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Comment by leotravis10 | Hacker News Reader

This Techdirt piece describes that lawmakers fixed none of the problems and actually exempts a lot of actual monopolies such as telecom (Example: AT&T and Verizon) and retail (Example: Walmart and Target): https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/27/senator-klobuchar-fixed-...

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The big issue explained in the Techdirt piece is how it only has a chance of passing because it's a trojan horse for other companies to sue the big companies (FB, Google, Apple) for the moderation decision they make, including Google downranking spammy sites that nobody likes being sent to.

It's worse than you think. The definition of a Covered Platform is so overbroad that basically if you allow any kind of user interaction on your website (or OPERATING SYSTEM!) then yours is a covered platform. So imagine you run a restaurant and allow for a customer feedback form that is visible on the website... congratulations, you've now become a covered platform and are obliged to allow other people to sell products on your website. No, I'm not kidding. That is precisely how badly written this thing is.

Doesn't the bill text also have thresholds that need to be met (such as revenue, user quantity, etc) for you to be subject to enforcement?

Does that make it any better? "Oh, hey, here's this absolutely horrible law, but don't worry, it only applies if you're successful."

Yes, if the intent is to regulate monopolies.

You know what you call a small cap monopoly?

Not a monopoly.

Let's say I make a miracle drug for people with a rare disease, patent it, and it costs $0.01 to produce, and I'll watch people die unless they pay me >$1M.

Am I a monopoly since I only have a few million in revenue?

Not in the sense that we're worried about here.

I feel like I shouldn't have to spell this out, but we're using "monopoly" in the sense of "monopolistic abuse specifically enabled by large revenue and/or platform gatekeeping."

Whether you think other kinds of monopolies are a problem or not is immaterial, because we're talking about a specific type of monopoly, that a number of us do have a problem with.

I have several friends who work in antitrust consulting. My understanding from listening to them talk is that monopolists are defined with respect to a market, and defining the relevant market is a task in itself. Surely the defining characteristic of a monopolist is that it has a high proportion of the market share for a given market, and it is not required that the market in question be large? You can have a monopoly over a small market.

Afaik, that's the (modern, post-1918, [0]) definition of a monopoly under Sherman Antitrust Act (of 1890).

And specifically, that a monopoly's nature and actions "[must] suppress or even destroy competition." Think duck typing.

Unfortunately, US vs ATT was never decided, as ATT volunteered to be broken up in 1982.

But the broader approach seems to have been that small monopolies are not harmful to the public good, as they face the potential of competitors (sometimes, larger ones) expanding from unrelated fields into their business.

It's only when a successful company leverages its success into a size (and dominance) that makes competition impossible that it becomes a legally actionable monopoly (by restricting even the possibility of competition).

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Board_of_Trade_v._Un...

Ooh, I didn't know this. I will go to the next discussion with my antitrust friends armed with my new info. Thanks for sharing this!

Under WTO rules, pharmaceutical patents are subject to compulsory licensing meaning a competitor would be allowed to use your patent whether you like it or not. Yes you would be entitled to a royalty but the rate is unlikely to be as egregious as 1 million dollars per unit.

If you create such a miracle drug why on earth would we want a policy that lets people die?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#Daraprim_price-...

It seems like the system in fact pushed back on Martin's pricing

He only got reprimanded because of how braizen we was, accepting news interviews and showing no remorse for the insane price increase. Without the news focus he probably would've avoided jail time (he was just released last month serving over 4 years of his 7 year sentence).

ehh... the whole idea for this bill is to prevent use of advantages gained from monopoly to create additional monopolies.

Yes. The thresholds are insanely high - like 1 in 8 people use it. Literally. 50 million US MAU or 1 billion worldwide (a smaller threshold of 100k business customers). And a market cap of 550 billion dollars (which automatically adjusts with inflation).

> which automatically adjusts with inflation)

For reference:

> adjusted for inflation on the basis of the Consumer Price Index;

Hmm... I wonder if this sort of verbiage might make much more of an impact on a hundred million working class Americans' lives if it were applied to other sections of the US Code...

"It could but not alone but it helps." coming from an stranger in the Internet working in one of the few countries where salary is adjusted for inflation.

Linux has more than 50 million US MAU, no?

Not as an online platform, no. Or at least not as one owned by the Linux Foundation or Linus.

AICOA 2(a)(9):

  ONLINE PLATFORM.—The term “online platform” means a website, online or mobile application, operating system, digital assistant, or online service that—

  (A) enables a user to generate content that can be viewed by other users on the platform or to interact with other content on the platform;

  (B) facilitates the offering, advertising, sale, purchase, payment, or shipping of products or services, including software applications, between and among consumers or businesses not controlled by the platform operator; or

  (C) enables user searches or queries that access or display a large volume of information.

It's an "operating system" that certainly meets (C) and arguably meets (A) and (B) as well.

Linux is a kernel, on its own it does not meet any of these criteria. An "operating system" would be something like Debian or Ubuntu, and at least the latter one has already had scandals regarding advertising.

Unless operating system is clearly defined, I absolutely would not assume that it must mean something more than kernel. These are legal stipulations, they are meant to be interpreted by an audience. They're not meant to be razor-thin in what they cover.

Right, Linux might count, but what is the "Linux Corporation" with the 50,000,000 MAU? It's not "is the program used by that many people" it's "does the company or individual have that many users". That's also why the company needs a market cap of more than 550 billion.

So I guess it would hit Android and maybe FireOS Linuxes.

> It's not "is the program used by that many people" it's "does the company or individual have that many users".

I'm not sure where you're getting this from. The bill doesn't actually define "monthly active", so you should construe it as liberally as possible when wargaming possible ways it might be used in practice.

> That's also why the company needs a market cap of more than 550 billion.

Check the conjunction between (II)(aa) and (II)(bb). It's 'or'. If you have 1B global MAU (again, Linux), the $550B threshold is irrelevant.

How the hell are Walmart and Target, stark competitors in the same space, both monopolies?

An oligopoly, then? A cartel?

These anti-monopoly laws always end up as “make restrictions preventing new competitors at some cost the big companies can easily handle”.

Always? All anti-monopoly laws, ever?

That’s a hypothesis explored by some authors, like here: https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/big-busin...

Libertarian is a word for people who are too bashful to describe themselves as Feudalists.

Yes, that's why the biggest companies are constantly lobbying to pass antitrust legislation. Because of the extensive history of small upstart competitors being destroyed in antitrust cases.

At least there are only two.

Imagine how awful if we had 5 or 10 monopolies in the same market!

People are to focused on the mono-part.

IMHO appropriate laws should be applied to any company which directly or indirectly affects some "high" threshold of people. Or another way to think about it would be if it's practically impossible to enter a market even with a decent start capital because of it being dominated by a small number of mega cooperation it's not (much) different then a monopoly.

What does it matter if there are 1 or 5 companies which effectively undermine competition in a harmful way. It's either way harmful.

Having 5 companies that actually compete for business wouldn’t harm consumers. Having 5 companies that avoid competition would, and that’s called a cartel and it’s already illegal according to the anti-trust laws (the Sherman and Clayton Acts).

Oligopoly is only marginally better than monopoly.

A cartel is illegal yes, but proving a cartel is dam hard. And depending on jurisdiction requires proving that the companies actually had some "agreement"/"communication" wrt. their non-competing (as far as I remember).

But if you look at markets all around the world having situations with the same harmful dynamics as cartels but for legalities not counting as cartels is not uncommon.

Monopolies might be harmful in that sense, but the issue is that monopolies tend to happen naturally as a company grows and expands into a national corporation, which is the most textbook definition of capitalism and the american dream. In general antitrust laws are meant to 'allow' competitors to exist should a new competitor attempt to challenge the incumbents, but they're not an attempt at forcing competition by hurting those incumbents.

> happen naturally as a company grows

It happens because (especially but not only the US) economics system is designed to feature monopolies as it's a efficient tool to economically suppress/control other countries.

And as far as I know some of this laws where meant to force competition. It's just lobbyist have effectively defused/removed/reinterpreted them.

There are huge swathes of the country, rural areas primarily, where Walmart is the only local option.

Techdirt/Copia Institute is a lobbyist which is sponsored by Google. Mike Masnick reads like a Google public policy playbook, because that's what he's copying from.

Any evidence that Google pays masnick or techdirt?

Mike's own website: https://copia.is/ (scroll down to sponsorship logos) Copia has also been listed on Google's own public policy transparency website in the past, though it's absent at the moment.

EDIT: This version of the disclosure is still up: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/trade_association_...

Note that the Google Public Policy Team's explicit purpose is to influence laws to be favorable to the company. Paying "think tanks", lobbyists, and political action groups is explicitly about avoiding government regulation for Google, as Mike is doing here.

Interesting, and good to know.

The part I don’t get is that Google is listed right next to Yelp, who are the #1 advocates for regulatory action against Google.

That's because Yelp can only extort businesses if Google puts them at the top of search results, instead of providing a quick link to unbiased reviews on Google Maps.

They are listed as a 3rd party org. In the same list as the EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Democrat and Republican Attorneys General Associations.

That's pretty much a catchall term for groups on this list. But every organization on that list is paid by the Public Policy team, whose goal is to influence the law in a favorable direction for Google. That both includes funding politicians (like governors) and people who will write favorable statements for Google online (like Mike Masnick).

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