Antitrust

Big-Tech is much more powerful than its defenders assume.

Proposed bipartisan legislation to modernize U.S. antitrust law and enforcement standards for the 21st century digital marketplace calls for a fact-driven comparison of Big-Tech’s unchecked power relative to Big Government’s Constitutionally limited power.

Big-Tech has proven its monopoly and cartel power can be more powerful than Big Government.

Big Government’s Constitutional limits denied two impeachment attempts to remove President Trump from office and to prevent his ability to run again. In mid-January, Big Tech collusively cancelled President Trump, his eighty million online followers, and his right-of-center, competitive social media alternatives – with impunity.

When unchecked by antitrust law, Big-Tech monopoly gatekeepers together are dominant enough to determine what Americans see and say online. This means in 21st century America, there no longer is a real competitive marketplace for ideas, and no longer are public squares open to all political voices.

Section 230 warrants repeal because it created, and empowers, two different types of problematic power-without-accountability to customers, competition, government or the courts.

Section 230’s extraordinary unaccountability advantages for Internet companies are an out-of-control, Big Tech monopoly-making machine.

There is no antitrust fix for Big Tech monopolization without first, or simultaneously, repealing Section 230, the evident root cause of, and superpower behind, Big Tech’s evident monopolistic impunity.

Section 230’s Wild West Internet policy and law empowers Big Tech to cancel and deplatform any competitor or dissenter, even the President of the United States, with impunity.

“The court of public opinion” is not a court of law.

“The truth” is not sufficient in a court of law like it is in the court of public opinion. In a court of law, the well-known legal “truth” standard and oath is telling “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Public relations, politicization, market capitalization, and acclamation, are not relevant antitrust arguments in a court of law. Google’s evident, self-serving, political definition of “the consumer welfare standard” has become damaging dogma politically undermining the legitimacy of antitrust law and antitrust law enforcement based on the facts and the rule of law standard of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” [See White Paper & Evidence here.]

https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/08/cleland-discovering-googles-rule-of-scofflaw/

DAILY CALLER OPINION

Discovering Google’s Rule of Scofflaw

SCOTT CLELAND CONTRIBUTOR -- October 08, 20203:04 PM ET

Google has a discovery double standard.

Google treats the discovery of others’ information the way they don’t want discovery of their information treated, the opposite of the Golden Rule.

The evidence shows Google expects everyone else’s private or proprietary information to be publicly accessible and useful, except Google’s.

Google knows information is power.

Google and antitrust authorities also know asymmetric information advantages can create, maintain and extend market power.

This is a timely and relevant concern as the two biggest legal cases that Google has ever faced are coming to a head in public, at nearly the same time.

IAM (Note:IAM is the world’s leading intellectual property business media platform.)

Google’s anticompetitive infringement of IP reduces innovation

By Scott Cleland

The impending public filing of the expected DOJ antitrust case against Google means big change is afoot for U.S. antitrust enforcement for Internet platforms.

As we look ahead, it’s important to not miss the forest for the trees.

The Senate is having an antitrust hearing on Google. The House is soon releasing a report on Big Tech antitrust. And the DOJ and states are expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google.

Some background on my insights and predictions below.

Thirteen years ago, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee in opposition to the proposed Google-DoubleClick acquisition. I accurately warned of “the stakes of lax antitrust enforcement…” and “missing the forest for the trees,” because the merger obviously “would create extreme market concentration horizontally and vertically, and also tip the online advertising market to a bottleneck.” Since then, I have copiously chronicled Google’s antitrust issues on Googleopoly.net.   

Our polarized Internet world has generated at least one area of extraordinary bipartisan consensus: 77 percent of Americans agree Google, Facebook, and Amazon have too much power according to a Gallup survey.  

The near unanimous participation of Federal, State and Congressional antitrust authorities in probing  Google, Facebook, and Amazon, indicates extraordinary concern that their unchecked market power threatens competition for the consumer market.

Both political parties agree that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants Internet platforms with immunity from liability for good faith moderation of online content, in practice provides Internet platforms unaccountable power that warrants reform.

Section 230’s intermediary impunity loophole provides these dominant consumer gatekeepers with anticompetitive advantages that facilitate the monopolization of access to consumer demand online, thus undermining competition for U.S. consumer spending that comprises 68% of U.S. GDP.

These gatekeepers, which do their best to avoid competing directly with each other, dominate competitive access to the online U.S. consumer market, leaving most potential competitors dependent on them to broadly reach online consumer demand.

How could this happen?

Big Tech tales that the Coronavirus Crisis somehow will mitigate their Techlash problem, totally miss the mark.

They miss that the crisis is not good and not about tech. They miss that to whom much is given, much is expected.

They miss how many other industries and companies have contributed and sacrificed during this crisis without expecting something in return.

Spontaneously this past week, a tech op-ed chorus broke out singing a new tune and tale, that the Coronavirus Crisis could benefit Big Tech and save it from much of the Techlash.

Consider: Coronavirus gives Big Tech an opportunity to shine – Axios 3-18-20; Has the coronavirus killed the Techlash? Wired 3-20-20; Big Tech has the cash to expand after crisis, Regulatory threat also likely to recede for now, FT 3-20-20; and What Techlash? Virus Could Remake Industry Giants Image, The Information 3-23-20.  

Like some catchy new tunes lyrics, these don’t make sense.

Why is the Coronavirus Crisis no cure for the Techlash?

First, Americans strong bipartisan views undergird the Techlash in the U.S.

Consider a recent Gallup poll of Americans published 3-11-20.

Government scrutiny of Internet platform unaccountability is here to stay because it is a strong bipartisan concern and interest.   

Yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use and Filtering Practices” featured Google CEO Sundar Pichai as the lone witness.

The hearing provided a ~30 congressperson data-set and proxy for where Google specifically, and Internet platforms generally, stand politically at this point in the techlash gauntlet.   

Are Google, Facebook, and Amazon, pro-competitive Internet “new entrants” or anti-competitive enduring monopoly Internet platform incumbents?

Apparently, that critical distinction depends less on evidence, and more on one’s antitrust predilections and prosecutorial presumptions – i.e. does one view the Internet competition glass half-empty (pessimistic) or half-full (optimistic).  

Recent evidence from the Trump DOJ Antitrust Division suggests it’s in the Internet competition optimist camp almost to the point of Internet competition Pollyannaism, despite the evident Internet platform antitrust enforcement drumbeat around the world, in Congress, and the White House, to the contrary over the last 18 months.