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by yjftsjthsd-h 1001 days ago
> Maybe ‘not doing illegal things’ should be the bar? At least they’re written down in advance (hopefully) instead of retroactively defined by folks who didn’t win?

...yes, allow me to introduce you too this little thing called the Sherman Antitrust Act, which has been the law for ~130 years.
1 comments
lazide 1001 days ago
Oh that I had no issues with, as you see in my comment history. That’s not what the parent poster I was responding to was implying though.
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yjftsjthsd-h 1001 days ago
You replied to me; what did you think I was implying?
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lazide 1001 days ago
That you first led with if it was fair or not, then tacked on the law as a penalty for it not being fair (seemingly in your opinion, as you provided no particular specifics).

Which is what you wrote.

As it’s hard to find a company that doesn’t at least attempt tactics like this named in the complaint (or much worse), it seemed to leave the implication clear.

They deserved to have the law applied because you felt it was unfair.

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yjftsjthsd-h 1001 days ago
That law exists to explicitly make certain types of unfair competition illegal. That's the point. So yeah, I pointed out that there's an underlying ethical principle, and that principle got encoded into the law, and MS (and now Google) violated both the ethical principle and the actual law.
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lazide 1001 days ago
The law is very vague and never says ‘unfair’ anywhere. Lots of competitive practices many consider unfair is de-facto legal (in that large companies like Comcast are literally doing them in the open right now, and have been for a decade plus with nary a peep from regulators).

Feel free to read the code, sections 1 through 7.

It says ‘in restraint of trade or commerce’. But how is Google restraining trade or commerce in a way any different (or even more than!) a broadcaster getting exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics for instance? And how is that not Unfair too?

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1]

Section 2 makes it illegal to Monopolize or attempt to Monopolize - but never defines it.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2

None of the other sections seem interesting.

In law the general definition of monopoly covers so many markets, and is also based on ‘unreasonable’ efforts to restrict competition. Reasonable is doing a lot work here, as that can go pretty far!

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly]

So what law exactly do you think they are breaking and why? Are they taking unreasonable steps to prevent others from competing with them? If so, what would be reasonable for them to do instead?

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