{"id":2215,"date":"2017-04-23T17:31:31","date_gmt":"2017-04-23T17:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?p=2215"},"modified":"2019-04-23T01:05:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T01:05:30","slug":"does-anti-trust-law-apply-to-apple-google-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/2017\/04\/23\/does-anti-trust-law-apply-to-apple-google-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Does anti-trust law apply to Google & Facebook?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may be time<\/strong> to think about breaking up the high-tech monopolies that dominate American telecommunication, says \u00a0Jonathan Taplin, \u00a0director emeritus of USC’s \u00a0Annenberg Innovation Lab<\/a>\u00a0in a New York Times article April 23, 2017. \u00a0Taplin is the author of \u201cMove Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taplin notes that Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. “In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies,” Taplin says.<\/p>\n

What this means is that under a standard\u00a0interpretation of anti-trust law and policy, these companies should be prevented from buying out their competitors and should be made to license its patents. \u00a0And, Taplin says, we should probably consider ending the “safe harbor” provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, since it allows the monopolies a free ride on content that they have not produced.<\/p>\n

Taplin’s argument revolves around whether or not these monopolies are natural, in the sense that competition would not deliver better service and lower prices. The article in the New York Times doesnt address one interesting question\u00a0involving the succession of technology in the marketplace. \u00a0It’s useful to remember that\u00a0 most of\u00a0today’s telecommunications monopolies displaced earlier monopolies that\u00a0missed the curve in the road. \u00a0Microsoft famously displaced IBM in the early 1980s, which had been\u00a0\u00a0the largest target for anti-trust enforcement during the Carter administration. \u00a0Apple displaced Xerox and the chaotic free software movement displaced AT&T. \u00a0So, even though anti-trust law was not enforced during the Reagan years, these former monopolies did not keep their positions.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It may be time to think about breaking up the high-tech monopolies that dominate American telecommunication, says \u00a0Jonathan Taplin, \u00a0director emeritus of USC’s \u00a0Annenberg Innovation Lab\u00a0in a New York Times article April 23, 2017. \u00a0Taplin is the author of \u201cMove … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2215"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3059,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions\/3059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}