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DOJ Drops Online Music Antitrust Investigation
JOstrow writes "On Tuesday, the Justice Department ended a two year long antitrust investigation into the online ventures of the music industry. The assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, R. Hewitt Pate, was quoted, 'Consumers now have available to them an increasing variety of authorized outlets from which they can purchase digital music and consumers are using those services in growing numbers.' What took off a lot of the heat was pressplay (now Napster!) and MusicNet changing their services to allow songs to be transferred from machine to machine."
The Irritating thing is that large businesses can get away with anticompetitive behavior and then, at the last minute get off scott free. why don't the file sharing or P2P crowd have the same Deal?
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Just use irate. All the free (beer) music you can listen to, computer-selected to be music you will like. The user interface could use a great deal of polishing, but I'm sure that is happening. And it's quite usable in its current state. I see no reason to support RIAA music for any reason anymore. (And sharing their music is supporting them, as it builds popularity).
Yet another case of our Republican administration yanking the leash back to reward their favorite corporate donors.
Proof? This investigation began during the same administration, so unless I see some actual coorelation between donation and administrative action, I call BS on you.
Actually, your analogy is slightly flawed.
It's like getting arrested for a crime, but getting released without punishment because, hey, you're not doing it right now.
--- I'm going sane in a crazy world.
From an antitrust perspective, this is right. The labels blew it so badly in online music distribution that they failed to achieve significant market share. They tried, but failed through sheer incompetence.
But it's not like successful anti-trust lawsuits ever punish infringing companies enough. For example, Microsoft has been found to be an illegal monopoly time after time. But no serious punishment or solution, such as splitting up the company, has even been considered. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to unfairly exploit it's desktop monopoly and crush any competition.
Not so. In the United States, although antitrust action is usually civil, unlike most other countries it is also a criminal matter. Check out the American Antitrust Institute's Primer on US Criminal Antitrust. The Sherman Act of 1890 provides criminal penalties for antitrust violations. In addition to fines, prison sentences of up to three years are possible.
'Consumers now have available to them an increasing variety of authorized outlets from which they can purchase digital music and consumers are using those services in growing numbers.'
Unfortunately (as was hinted at in another comment), The Big 5, acting as one, still control the material; yes, we have more middlemen ('outlets') to sell it to John Q. Public, but the middlemen have no choice in supply. Hence, 'consumers' (the term the DOJ used) still don't have any true choice.
If one manufacturer had a monopoly on car batteries, yet I can buy said batteries from Target, Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware, and a few other stores, do I really have a choice? Is there any significant change to the monopoly status?
I think the DOJ is wearing the wrong kind of glasses, metaphorically speaking.
RD
There are two aspects to it - one is becoming a monopoly itself (which isn't illegal by itself, as long as it happens in a legal way), and abusing said monopoly. The problem from a legal point of view is that it is very difficult to give a clear definition of when exactly it is abusing the power. Yes, it might seem "obvious" to you that this is an abuse of market power, but it's hardly specified anywhere in a law that "under market conditions X, with a market power Y, it is illegal to do Z".
After all, there's no doubt that Microsoft, RIAA has a lot of power, in whatever they do, simply because they're monopolies (no, that does not mean 100% market share. Look it up). The question is, where exactly is the border between use and abuse? It's a fundamental right, for companies as well as individuals to know what is illegal. Not "we'll decide that this is illegal" after the fact.
Since it's mostly a gray area decided on a case-by-case basis, they do not want it to be self-limiting out of fear. That's why most penalties are designed to be corrective rather than punitative, or in more normal terms, their goal is to end the reason for the anti-trust suit, nothing more. Think of it an anti-trust ruling almost like a specific instantiation of the law "It is illegal for a company with Microsoft's market power, under the current market conditions, to integrate IE the way they do." After that it is "law", and you can punish them bigtime if they don't comply with that.
The thing is, when conditions change, the "law" goes null and void. Which leads to cases like this, where they basicly say: "Well, the market conditions are no longer the same as at the time of the filing, so even if we went ahead the ruling would have no effect whatsoever."
If you want an analogy, a dog on a leash gets reined in when it goes too far (corrective), it doesn't get a beating because it went too far (punitative). If you did, it would probably stick very close to you, afraid of getting a beating (self-limiting).
The whole problem occurs when the legal system is lagging. The leash is an instant feedback "this is the limit". This investigation is like saying "Well, the dog tore the leash, but ran out of the city (where it's supposed to be on a leash) and into the woods, where it usually runs free anyway. So everything is ok, no need to leash it now." The result is the dog can keep running (drag it out in court) until the problem solves itself and nothing happens.
It sucks, and there really should be punitative penalities for what I mean are blatant and obvious abuses of power. We don't have to list all the possible ways to kill a man in the murder paragraph, then we shouldn't have to list all the ways to stifle competition in the anti-trust paragraph either.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yet another case of our Republican administration yanking the leash back to reward their favorite corporate donors.
Ummm...the music industry gives primarily to Democrats. Check it out.
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth