Because the two giant companies that own those markets like it this way, and they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position.
> They paid lawmakers...if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery
No, they did not and no we would not.
If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.
>If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.
$140,000 to a John Harris Whitmire. Apparently he's "an American attorney and politician who is the 63rd mayor of Houston, Texas" according to Wikipedia.
That's a campaign donation. (Mayors in mayor-council governments aren't technically lawmakers, though Houston has a strong enough mayor that it's semantic at best.) You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally.
I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.
> You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally.
A personal election campaign is presumably something in your personal interest, and money is fungible.
> I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.
On the contrary, giving in to the sophistry that says that this particular system of organised and regulated bribery is somehow not bribery is intellectual dishonesty. Yes there are some relevant differences between this and other forms of bribery, but the similarities are stronger.
> If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker
And then
> That's a campaign donation
Use newspeak and call it whatever you want, it is VERY clear MONEY WAS PAID TO A LAWMAKER, which is EXACTLY what you wanted evidence of. This very clearly means you need to cut me a 6 figure cheque.
Again, other countries very clearly call this bribery, the US just invented a new word for it.
> You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses.
You absolutely can. You can loan money to your campaign and charge interest on that and then have donors donate to your campaign to repay your debt. Brought to you by the conservative wing of the supreme court in FEC v Cruz.
> Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices.
It's up to us to make them give us better tools for us. This isn't a natural thing that just happens. I don't give a damn which company succeeds in the end so long as the consumer is fairly represented.
It's not even clear that breaking up the app stores would be good for consumers or developers. Having to load an app onto 15 different app stores to capture the market sounds like hell.
The only ones who would really benefit are other large corporations like Epic.
> This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws.
No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law. We are in a thread discussing a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9.
“This is completely irrelevant if [this decidedly false fact]” is not really a useful statement. Wishcasting that courts will misinterpret the law is not the way forward, the way forward is new laws.
My point was that someone saying "well it's their platform, they can do what they want!" Is making a bad argument.
If someone wants to make a good argument, instead of a bad one, then you would have to start talking about what a monopoly is.
But whoever built the platform is simply an argument that is unrelated.
> is not really a useful statement.
It absolutely is useful, because it focuses on the question that matters.
No matter if you think that Apple is a monopoly or not, of which there are reasonable arguments to be made on all sides, the fact that Apple built it just doesn't matter.
Talk about the things that matter, not unrelated points.
> a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9.
If you meant to imply that this is a final verdict on if Apple is a monopoly or not, then I would recommend that you re-read the original ruling of the California judge.
The California judge was very clear that the verdict only shows that Epic failed in their arguments, not that Apple is decidedly not a monopoly.
Now that SCOTUS has denied cert this constitutes a final judgement. Its rulings on law are binding throughout the 9th circuit. While “possession of monopoly power is a fact question”, this denial is likely to be the final say for quite some time on questions of whether Apple possesses monopoly power in markets related to app stores, which it obviously does not because of the existence of Android.
Epic attempted to argue that Apple has monopoly power in “iOS games” which was rejected since you can’t just arbitrarily narrow your market definition until you find a monopoly.
> Now that SCOTUS has denied cert this constitutes a final judgement
You still don't understand. This is in reference to epic's case. It not about other people's cases. The final judgement is on Epic. It is not on the upcoming US government case, for example.
Do you understand the difference?
Do a control F on the document for "Epic failed". Notice how the words "epic failed" are completely different from "everyone in the world has failed"?
This case is about epic's case, not others. Mostly because Epic did not provide enough evidence and failed on the fact finding portion of the original trial.
But that has nothing to do with if other groups provide evidence that Epic missed.
> Epic attempted to argue
Epic attempted to argue it. And epic's, and only epic's argument has failed.
> which it obviously does not because of the existence of Android.
I don't think you understand what a monopoly is, according to anti trust law.
A monopoly is not a single firm. Instead it is about durable market power.
"Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors."
If you want another source, for future lawsuits, you can simply research the US government's upcoming case against apple.
> No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law.
The right way to look at it is "US law is not written in a way to recognize and break up these monopolies". By any common sense or economic definition, these are monopolies. That the legal definition is out of whack is a problem which will hopefully be corrected.