7 ms·
The FTC and DoJ have been hitting it out of the park recently, unfortunately, there are a lot of judges out there that think corps should be able to do anything
by EasyMark 2y ago
The FTC and DoJ have been hitting it out of the park recently, unfortunately, there are a lot of judges out there that think corps should be able to do anything they want.
- klyrs 2y agoIt's an election year, don't hold your breath.
- laidoffamazon 2y agoElection year is 25% of a single administration's term, why should events be ignored 25% of the time?
- mapt 2y agoIt's also not like they're not campaigning for the other 3 years of the term.
- Loughla 2y agoYes, but the public memory is increasingly short.
- dclowd9901 2y agoHell, anymore it’s more like 50%.
- lesuorac 2y agowell at least 50%. I guess everybody forgot there are mid term elections which affect what the administration can do with help of congress.
- klyrs 2y agoIn this case, because I don't expect Biden to win another term and I expect the prosecution of this case to take longer than a year. The last several administrations have opened their term by tearing down everything that the prior administration had done. To be specific: I'm not confident the prosecutor behind this will have a job at the end of the year.
- dan_atem17 2y ago[dead]
- laidoffamazon 2y agoI genuinely think that if Biden does not win another term there are far larger problems for the American project than Ticketmaster, including democracy existing as we know it today.
- xwolfi 2y agoOn your opposite side, they think if Biden wins babies will die horrible deaths. American politics are full of superlatives, and very devoid of any real actions. Once the hero or the devil gets elected, nothing happens much.
- throwaway173738 2y agoYeah except for Roe v. Wade which you might consider a bellwether event for anti-contraceptive activists. But other than that yeah nothing much happened.
- gruez 2y ago>including democracy existing as we know it today. Weren't there similar predictions back in 2016? How is it different this time? Or to back up a bit, what exactly does "democracy existing as we know it today" mean? It could mean anything between "US becomes North Korea" and "the whitehouse revoked the press credentials of someone who said something mean about trump".
- brightball 2y agoBecause they've had the entire term to take action and the only reason anything is happening now it to attempt to build some momentum going into the election itself. Soon as it's over, everything most likely goes away.
- kelnos 2y agoIt takes time and work to put together cases like this. I look at it the other way: they've only had three years, and have already done some impressive things.
- fragmede 2y agoBut we have Taylor Swift to thank for this one and she's not running for office.
- kylebenzle 2y agoWhat? Because she set her ticket prices so high?
- jprd 2y agoPearl Jam
- llamaimperative 2y agoFTC has been aggressively pursuing antitrust since pretty much day one of the admin. You just weren’t paying attention.
- klyrs 2y agoTo the contrary, I've been paying very close attention. I'm just not confident that the DoJ can pull this off before the end of the Biden administration.
- llamaimperative 2y agoAh I see. You’re saying that you don’t expect this to complete, not that this is cynically political/false… sorry!
- jimbokun 2y agoHow dare politicians implement popular policies to appeal to voters!
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y agoI think the objection is the timing. If the administration truly cared about such things, they'd do them in non-election years. But they seem to save up these things for election years so people feel listened to.
- the_gastropod 2y agoYes. I think that is the objection. But it's absurd. It's not like the FTC has been sitting on its hands the past 3 years. Last year, for example, they sued Amazon for illegally maintaining a monopoly. In 2022, they sued Walmart for facilitating money-transfer fraud, Harley Davidson for illegally restricting customers' rights to repair, countless health insurers to block illegal mergers. In 2021 they sued Frontier Communications for advertising false internet speeds, Lockheed Martin from illegally acquiring Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Nvidia from acquiring Arm Ltd, etc. There are hundreds of cases this FTC has brought in the past 3 years. Cynically saying "LOL ELECTION YEAR" at this case, because it's the first case you've paid attention to is just... so comically predictable.
- WWLink 2y agoIf Fox News lies to them enough times it becomes the truth :P
- dmvdoug 2y agoRight, right, right. So what we really need is for politicians to be consistent and never do anything at all, including during election years, because they don’t really mean any of it (as we wise folk all know).
- aaronbrethorst 2y agoI’m confused about why you’re so opposed to the biggest climate legislation package ever signed into law.
- Salgat 2y agoTheir literal job is to perform based on what made/makes them desirable to the electorate.
- nerdponx 2y agoIf one party's election-year pandering is legalizing marijuana and enforcing antitrust law, I'll take it.
- dragonwriter 2y agoRescheduling marijuana is a multistep regulatory process set out in law that Biden initiated with an executive order the month before the 2022 midterm election, so its kind of weird to call it election year pandering.
- parineum 2y agoRescheduling is not descheduling. It's better but it's still a half measure and far away from the blanket pardons that the President (any president) needs to be signing asap. I get the whole "progress is slow thing" but this is a case of politicians being the only slow ones. A supermajority of the public supports alcohol/marijuana parity.
- willcipriano 2y agoElection year. They know the judges won't let anything bad happen to their friends so they can pretend to act tough every four years (when the billionaire class's preferred candidate/party is in office of course).
- __loam 2y agoI don't understand people like you. A government agency does something material to help the consumer and you just shit talk and resort to base cynicism. Nothing would ever change if everyone was as apathetic as you are.
- willcipriano 2y ago> something material That's the trick. What material thing happened? Over the years, hundreds of thousands (?) of people have been ripped off. If I did that I'd be in jail.
- __loam 2y agoAnti-trust has a proven record of making things less shit. It doesn't work if you don't use it, obviously. Courts are unfortunately not built for your instant gratification.
- llamaimperative 2y agoCynicism helps people feel smart, when in many cases it actually just reveals their immense ignorance (such as this case).
- kylebenzle 2y agoIn this case ticketmaster is a scape goat by design so artists can charge whatever they want.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thfuran 2y agoOr at any rate starting to catch up on the backlog from the past forty years.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoUnfortunately, anti-trust is all case law. The Sherman Antitrust Act is one paragraph long. 9 constitutional amendments are only one sentence long, not even a paragraph! It's all case law. But judges care way more about constitutional amendments than Sherman Antitrust Act. Most have limited intellectual interest in the problems it tackles. And really, who cares about the price of concert tickets, online ads and in-app purchase fees? These guys went to law school not business school. They. Just. Don't. Care. Could the DoJ and FTC make them care as much about antitrust as like, at least 2 amendments? Yes. I have no idea how the DoJ and FTC have failed to drum up excitement about this stuff. Nobody is going to rule against the status quo without passionate feelings about it.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoI suggest you look at the supreme courts actual docket.[0] It's a misnomer to think that the Supreme Court only cares about the first and second amendments, that's just what's interesting to Americans. Nobody cares about some random government employee who was furloughed in 2013,[1] for example, but the court reviewed that anyway. Law school is not just about the first amendment. In fact business law is actually a pretty common field to go into. [0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/23 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/23 [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-21_3e04.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-21_3e04.pdf
- 7thpower 2y agoThat is by design, no? Sherman act does not address a lot of modern anti-trust, as you mentioned. We need new legislation. Judges can just as easily find pet causes that don’t align with your interests, I don’t think that’s the mechanism you or I want our country to rely on.
- dragonwriter 2y agoAll three of the main US federal antitrust laws (Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and FTC Act) have neen amended since originally adopted, and the FTC act also creates regulatory authority which the FTC has regularly exercised. Even ignoring case law evolution, US antitrust law hasn't been static.
- kylebenzle 2y agoGoing after ticket master makes no sense and would accomplish nothing. Artist set the price of their tickets, ticketmaster is a middleman/scapegoat. Seems it whole scheme worked perfectly if most think they're to blame.
- Sebguer 2y agoLive Nation owns a significant swathe of venues in America, and requires that artists use Ticketmaster if they want to be able to play those venues. And they continue to buy up more and more venues. Not sure how you can say this integration is just them being 'scapegoated'.
- blueside 2y agoAnd it's the promoters, on behalf of the artists, who helped secure all those exclusive deals. Taylor Swift didn't become a billionaire because of Ticketmaster fees.
- StackRanker3000 2y agoLive Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly and colluding practices are what’s enabling them. Going after them definitely accomplishes a whole lot. Additionally, if artists were to continue the high prices in a more transparent manner without them, then that’s fine - it’s a free country and a free market.
- Percolator 2y agoAnyone who goes to concerts understands this. This is exactly why this board is a waste of time. Half of what you read on here are people talking about things they have no idea about and/or no vested interest in the outcome. Just a large collection of wankers.
- faeriechangling 2y agoThey’ve been swinging around a bat a while lot, I haven’t seen them hit the ball much less knock out of the park. At most they’re scaring the pitcher with erratic behaviour.
- moneywoes 2y agoany examples for the uninitiated?
- csa 2y agoMost stuff not easy to describe in a few blurbs, imho. Here’s an article (gift link, so no paywall) that describes the whole situation: https://wapo.st/4dNEf0z https://wapo.st/4dNEf0z Good interview with Jon Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM Simple examples are: - Kroger and Albertson’s (grocery stores) - Illumina and Grail (cancer detection) - Amazon for dark patterns regarding signing up for prime, and for privacy violations with Alexa and Ring - Lost challenge to Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard (good to look into, not sure about the specific case) - FTC released a framework for anti-trust that should be a regulatory win.
- kelnos 2y ago[flagged]
- scarface_74 2y agoIt’s not all the judges fault. The DOJ has been bringing weak cases with poor arguments. The LiveNation/TicketMaster case should be a slam dunk. But I seriously doubt the competence of the current DOJ.
- zimpenfish 2y ago[flagged]
- g8oz 2y agoCorporate America is certainly not a fan of FTC chair Lina Khan. She's been subjected to a barrage of attacks from places like the Wall Street journal so she must be doing something right. Jon Stewart revealed when interviewing her, that Apple executives had asked him not to have her on his podcast. https://youtu.be/CnC9JV5YtBY?feature=shared https://youtu.be/CnC9JV5YtBY?feature=shared
- bpodgursky 2y agoI mean mostly people make fun of her for losing every important case she picks up.
- Ruthalas 2y agoThey're a little rusty after sitting on their hands for several decades, they'll get better with practice.
- scarface_74 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago> he’s going to drop everything they are working on. Without asking for anything in return?
- scarface_74 2y agoYes because his focus and the focus of his department will be different.
- m463 2y ago> Corporate America is certainly not a fan of FTC chair Lina Khan. I think the problem is that some corporate america WOULD be a fan of her, but they either died or had no opportunity to exist in the first place.
- scarface_74 2y agoI couldn’t find a single major case that has brought meaningful change in the last 3 years since Biden was elected. That’s not meant to be a political statement about Biden. But I’m assuming you are talking about the current DOJ/FTC.
- hnburnsy 2y agoYeah not allowing 2 crappy, low margin, and low combined market share grocers who have to compete with Walmart and Amazon to not merge was really knocking it out of the park. /s
- Clubber 2y agoI wouldn't say they're hitting it out of the park; I'd say they've been doing what they were supposed to be doing but haven't in the last 20+ years. Having said that, it's nice to see they've finally woken up after all these years. I want to see them go after the credit card companies. They can start by passing usury laws that cap interest at 10%.
- thfuran 2y agoI'd be more interested in capping processing fees.
- gorbachev 2y agoTheir #1 target should be credit reporting agencies, and other information brokers.
- thfuran 2y agoIt's beyond the scope of the agency, but we need comprehensive statutory privacy protection. There's a massive industry around acquiring and selling data that's far bigger than just the credit reporting agencies. It'd be mostly a waste of time trying to approach it piecemeal.