#DMA#BigTech#Regulation#Antitrust: "The DMA is a first, and a great deal of earnest effort is going into its implementation. But we don’t know what “success” will look like, even on its own terms. Of course, even a limited set of improvements would be better than the status quo. Godspeed, but let’s be realistic also. The more fundamental point is that the real interesting question is not if we can nibble the gatekeepers at the margin: but whether we can disintermediate them at least in part so that we do not need to rely entirely on a proprietary Web 2.0 that they comprehensively control. Antitrust complaints in the US have at least some prospect of involving divestments and break ups as the eventual remedy – though this will also be a long and inevitably hard fought road. This is not on the cards in Europe through digital markets regulation."
Replay Crew! We had a fun romp through tech headlines this week! https://somegadgetguy.com/b/44j
Jack Dorsey is no longer on the board of BlueSky. We're wrapping up the closing arguments in Google's anti-trust case. The Rabbit R1 is an app. Sony's marketing materials for the next XPERIA leak.
And we should probably chat about this next iPad thing-y...
US Oil producers withheld prod. to DRIVE UP OIL PRICES BY COORDINATING WITH #OPEC.
-h/t M Stoller
Exxon is set to close its $60B deal for Pioneer following an agreement with #antitrust enforcers not to add fmr Pioneer Chief Exec Sheffield to its BOD.
#EU#Cybersecurity#Antitrust#Apple#Safari: "Apple's grudging accommodation of European antitrust rules by allowing third-party app stores on iPhones has left users of its Safari browser exposed to potential web activity tracking.
Developers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk looked into the way Apple implemented the installation process for third-party software marketplaces on iOS with Safari, and concluded Cupertino's approach is particularly shoddy.
"Our testing shows that Apple delivered this feature with catastrophic security and privacy flaws," wrote Bakry and Mysk in an advisory published over the weekend.
Apple – which advertises Safari as "incredibly private" – evidently has undermined privacy among European Union Safari users through a marketplace-kit: URI scheme that potentially allows approved third-party app stores to follow those users around the web."
#LiveNation#TicketMaster#Antitrust#Monopolies: "It's been a minute since Ticketmaster was last in the news, so let's recap. Ticketmaster bought out most of its ticketing rivals, then merged with Live Nation, the country's largest concert promoter, and bought out many of the country's largest music, stage, and sports venues. They used this iron grip on the entire supply chain for performances and events to pile innumerable junk fees on every ticket sold, while drastically eroding the wages of the creative workers they nominally represented. They created a secret secondary market for tickets and worked with ticket-touts to help them run bots that bought every ticket within an instant of the opening of ticket sales, then ran an auction marketplace that made them gigantic fees on every re-sold ticket – fees the performers were not entitled to share in.
The Ticketmaster/Live Nation/venue octopus is nearly impossible to escape. Independent venues can't book Live Nation acts unless they use Ticketmaster for their tickets. Acts can't get into the large venues owned by Ticketmaster unless they sign up to have Live Nation book their tour. And when Ticketmaster buys a venue, it creams off the most successful acts, starving competing venues of blockbuster shows. They also illegally colluded with their vendors to jack up the price of concerts across the board:"
The agency accused Amazon of using the app, which can be set to automatically delete messages, to hide information related to the FTC’s ongoing #antitrust investigation into the company #security#privacy
#Amazon#BigTech#Antitrust#Competition: "The Everything War makes a compelling case that no company should be this powerful. For many sellers, Amazon is now their main route to market. Khan’s lawsuit argues that the company has leveraged this to force them to buy other services such as advertising and fulfilment (in 2022, Amazon surpassed UPS to become America’s biggest non-governmental delivery service). Swelled by this influx, its take of sellers’ revenues rose from 19 per cent in 2014 to 45 per cent in 2023, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an anti-monopoly group, which adds that prices had to go up to offset these fees. A Borkian might argue that Amazon’s success is the reward for being efficient and raising consumer welfare. But with less and less competition providing a benchmark, these notions of welfare become very hard to gauge."
#Books#BookPublishing#BookPublishers#Antitrust#Competition: "The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).
But let’s dig into everything they said in detail."
BREAKING: U.S. Chamber of Commerce seeks to block Non-Compete Rule. Chamber also seeks to block the ghosts from visiting Scrooge so Tiny Tim can die in an appropriately Malthusian way.
The Department of Justice is planning to sue Ticketmaster's owner, Live Nation, for antitrust violations, and could file suit as soon as next month, Axios reports.
#Amazon#WorkersRights#Labor#EU#Monopolies#BigTech#Antitrust: "At the hearing in the European Parliament in January, where Amazon's chair remained empty, we got a glimpse into horrible working conditions through testimonies of employees.
One particular story sticks in our mind — of a worker who witnessed an accident and was later fired, to prevent any negative impact. There are reports about every break being closely monitored, about cameras in front of the bathroom door, about workers being treated like robots, slaves, numbers.
There must be no place for such exploitation in Europe. The multinational must respect European rules and values if it wants to do business and make profit in Europe. We must make Amazon pay decent wages and ensure workers' rights — to treat employees like humans, not robots.
With this mission in mind, the Socialists and Democrats are on Friday (12 April) organising a Europe-wide Amazon action day, coordinated by UNI Europa, the European Services Workers Union, to meet Amazon workers and UNI Europa affiliated trade unions in Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands — and discuss how to empower employees so they can stand up to Amazon's exploitation."
#Capitalism#Globalization#Monopolies#Antitrust#Unions: "Here's a silver lining to global monopoly capitalism: it means we're all fighting the same enemy, who is using the same tactics everywhere. The same coordination tools that allow corporations to extend their tendrils to every corner of the Earth allows regulators and labor organizers to coordinate their resistance.
That's a lesson Mercedes is learning.
(...)
This is that unexpected benefit to globalism: the fact that Mercedes has extrusions into both the American and German political spheres means that both American and German workers can collaborate to bring it to heel.
The same is true for antitrust regulators. The multinational corporations that are in regulators' crosshairs in the US, the EU, the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea and beyond use the same playbook in every country. That's doubly true of Big Tech companies, who literally run the same code – embodying the same illegal practices – on servers in every country."
First was a nice slate of talks at the Maastricht University Faculty of Law by Martijn Snoep (an enforcer's perspective on the green and digital transition), @kasnder (Ticketmaster, online bots, and the price of concert tickets), and Maria José Schmidt-Kessen (human rights and corporate sustainability due diligence for improving antitrust law) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vczQsxVQajA (2/6) #law#antitrust
23 years later, Antitrust is still a great movie. Featuring Gnome desktop and all the anti-Microsoft sentiment from the 90's. We all wanted to be Milo.
#EU#Europe#Antitrust#Monopolies: "We are launching a new economic agenda for tackling monopoly power called "Rebalancing Europe", together with allies across Europe.
In June, millions of Europeans will be called upon to vote in elections that will determine the course and character of European democracy for years to come.
This manifesto sets out a roadmap for reimagining the mission, structure, and powers of the European Commission and European Parliament to restore freedom, opportunity, and prosperity to all its citizens by reining in and dispersing concentrated economic power.
For too long, the EU hesitated as a handful of powerful corporations gained strangleholds over the very heart of our economic life: our core communications and commercial technologies, essential goods, and critical supply chains. Hundreds of major corporate mergers went unchallenged, leading to serious and growing corporate concentration. This concentration has severely weakened Europe's power to provide for its citizens and defend their rights and freedoms." https://www.iccl.ie/news/new-manifesto-for-europe/
#DOJ Can Reopen NAR Antitrust Probe: Appeals Court >>>
The National Association of #Realtors is officially back in the federal spotlight.
The Department of Justice can reopen its #antitrust#investigation into the trade group’s policies, according to a ruling in a Washington D.C. federal #appeals#court on Friday.
Unfortunately, some Dems have sold out to corp. interests too. It's shameful:
Based on timing -it appears that the meeting was intended to thwart the antitrust efforts, at the behest of regulators’ corp. adversaries. The presence of both Massie & Correa is intended to signal that both parties have concerns about antitrust enforcers’ approach, particularly on the HSR proposed rule, sources explained. & the effort seeks to indoctrinate staff into that mindset.
"Antitrust Action Agst Google May Transform the Internet."
Google's growth mirrors that of other tech giants like Microsoft, Meta & Apple, platform owners who've become similarly dominant in -the digital world & whose positions are coming under increased scrutiny worldwide. Platforms have used devious means to squash competitors, limiting comp. in the digital world to the detriment of just about everyone who uses the internet.