I don’t like it, but it is Amazon’s web property and they can do whatever they want. They could put up political banners on the top of their website, but I wouldn’t recommend it with how divided the country is.
They can't do whatever they want, we live in a regulated economy for precisely this reason. Otherwise you get exactly what is happening here, a company using it's near monopoly power to raise prices on everyone to enrich a few
> The policy and spirit of the California antitrust laws are to promote the free play of competitive market forces and the lower prices to consumers that result. Amazon, the dominant online retail store in the United States, has violated the policy, spirit, and letter of those laws by imposing agreements at the retail and wholesale level that have prevented effective price competition across a wide swath of online marketplaces and stores.
The linked-to article concerns a possible preliminary injunction related to that antitrust case.
You don’t need to be a monopoly for anti-trust law to come into play. Airlines can’t collude on pricing, for example, even though no single airline is a monopoly.
Yes. And? There's no claim that Amazon is part of a price-fixing cartel or other collusion.
A pure monopoly is one where there is a single seller or provider. The US grants limited-time monopoly power to a new patent holder, and USPS has a monopoly on traditional letter delivery within the United States, for examples. A pure monopoly is therefore not necessarily illegal.
"In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. For instance, the term monopoly may be referring to instances where: ... There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)"
That use certainly seems appropriate in the context of Amazon's ability to dictate prices, as described in California's complaint, yes?
These laws do not prohibit putting up political banners, but Amazon certainly cannot do whatever they want.
There are laws regarding price fixing, abuse of monopoly powers, discrimination on a protected class, product labeling, and making false and misleading statements about drugs.
If they sell Cuban-made cigars made with conventionally grown tobacco, then while they technically can put up a banner claiming "these organic, made in the USA cigars, if smoked twice daily, will cure epilepsy in children - buy now!", they'll have broken several laws.
That's not legally correct in the US, EU, or the UK. Private ownership gives Amazon a lot of discretion over its own site design, messaging and whatnot, but not unlimited freedom to do or say whatever they please.
In the US major firms do not get a free pass simply because they own the platform and the idea that a website constitute "private property" doesn't work as a defence to anticompetitive conduct or to display a political banner expressing support for a political party of candidate without triggering additional rules / limits.
In the EU this is even less the case, as it effectively treats some platform conduct as capable of creating societal/systemic risks and thus needs to be kept in check. Whether is happens like that all the time in reality is subject of another discussion, I think; the point is that the mechanisms exist.
Political spending/advertising is a regulated activity that goes beyond rules that apply to private property. In the UK, for example, spending, donation, reporting etc. if the activity is intended to influence voters, falls under specific regulations: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-guidance/campaign...