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DOJ Confirms Google Antitrust Investigation
An anonymous reader points to Digital Daily, writing "Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act."
The move is the strongest sign yet that the DOJ may block the settlement, which critics claim would grant Google (GOOG) a monopoly on orphaned works-copyrighted texts without an identifiable copyright holder.
Heh, really? Maybe if there was some copyright reform no deal would be necessary. Maybe if copyright was an opt-in system, publishers could publish out of print books without having to worry about being sued by an absentee copyright holder.
How we know is more important than what we know.
in b4 a million slashtar comments denying that google is just as bad (in some ways worse) as every other corporate entity.
I'm ok with this, as long as they investigate the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers as well.
Qxe4
Stupid companies.. Stop getting too big! Stop making so much money! Stop being so much better than your competition that everyone only uses your product. Being competitive means allowing the other guys to catch up! It also means you can't branch out too much..so keep your focus narrow.
Anyone else think this is a little over zealous?
Yet another case of punishing business for success. Alan Greenspan had it right back in 1966 when he wrote this memo on anti-trust legislation:
Can someone please post information that relates to what Google is actually doing in the first place? I'm sure I could google it, but it would be nice to see people making posts on slashdot where the subject at hand is sufficiently described or referenced.
First let me say, don't ever trust the government...but when you have a very large company and a deal that is being called questionable by some. Isn't this what the DOJ is supposed to do, investigate and see if there is any merit to the complaints?
Google has money.
"Investigation" is simply a euphemism for "let's see how much we can extort from them."
In this economic climate, to pull this kind of shit on a company that is not begging for taxpayer money, is utter bullshit.
Hope is the currency of fools
back at the time ? in the last 8 years, microsoft got major fines from regulators and antitrust institutions around the world for anticompetitive practices, including European Union. yet, doj doesnt do any serious shit about microsoft. what gives ?
Read radical news here
this is a motion that was put underway during last vestiges of bush admn. who were very chummy with microsoft.
Read radical news here
Over the years, Microsoft has proven to be particulary inept at getting any traction with their search business. In January 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo. Their efforts were frustrated when Google came to Yahoo's rescue. To get their revenge Microsoft mobilized their army of lobbyists in a Plot to Kill Google. Microsoft persuaded other companies and trade groups to lend support to their FUD campaign against their arch enemy. You will recall that the powerful American Corn Growers Association was among them - this same organization who's members get billions in subsidies to produce environmentally unfriendly ethanol from corn.
An article in the New York Times details Google's public-relations offensive to counteract the Microsoft generated FUD.
The Times articles states about Google: "regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with ... Microsoft. (My bold)
Why is it - "as they once did with Microsoft"? Microsoft never changed the behaviour that lead to civil actions filed against Microsoft in May of 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 U.S. states.
They have made a big mistake. The DOJ is after the wrong company! With a new administartion in place, their first priority should be to get Microsoft under control. The EU has really shown the world the the US DOJ has been asleep on its watch. If the DOJ woke up and stepped up to its long neglected responsibilities, it would be the USA raking in the billions in fines it will take to get Microsoft to behave itself, instead of the EU. Why in the world are they going after Google at this time?
Google has been a shining example of how a good corporate citizen should behave, and Microsoft should be encouraged to emulate Google's example. Google doesn't lock people into its software or services. Any time you want you can use another search engine or pick up your Google docs and walk away. If there are some justifiable concerns about Google, I suggest that the DOJ first take care of elephant in the room - Microsoft - before turning to Google. It is just so disheartening to see the good guys getting DOJ's attention while the bad guy slips away. Microsoft, you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from Google's eye.
PS: I couldn't have written this short essay without Google there by my side the whole time as a friend to help me with the research.
....weren't they big Obama supporters? How's that workin' out for y'all, now?
Microsoft was investigated during the Clinton administration. Microsoft gives very little money to the Democrats.
The Microsoft antitrust suit was largely dropped during the Bush administration. Microsoft is a top Republican contributer.
Personally, I find it fascinating that the Obama administration is investigating Google despite the fact that Google is a heavy Democrat contributer. Perhaps Google will start supporting the Republicans now.
they're monopolies also.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
DOJ is wasting time and tax payers money, makes me sick.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
"along with clauses allowing for non-commercial use and distribution of any book, movie, program, etc. which is not being sold to the general public or is not available in the USA."
That from a nation whose major corporations ideas of copyright are being forced upon the rest of the world. Maybe there is a reason some works are not available in the USA.
Maybe as the author I didn't like the terms offered so you can just steal my work because your American?
I can steal your work because your grammar is awful!
I can't believe that anyone in the DOJ is stupid enough to believe that Google taking the initiative to provide orphaned works to the public constitutes some sort of monopoly. The original work must still exist somewhere in print. It's not like they're engaging in Fahrenheit 451-style tactics to control all knowledge. Furthermore, making a settlement to get rid of a nuissance lawsuit doesn't represent an admission of wrongdoing. It's not like the idea of mass book scanning and indexing was an original idea of Google's that they have some exclusivity over. If anyone want's to engage in their own mission to do so they can. In fact there were academic projects to do just that before Google came along with their idea of how to do things. Google worked with them to help develop better technology to improve the throughput over existing scanner systems. The whole history of the books project is available for anyone to peruse if they are interested. I don't see how anyone can construe the actions described therein as monopolistic.
The only thing that's questionable is how far they're stretching the fair use principle in what they're doing. A strict interpretation of the law suggests that any complete duplication of a protected work constitutes infringement even if it is kept in private with only excerpts revealed to the public. Considering that the complaint centers around orphaned works still under copyright but with no one making a claim to them it isn't clear who the potentially damaged party is in this case. If someone wanted to acquire an orphaned work in its original form how would they do it? Resale of existing copies doesn't deprive the copyright holder of any income. If the publishing industry is wringing their hands over the inability to contact the copyright holder then they obviously can't be producing new copies of these works. So where is the damage?
What's wrong is that it is saddeningly easy for MS to use it's network of lobbyists to buy their own special government services when they need them. What you have is a publishing industry that is scared of being obsoleted like the buggy whip manufacturers. MS loves to take advantage of organizations like this and use them to do their bidding such as how they used SCO to spread FUD on the use of Linux. A previous poster had it right when they surmised that this is payback for Google's interference in the attempted Yahoo buyout.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
hope sergey and lary are happy about all their campaign contributions...
Antitrust laws are nothing more than a pure power-grab by the government, allowing the Gov to threaten endless lawsuits on any large company any time they want. It is rife with circular reasoning and has no definable test. Worse, many companies prosecuted under the law do not even have monopolies in their industry. And worse still, the companies that -do- have monopolies have them because the government gave them to them! Examples include the old phone system (AT&T), many utilities, and the Post Office. The idea of 'natural monopoly' is totally false. And our current President is trying to create a new government monopoly on Health Care. It's despicable. What we need is to end the monopoly on government power.
Because of the way the law on antitrust has evolved, any business situation imaginable can make you subject to antitrust persecution *cough* ...err, prosecution.
If a business increases prices, then clearly it's because they've already driven out their competitors and are now taking advantage of that fact to milk the consumer.
If prices remain the same, then that's evidence of collusion, and thus comes prosecution for milking the consumer.
And if prices fall, then clearly that's predatory pricing designed to drive a competitor out of business entirely, and makes them subject to prosecution yet again.
So, if a company raises their prices, drops their prices, or leaves them the same, they can be prosecuted for monopolistic practices. How can anyone win? It's been said that if the Department of Justice had enough men, they could arrest every businessman in America for monopolistic practices.
But, even worse than all that, the premise of the law, that monopoly is always bad, or even objectively possible, is totally wrong from an economic point of view--underscoring the fact that the law is nothing more than a tool of a repressive government to use against companies whenever they want. Why did Microsoft get hit with the monopoly stick? Because they made Internet Explorer free and thus put Netscape out of business? Not really. That didn't hurt the consumer at all. The real reason is that Netscape hired political muscle on Capitol Hill, made the right connections, donated to the right people, and lobbied for political favors. And Microsoft, naively, ignored Washington.
Here's what the experts have to say:
-( from: http://wiki.lawguru.com/index.php/Antitrust )
Monopolistic firms are in a privileged position to reap economic benefits by restricting output and raising prices, without fear of competition. However, Thomas Woods asserts that the industries most frequently accused of holding a monopolistic position in the late nineteenth century were neither restricting output nor raising prices.
The Results of "Predatory Pricing": Commodity Prices from 1880-1890
Steel 58%
Zinc 20%
Sugar 22%
During the 1880s output of monopolistic industries grew seven times faster than the overall economy, while prices in these industries were generally falling--even faster than the 7% rate of decline that occurred in the economy as a whole. Template:Ref
Free market economist Milton Friedman states that he initially agreed with the underlying principles of antitrust laws (breaking up monopolies and oligopolies and promoting more competition), but came to the conclusion that they do more harm than good and that therefore they should not exist. Template:Ref
Critics also argue that the empirical evidence shows that "predatory pricing" does not work in practice, and is better defeated by a truly free market than by anti-trust laws (see Criticism of the theory of predatory pricing).
Thomas Sowell argues that even if a superior business drives out a competitor, it doesn't follow that competition has ended:
"In short, the financial demise of a competitor is not the same as getting rid of competition. The courts have long paid lip serv
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Doesn't the DOJ have real things to investigate like where all the money the usa government has vanished in attempt to solve their problems by throwing money at them....
How would that be stealing if it wasn't offered? Thats as stupid as me saying that you are stealing my profits when you buy a computer from Best Buy because I have a computer. Now, would I sell that computer to you? Probably not. How do you say that its stealing when you could never buy it anyways? With the cost of distribution approaching 0, there is no real reason to not make things available over the internet.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/
I look forward to "not available in your country".
How we know is more important than what we know.
Clearly the Google executives did not donate enough money to Democratic candidates in 2008. That's the only sure way to prevent unpleasant investigations by bureaucrats or congressmen.
The AG + Google agreement *does* give them a monopoly. Any other entity, per the AG + GOOG agreement, has to deal one-by-one with authors and their proxies. Only AG + GOOG has a wholesale agreement across all authors and all publishers.
This has nothing to do with browsers or historic issues with MSFT.
It has to do with: shall the US government allow creation of a permanent de facto and de jure monopoly? The answer may be "yes", but the question is still valid.
This is Google.
I don't think the government quite comprehends this. Google. MF'ing GOOGLE. The people who know that you like orgy-involving-horses-and-midgets-porn, Mr. DoJ investigator.
Keep it up. I can't wait until the scum of D.C. are driven into the streets and replaced with slightly less corrupt versions of themselves. :p
How would that be stealing if it wasn't offered?
His point was that it was offered, but under different terms which you as a society implicitly did not accept (e.g. 20-year copyright term, while he wanted more).
Is like quoting
- Steve Ballmer about Open Source.
- Hitler about racial harmony.
- GW Bush about English Grammar.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Bill Gates crying into his webcam: "Just leave Google alone!"
> (aside: checkout Thomas Sowell's "Citizen's Guide to the Economy" for more info)
How about checking out "Citizen's Guide to Astroturfing"?
They binged up my browser when I updated to IE 8. I've been a Microsoft supporter in many cases, but this time they really binged up bad. What good is the internet if it's all binged up? Who would of thought binging things up would become an actual business plan
ed duval the very last person
Giving his product away to you for free just because you're American lowers the value of his product - the people that have to pay for it will wonder why the hell they bother, and just get someone in America to ship them a free copy. Now he has no profits. And then nobody has any profits, and stop producing any such product. Subsequently culture decays, and thus begins the End of Days.
On another note, it would totally kill the imports market.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
The DOJ investigation of MS started with lobbying and ended with lobbying.
Like friggin' banks. When a company gets so big that it can manipulate markets or it's failure would hurt the economy as a whole, the Sherman act is supposed to protect the citizens by empowering the government to step in. Instead of Google, how about Goldman Sachs? Man, the priorities in D.C. are seriously out of whack..
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...
IBM influences the government to pursue antitrust against AT&T.
Microsoft now doing the same against Google?
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
Go arrest some bankers and leave Google the F*** alone. What a waste of time, effort, and money this is.
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