I think my concern is that the important thing is not to do illegal things. If training focuses on just not sounding like you do illegal things instead of just not doing illegal things, that’s the problem.
No, that isn't the problem.
The problem is that the difference between violating the law and not violating the law is whether you used what the court/jury felt to be inappropriate language. "Not sounding like you do illegal things" is how you avoid violating the law. Your actions are less relevant than your commentary on those actions directed to your friends.
That's why the training focuses on using the right magic words and tabooing the wrong ones. The training is there to help you follow the law, no matter how stupid the law might be.
only if the regulators investigating you are complete morons, which may be the case once in a while, but I doubt it is for any large case like this one.
regulators see straight through doublespeak and careful wording. buzzwords and corporate lingo are completely transparent to anyone who spends a single moment thinking about the message that the words are conveying, and regulators have far more experience cutting through that stuff than just about anyone else.
> Moron
Not so much because they might making some incorrect conclusions but because they don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.
When one actually suspects that something is anticompetitive, subverts the privacy policy, or is against the law, the done thing is to go talk to an attorney. Either product counsel inside the company if you are just curious or concerned in good faith, or your own attorney if you think the company is acting in bad faith.
No they don't, Microsoft didn't do this training and got nailed for bundling internet explorer with windows. Then Microsoft and all other big tech companies started to police words and look, no big anti trust like that has happened in US since. As long as Microsoft says "we always open edge no matter the settings when you click links in our products to ensure the best customer experience", instead of "we always open edge to increase edge market share", they wont get nailed in USA.
you are saying that regulators can't see through this then giving an example of them seeing through it.
They spend a lot of time parsing just what Gates and others on his executive team meant by things like “cut off [Netscape’s] air supply”.
Regardless of who you think “wins” these exchanges, the government thought that putting Gates in a position where he had to explain this kind of language would be embarrassing and discrediting.
It worked.
Describing something in terms of helping the competition while actually doing the opposite, will get you dunked on doubly so. If you think equivocation is they to doing illegal things, my dear poster, snap out of it and feel the Terra firma, because you're so high, the FAA can do an airspeed check.
Actually anti-trust training I have gone through mostly emphasizes that you should never ever help the competition or talk to them, because that sounds like forming an illegal oligopoly.
And that's the point. Lawyers can twist things written in emails to be whatever they want. People who say "if you're not doing anything illegal, then you have nothing to hide" has never been at the hands of a witch hunt. I have a friend who lived in the US on F1 and H1B for over 10 years and was banned from entering the US over jokes with her ex-bf about marrying for a green card.
Don’t worry, soon it’ll get done by AI instead and it’ll match on “acceptable” language too.
That's insane, especially after her being in the US for 10+ years and having established a life there. Sorry to go off-topic, but I have a friend whose SO is on a work visa and they have joked about the marrying for a green card thing before (a very common joke it seems). How did the government find out about the joke? (in-person, through texts, etc.) I ask because I wouldn't want the same to happen to them and to caution them.
What? That's also fine.