FTC Votes To Expand Antitrust Enforcement Powers (thehill.com) 38
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday voted to expand the regulatory agency's enforcement powers, a signal of Democratic commissioners' willingness to crack down on alleged anti-competitive behavior. From a report: The Democratic-controlled commission voted 3-2 along party lines to repeal a 2015 policy statement that blocked the regulatory agency from challenging "unfair methods of competition" that don't violate existing antitrust laws. The update comes at a time when federal and state regulators are sinking their teeth into investigations of the market power of tech giants. "In practice, the 2015 statement has doubled down on the agency's long standing failure to investigate and pursue unfair methods of competition," Chair Lina Khan said at the meeting, the first under her charge.
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Corporation expanding their power is just fine by you?
Go watch the ads in the middle of your console game, idiot.
well that was stupid (Score:1)
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But...But...Amazon!
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The FTC has explicit mandates from the law, like price fixing.
The FTC also has vague mandates in the law, like "unfair competition", with Congress delegating to the FTC the definition of "unfair competition".
So it is prohibited by law, but needs an entity like the FTC to do the rulemaking that turns it from something vague to something concrete.
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If its not prohibitted by law, the FTC shouldn't have any reason to investigate...
This is a naive interpretation at best. Many actions are not prohibited by law but it is in accord with other actions that make them illegal. It is not illegal to sell things at the same price as your competitor but it is illegal to make an agreement with your competitor at which price to sell things. This is called price fixing and it is illegal but all the outward actions involved are perfectly legal, it is not until you investigate that you can discover the illegal actions they have taken.
Re:well that was stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
If its not prohibitted[sic] by law, the FTC shouldn't have any reason to investigate
That's not how regulatory bodies work. Regulatory bodies are charged by Congress to report to them, this is usually called a mandate. That is Congress grants some regulatory power to some agency, BUT that agency must report back regularly on it's findings of things. Here I'll give you an example. House Report 116-456 is an order by the 116th Congress (order 456) for the FTC to submit to Congress pursuant to public law 93-637. That is, Congress may order the FTC to report back on questions related to Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act as the act grants Congress the power to demand such a report from the agency.
Thus, the regulatory body must investigate because Congress has asked it to do so. Now the "HOW" do we investigate, that's policy. And that's what gets into what the FTC voted on. Basically, AND BOY IS THIS SUMMARIZING, the FTC decided to widen it's scope when Congress asks for reports AND in it's usual regulatory function.
Now all that said. These investigations aren't typically looking for violations to recommend to the Department of Justice. What they usually are for is for very long boring reports, like this one that relates back to House Report 116-456 [ftc.gov] that I had mentioned earlier. Now what Congress does with the report, that's up to Congress. But expanding investigatory powers by a regulatory body is usually a signal by that department that they are looking for Congress to "enhance", "broaden", you take your pick of words the related law. Or vice versa, which is more than likely the case here, that Congress wants more info because they are looking to smack some bills down on some companies and so the regulatory agency needs to give more info.
But investigation into companies isn't always a "let's find illegal shit" kind of ordeal. Now the not too long ago, if Congress had a question about how a company was "working" they might invite the company to some committee meeting in DC. And that's usually how it goes. Congress mostly ignores you if you're on their good side. Congress invites you to committee meetings and listens to your lobbyist if you're on their radar. Congress instructs a regulatory body to investigate and report back if you're on their bad side. And finally Congress is usually voting on some bill if they're officially pissed at you.
A lot of these companies that the FTC now has their sights on are companies that we've all see in recent days at Congressional Committee meetings. So I think Congress is pretty much done giving these people the benefit of the doubt. So if these companies are "less than willing" to work with regulators, well then it's fully within Congress' Interstate Commerce power to make examples of their hesitation to work with regulatory bodies. Especially seeing how the current winds in Congress are about 70% to 80% of the members being officially done with these companies' BS. That kind of overwhelming sentiment in Congress usually means, you either cooperate with the Government or start looking at other countries for your business to call home and pray you'll be able to import into the US. But Congress is clearly primed to start passing some Legislation related to all of this and they're pretty much done buying whatever "excuses"/"reasons"/whatever that the lobbyist and people they sent to committee meetings were giving. So now it's this regulatory agency's turn to flex some of their mandates and the means by which they do that is via investigation.
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Re:well that was stupid (Score:5, Informative)
If its not prohibitted by law ...
Anticompetitive behavior is prohibited by law.
Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 [wikipedia.org]
It is the FTC's job to enforce the law.
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There is still the issue of things that SHOULD be illegal, but find loopholes to avoid getting the company in trouble. Intel business practices have a fair number of these, from "rebates" for not selling too many AMD based devices to out and out giving incentives not to sell AMD based products to keep Intel market share numbers up. These have not gotten the proper investigation over the years, and allows for abuses that should have resulted in billions of dollars in fines but have not.
Things that should
Unelected bureaucrats vote to increase their power (Score:2)
I am usually the first to complain about the way the federal government has dropped the ball on trust-busting time and again. I absolutely want the FTC to do more to take on monopolies.
I do not, however, like the sound of news saying that unelected bureaucrats just voted to give themselves more power. Ick.
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Assuming its a behavior that is not already called out in the law or FTC rules, the FTC would only be able to say "don't do that anymore". They couldn't issue fines until the company continued to do the prohibited activity.
Re:Unelected bureaucrats vote to increase their po (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't.
In 2015, they voted that they would not use the power they already had. This vote is a reversal of that.
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If they are investigating things that are not against the law, then they are increasing their power, regardless of what happened before.
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Is there a problem with investigating things when the consequence is "referral of behavior to Congress that legislation should be considered to address?"
If it's not illegal, referral to the courts probably isn't a consequence. Is there anything inherently wrong with 'investigating?" (ok.. other than the use of tax payer dollars so fair question on whether or not this is how they should be spending money.. but if you want to go down that rabbit hole....)
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I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you want that, pay my retainer first.
More specifically, it appears that the agreement was to not investigate things that federal courts had already ruled to not be illegal.
That was a bipartisan vote, not party line.
The new policy, on a party line vote, is to investigate things that the courts have already found not to be illegal.
Now, short of a USSC ruling, it's *possible* to take a position and try to get the lower courts to reverse themselves, or the USSC t
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The law has explicitly prohibited activities, like price fixing.
The law also has vague prohibited activities, like "unfair competition". Congress delegated the definition of "unfair competition" to the FTC. The FTC's rulemaking process turns those vague prohibited activities into concrete ones.
The "not against the law" bit is shitty wording of the explicitly prohibited activities.
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If they are investigating things that are not against the law ...
The law charges them with the duty to regulate what competition is considered unfair --- The FTC are failing in their regulatory duty assigned to them by the law: If they are not investigating new practices of companies that may be unfair But not addressed by their existing rules.
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If they are investigating things that are not against the law
No, Congress mandates agencies to report to them. An investigation isn't always for "let's find illegal shit". It just means that some government agent is officially looking into something. Like, if the Forestry Service was noticing some white fungus on oak trees, they would send people out to investigate, because that's part of their job to do that. The trees aren't doing anything illegal. I guess if the tree were granted access to the rights in the 4th Amendment, they could tell the investigators to
Re:Unelected bureaucrats vote to increase their po (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not, however, like the sound of news saying that unelected bureaucrats just voted to give themselves more power. Ick.
They didn't grant themselves more power. They have always had such power granted to them by Congressional mandate. The FTC has a policy which dictates to what degree they flex their power. Since about 2015 (and actually is just a part of an on-going trend since the 1980s to reel back government but this ain't a history class), the FTC's policy was to NOT use every single granted power, granted to them to investigate a matter under their regulatory authority. Basically, if some "small" (that's a really relative word here, so by small we're still talking pretty large just not super large) company complained to the FTC about some company being a bully. The FTC has the authority to investigate and send a report to Congress based on that complaint. (Side note: Here's [ftc.gov] an example of one those things they send to Congress) This way if Congress sees a pattern in some activity, they can legislate on it. What has happened in the past however, was that the FTC would ask the company that was complained about (I'll call them the bully company), what they thought of the situation, and then ask them "the bully company" what they felt were ways to make everyone feel better about the situation. And then that was pretty much the end of it. So complaining to the FTC was pretty much asking for a very one-sided therapy session. Think of regulatory policy like, we all know that there's a lot of people speeding on the highway each morning, but there's not like 100s of cop cars out there on the highway patrolling it. The cops decided to set the dial on how much they patrol the highway to some level less than all out, 100%, full throttle patrol this highway like none other. This is sort of the same thing.
Now you may ask, "Why Vote"? Well because like you just said "unelected bureaucrats", Congress "allows" (that gets into the division of Legislative fiat and Executive discretion and this ain't a government 101 class, so I'm just going to go with that word to gloss over all of that) agencies to enact whatever policy they want. However, they must do so "deliberately" and what that means is a full spectrum of gray areas but suffice to say, it "usually" means a public comment period, hearings, and finally a vote. So the FTC wants to change policy, so unlike the police department which would more than likely just tell the cops to go patrol the highway, the FTC has to have a whole pageantry to change policy, because they're unelected bureaucrats and the pageantry is there to make people feel a bit better about some agency just up and changing their mind (I guess to invoke a sense of something that remotely feels like the floor of Congress). OR at the very least allow the courts to feel better about an agency just up and changing their mind.
But I digress, the important thing is, the power they are wanting to exercise, they've always had it, Congress granted them that mandate. But policy was once to not exercise it 100% and hell's bells this new policy doesn't even turn it all the way up either.
Will SCOTUS let it stand (Score:1)
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It's not an expansion of the FTC's power. In 2015, the FTC made a rule to not use the power it already had. This is the FTC deciding to not hamstring itself.
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What's really hilarious is, my Dad considers the SCOTUS to be "liberal". Just like Bush Jr.
They should start (Score:3)
with Spectrum and Cox, with a dash of AT&T
i want to see more open smartphones (Score:2)
Go after Global Tax Cartel! (Score:2)
I hear your boss is one of the suspects in a global price-fixing scheme.
Let's try English. (Score:1, Flamebait)
monopolistic forces at work in the iOS ecosystem (Score:2)
Are to much so apple may want to make changes on there vs beforced to open open maybe to much by the courts.
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Tech gets the flak but what about (Score:1)