FTC Restores Rigorous Enforcement of Law Banning Unfair Methods of Competition (ftc.gov) 46
The Federal Trade Commission issued a statement today that restores the agency's policy of rigorously enforcing the federal ban on unfair methods of competition. From a report: Congress gave the FTC the unique authority to identify and police against these practices, beyond what the other antitrust statutes cover. But in recent years the agency has not always carried out that responsibility consistently. The FTC's previous policy restricted its oversight to a narrower set of circumstances, making it harder for the agency to challenge the full array of anticompetitive behavior in the market. Today's statement removes this restriction and declares the agency's intent to exercise its full statutory authority against companies that use unfair tactics to gain an advantage instead of competing on the merits.
"When Congress created the FTC, it clearly commanded us to crack down on unfair methods of competition," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "Enforcers have to use discretion, but that doesn't give us the right to ignore a central part of our mandate. Today's policy statement reactivates Section 5 and puts us on track to faithfully enforce the law as Congress designed." Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act in 1914 because it was unhappy with the enforcement of the Sherman Act, the original antitrust statute. Section 5 of the FTC Act bans "unfair methods of competition" and instructs the Commission to enforce that prohibition.
"When Congress created the FTC, it clearly commanded us to crack down on unfair methods of competition," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "Enforcers have to use discretion, but that doesn't give us the right to ignore a central part of our mandate. Today's policy statement reactivates Section 5 and puts us on track to faithfully enforce the law as Congress designed." Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act in 1914 because it was unhappy with the enforcement of the Sherman Act, the original antitrust statute. Section 5 of the FTC Act bans "unfair methods of competition" and instructs the Commission to enforce that prohibition.
Removable batteries again in cellphones?! (Score:1)
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I'm not coming to this question from a place of hostility or derision, but how is a non-removable battery in a cell phone anticompetitive?
It's anti-customer, for sure. But I don't see it being an issue for anticompetitive regulation.
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It keeps a third party vendor of batteries from competing with the original manufacturer, that's clearly anti-competitive.
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Spoken like someone who never changed a battery in their lifetime. There are plenty of third party vendors of batteries. Heck, even Rossman group got their shipment of third party batteries confiscated because they featured the Apple logo on them even though they weren't genuine Apple parts.
Go to any cellphone store and they'll have replacement batteries, almost always unofficial third p
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Cellphone makers made a cartel about it nowadays (its part of the "planned obsolescence")
Re: Removable batteries again in cellphones?! (Score:1)
Re: Removable batteries again in cellphones?! (Score:1)
This "minimization" is called planned obsolescence
news corp is failing (Score:2)
news corp is failing
The #1 issue is lobbying for law changes. (Score:5, Informative)
That's how corporations run America, along with "free speech = money" and "corporations are people". Let's see them do something about those. Until then, it's just more noise.
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Never mind the difficulty in trying to enforce any kind of law banning corporate speech. Does your law restrict the owner and sole proprietor of a business from petitioning the government from some change in law? What about employees of companies that are either interested in having a job or trying to make the co
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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This has always been like that.
Recently it became clear, the only way a large company continues to exist in the USA, is if they start making huge lobby and campaign contributions. Otherwise, they will not make your company's life any easy.
Most obvious one is tech companies. Remember anti-trust action against Microsoft, federal government becoming very loud, and all going away. For what is essentially a slap on the wrist. And then look up Microsoft spending over years in Washington and correlate them. It is
It's going to be counterproductive (Score:1, Redundant)
Apple only needs bundling and Apple-tax to have first party products win in any consumer electronic ecosystem niche they want. They have all the anti-competetive measures they need already in place. Microsoft and Google as far less vertically integrated ecosystem providers will be far more blatant when they want to start moving in a niche. Just because it's more blatant doesn't mean it's worse though.
Microsoft and Google are the faltering competition to Apple, sawing at their legs is just going to accelerat
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It will be interesting to see, because there are two sides to this.
If you create a new OS platform, would it be considered unfair methods of competition if you're the only one able to write apps for it?
After all, would making macOS or iOS be considered unfair because everyone around writes for Win32 APIs?
At some point something will become proprietary, so where is the line between unfair and simple innovation?
If a car maker makes a car that has oddball rims, is it unfair competition because you can't use ex
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I never mentioned fairness, it was a not a moral argument.
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Google won't allow F-Droid to auto update (root required).
A level playing field is sufficient. They're tying their store to their OS, same as Microsoft tying IE. Imagine if they had prevented a downloaded Netscape from making SSL connections!
Lord knows Google isn't operating as a pure free-market player.
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There is no F-droid for iOS at all.
Well then (Score:2)
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The thing that *is* illegal is leveraging your monopoly such that people *have* to do business with you, or using anti-competitive practices (not clearly defined) to be successful. Just being really good at what you do is not illegal and is not anti-competitive.
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The thing that *is* illegal is leveraging your monopoly such that people *have* to do business with you...
And would a software vendor be guilty of this based solely on the fact that they only develop and sell software that runs on OSX?
A software vendor may have had zero intention of accidentally creating leverage for Apple simply due to the obvious OSX exclusivity. But it's that easy to do when you do not license your OS to any other hardware provider on the planet.
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That's a choice that vendor freely makes. It's not like they are being forced to do so. They can always develop for Android, as well. Many do.
And that, does not answer my question or address the issue. Apple also makes the choice to refuse to license their OS to 3rd party hardware vendors. It's not like they're forced to do so, but I would certainly be forced to buy Apple hardware for an OSX-only software solution. Many are.
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The thing that *is* illegal is leveraging your monopoly such that people *have* to do business with you, or using anti-competitive practices (not clearly defined) to be successful. Just being really good at what you do is not illegal and is not anti-competitive.
An example of leveraging a monopoly is Comcast's practice of bundling internet access into all of their cable TV offerings. By making internet access effectively free for anyone who wants cable TV service (since the cable TV companies have divided the territory between themselves to avoid competing with each other) they make it hard for a company that offers only internet service to enter the market. Fortunately for the ISP market Comcast has such poor customer service that customers would rather pay for
It's about fucking time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering how badly corporations have been behaving, this is waaay past due. I hope they do away with zero-rating bullshit.
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Well, if the summary is at all accurate, the catch is that the law doesn't define what is meant by "unfair". Just imagine trying to come up with a definition of that that would satisfy everyone.
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Mostly it means preventing other businesses doing the same thing: selling your privacy, fair; vendor lock-in, fair; disabling your online identity, fair; suspending/terminating subscriptions, fair. It sets the bar really low, now if they said "consistent outcome', or "board of review", that might offer some power to the consumer.
Banks? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, does this Fair Competion apply to banks? Is it a level playing field when multi-billion-dollar banks get to play at the Wall St casino with everyman John Doe? Is it a level playing field when multi-billion-dollar banks get bailed out by John Doe's hard-earned money after losing their shirts over greedy, irresponsible "investing" in what they knew to be junk?
How can stock market investment banking EVER be considered a "Fair Competition"? There will NEVER be Fair Competition unless you bring back Glass-Steagall or a new equivalent.
If you want inflation to go down (Score:4, Insightful)
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If we want inflation to go down, we need less printing of currency. This announcement has nothing to do with inflation.
Fucking finally (Score:1)
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Ever wonder just how many times American citizens have pointlessly declared "Fucking finally" across the last 100 years or so?
I don't.
Don't hold your breath. After nearly a century, lip service is still a hot seller.
About time (Score:2)
FTC is a joke (Score:2)
The FTC doesn't do nothin' 'bout nothin' hardly no more. All this is is a smoke screen to go after companies who do not toe the woke party line.