5 ms·
> I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thread on HN arguing one way or another whether Apple is a monopoly. Why would it? The court basically dodged th
by bialpio 5y ago
> I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thread on HN arguing one way or another whether Apple is a monopoly.
Why would it? The court basically dodged the question, so we still don't have an answer provided by the court system. Until that happens, we can discuss it to death if we want!
Edit: excerpt from the ruling is:
"Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws. (...) The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist."
- madeofpalk 5y agoWhat does an answer actually look like?
- bialpio 5y agoI'd expect one of the 2 phrasings to be present: "the Court concludes that Apple is a monopolist under federal / state antitrust laws" "the Court concludes that Apple is not a monopolist under neither federal nor state antitrust laws" Instead, the court went with the third, which to me means "we have not ruled on whether Apple is a monopolist or not, lawsuits welcome". Is that not the right way to look at it?
- dannyw 5y agoThe court said Epic failed to prove it in the relevant market to this case (digital mobile gaming). Leaves the door open for Spotify to sue.
- radley 5y agoThe injunction clearly states Apple is anti-competitive, but not a monopoly.
- bialpio 5y agoHmm. I'm reading "the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws" as "we cannot decide on this matter". Is this not the right interpretation?
- borski 5y agoThat is not the right interpretation. They didn’t say they cannot conclude one way or the other - they said they cannot conclude that Apple is a monopolist, period - meaning that they have concluded Apple is not a monopolist (under current state and federal laws). They did not say “we cannot ultimately conclude whether Apple is a monopolist” which would be your interpretation. [edit] Given the downvotes (really?) I suppose I should add the nuance that all of this is based on this specific case and evidence presented; the case did not conclude that Apple can never be a monopoly (in another case, with other evidence) but that in this case, it isn’t.
- makeitdouble 5y agoWhy twist the words straight from the ruling ? If they “concluded Apple is not a monopolist” they would have said so. They deliberately choose a different turn of phrase for these words, let’s respect the nuance they cared to put there.
- gpm 5y agoThey literally did, at the bottom of page 1 of the ruling > Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws. [snip explanation] The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist.
- bialpio 5y agoThanks, I haven't skimmed that far!
- nescioquid 5y ago
- cush 5y agoDodging the question would be a non-ruling. The judge issued an injunction. It's in the title of the post.
- bialpio 5y agoI seem to recall reporting around some Supreme Court ruling that was phrased as "there is a ruling but the question is still undecided". It may have been Google v. Oracle, where it didn't say APIs are copyrightable or not, but Google's use fell under fair use irrespective of that. So just the existence of a ruling doesn't mean there is an answer to the question that was asked.
- gpm 5y agoThe judge issued a injunction based on another law that didn't require Apple be a monopoly, found that the record did not prove that Apple was a monopoly (and thus against Epic on that theory), but took the time to clarify that Apple might be a monopoly, it just wasn't proved.