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Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

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Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#161

Post by ttul »

outside1234 wrote: post #153
jcranmer wrote: post #4

For those who don't want to read the opinion: SCOTUS holds that Apple can be sued for alleged monopoly of the Apple App Store. It does not decide whether or not this alleged monopoly exist. Interestingly, it's a 5-4 decision, with Kavanaugh writing the decision, joined by the 4 liberal justices. Probably the most unexpected alignment of the current term!

This is what is great about it being a lifetime appointment. There is literally nothing else for these folks to strive for except being well regarded in the history books, so they can finally do what they regard as the best thing to do.

A ten year term ought to do the trick, though. And would allow the passage of time to undo any stacking of the court that a particular president wants to engage in.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#162

Post by wayneftw »

Majromax wrote: post #143
delinka wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this debate is interesting, but I don't expect Apple to be happy about the final outcome. A developer publishing solely on Apple's App Store (and relying solely on Apple features to provide functionality) has no direct access to the customer* - Apple prevents that fairly well. In this case, I feel like, as a consumer, I'm Apple's customer. I think courts, and especially juries, would agree. That said, I don't…

> That said, I don't see how the App Store is a monopoly. How would "monopoly" be defined to even formulate a case against Apple? I think the argument would be fairly straightforward: the App Store is the exclusive avenue to distribute paid applications to iPhone users. In so doing, it acts as a single seller of applications to consumers and a single buyer of applications from developers, and its arbitrarily-set fees…

There was a story recently about how "83% of US teens have an iPhone, Android 9%" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19610357

So, they're certainly a monopoly in that market today and possibly in the general market in the near future. I have also read that you don't even need to have a higher than 50% market share to be considered a monopoly. You simply need to affect the entire market, which Apple certainly does with their 45% general market share in the US.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#163

Post by SpikeDad »

outside1234 wrote: post #153
jcranmer wrote: post #4

For those who don't want to read the opinion: SCOTUS holds that Apple can be sued for alleged monopoly of the Apple App Store. It does not decide whether or not this alleged monopoly exist. Interestingly, it's a 5-4 decision, with Kavanaugh writing the decision, joined by the 4 liberal justices. Probably the most unexpected alignment of the current term!

This is what is great about it being a lifetime appointment. There is literally nothing else for these folks to strive for except being well regarded in the history books, so they can finally do what they regard as the best thing to do.

This is what's terrible about being a lifetime appointment. Once a politicial driven justice gets appointed there's literally nothing that will change them.

Perhaps in the "old" days when Justices had the feelings you're attributing it might be true but now in the current political situation ideologues are who are sought out to appoint and they care only they're well regarded by their own political persuasion.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#165

Post by noelsusman »

curt15 wrote: post #104
khawkins wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fact that he sided with the liberal justices in favor of Planned Parenthood was less expected [1]. Especially considering his hearings were plagued with disruptions and protests from pro-choice activists. [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/10/supreme-court-plan...

Kavanaugh agreed with Merrick Garland most of the time during his tenure at the DC court of appeals.

Most judges agree on most cases. This is true on the Supreme Court and gets more true as you go down the hierarchy.

That doesn't mean the disagreements aren't important.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#166

Post by noelsusman »

kolbe wrote: post #126
khawkins wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fact that he sided with the liberal justices in favor of Planned Parenthood was less expected [1]. Especially considering his hearings were plagued with disruptions and protests from pro-choice activists. [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/10/supreme-court-plan...

It shouldn't be surprising. Nothing about his testimony or judicial history indicated he would be particularly conservative on women's rights.

I'm sure it's surprising to the various pro-life groups who fought for his nomination.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#167

Post by vorpalhex »

ff317 wrote: post #114
vorpalhex wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flippant and non-helpful. If you disagree with how his record is characterized, then please post counter examples. But let me post the following: + Rejected challenges to NSA authority + Rejected workers rights to picket + Opinionated diverting public funds to religion schools + Rejected meat labeling requirements + Repeatedly restricted the EPA https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/09/brett-kavanaugh-tr...…

None of your examples are about how he looks at the particular issues in this case though. You've arbitrarily grouped this case with the several others above by putting them all on an axis of whether he's anti-consumer or pro-consumer. You may choose to perceive justices on these ideological axes, but these ideological axes are probably not what determines how they vote, even if there are sometimes strong correlation…

It doesn't matter the theory driving his votes, it matters the outcome. If you vote against say, civil rights, because you have some super-nuanced view about how the court can or can not be involved in respect to state politics, you're still propping up Jim Crow laws.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#168

Post by noelsusman »

binaryblitz wrote: post #133
NowThenGoodBad wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to guess, he knows that when things turn back around, he wants any and all reasons for people to be on his side. Keep a close eye on his decisions post 2020.

Supreme Court justices are appointed for life. There would be no reason to rule either way based on the election cycle. That's the whole point.

There is definitely a reason. Supreme Court Justices have policy preferences like anyone else, and if a particular decision would hurt the electoral chances of their preferred politicians then that's a reason to go the other way.

Whether or not they actually do this is another question, but the incentive is still there even with a lifetime appointment.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#169

Post by pier25 »

Fellshard wrote: post #134
pier25 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the hypothetical third party Android App Store could use any payment service it wanted, or even the user could use any App Store it preferred. With iOS not only you can't buy from a third party, you can't even install an app that hasn't been signed by Apple.

I would argue the point of consumer choice is at device selection. If they choose the ecosystem with the heavy markup, when they had alternatives, then they are responsible for incurring their own additional costs. The information is public regarding app costs between devices and marketplaces. This seems to me a bad ruling based on that.

Everyone has a different opinion on this, but I have a hard time believing desktop users (Linux, Mac, Windows) would accept getting their software only from the computer manufacturer's officially approved store.

Would you?

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#170

Post by pier25 »

Fellshard wrote: post #150
bduerst wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming the consumer in this case doesn't fly because the consumer owns the device once they purchase it, and it is anticompetitive for Apple to lock out competing services on the consumer's device. The "Just don't buy it" argument also doesn't work for The Right to Repair movement. Either way, end users have the right to sue Apple here, not just the developers.

That requires making the case that the consumer believes they are buying a general computing device that they can use for any purpose and customize freely, which is simply not the case. Furthermore, repair applies to the hardware of the device, not the software ecosystem. You have to make a separate, very different argument for software as it is more malleable and less restricted than hardware components are.

> believes they are buying a general computing device that they can use for any purpose and customize freely, which is simply not the case

So you are arguing that an iPhone is a very sophisticated calculator and not a general purpose computer?

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