Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed • Hacker News Board

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#331

Post by ashelmire » Tue, May 14, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #298

dragonwriter wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6 year staggered appointments. So 3 justices terms are up every 2 years. Means one president doesn't get to completely stack the court Most presidents are reelected to two terms, and so if judicial terms were offset from Presidential terms by a year, they'd have: At 0 years, 0 justices they appointed. At 1 year, 3 justices. At 3 years, 6 justices. At 5-8 years (and up until 1 year into the next term), all 9 justice…

Would be psyched to live in a world where Bush II got to appoint the entire Supreme Court after 9/11.

You'd have lived in a world where the current Supreme Court was appointed almost entirely by Obama. Also, Citizen's United wouldn't have been ruled the way it was. Would be a damn better world.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#332

Post by harryh » Tue, May 14, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

ashelmire wrote: post #331

rayiner wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be psyched to live in a world where Bush II got to appoint the entire Supreme Court after 9/11.

You'd have lived in a world where the current Supreme Court was appointed almost entirely by Obama. Also, Citizen's United wouldn't have been ruled the way it was. Would be a damn better world.

Citizen's United was decided on Jan 21, 2010. At this point the court would have still been dominated by Bush II appointees not Obama ones. Always hard to say for sure, but it probably goes the same way under this proposal.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#333

Post by jayesobj » Tue, May 14, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #247

SpikeDad wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A sub-lifetime appointment is also really bad for the Court system, too- the Court gets the final say in the law- and needs independence- and if we were to hold elections every few years for the Supreme Court , we would have an even more partisan government , as people would go campaigning for that office, with all its mud-slinging and hyper-partisanship that seems to be necessary to get elected in the United States'…

I agree with you, but also think SCOTUS and similar picks need to require a supermajority vote. That is, I don't have a problem with lifetime appointments to SCOTUS, but I do think if that's the case we need to base those appointments on some kind of trans-partisan consensus.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#334

Post by shmerl » Tue, May 14, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

millstone wrote: post #326

shmerl wrote: post #252

Can anyone now blast Apple on anti-trust grounds, for banning competing browsers in their store? When Apple want to sabotage universal adoption of certain technology (such as DASH for video streaming), they can avoid implementing needed components on the client side in their engine, forcing everyone who wants to target iOS (a sizable chunk of the Web market) to support their own technology instead of only something e…

Yeah Apple can do that. Thank goodness. Safari lags on web standards. It's ahead on anti-tracking, Reader Mode, etc. Which focus benefits the user more?

They do that. However it shouldn't be legal in any sane legal climate, where competition law is not a fake facade. And who would defend the monopoly except for shills?

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#335

Post by parthdesai » Tue, May 14, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #291

parthdesai wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As long as they're not false or misleading So either Apple is misleading us when they say we are their customers or they are flat out lying to get out of a lawsuit. Can't have your cake and eat it too, mate.

If you own a shopping centre, and rent out the spaces to shops, do shoppers at those stores count as customers of the store, or of the shopping centre owner?

If you don't maintain the mall, shoppers won't come to your mall and this in turn will drive the stores away. So you stores are your primary customers and shoppers are your secondary customers.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#336

Post by chungleong » Tue, May 14, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #321

chungleong wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why the suit will probably fail in the end. In terms of app selection, Android is not inferior to iOS. People aren't choosing Apple's products because they have no other choice. They're buying them BECAUSE Apple has tighter control over the platform. If the company conducts a survey asking iPhone users if they want Play Store on their phone, I suspect the vast majority would vote no. The choice to install malw…

Nobody is asking specifically if the majority of users want to specifically install the play store on their phones so answering a question nobody asked in the first place isn't terribly relevant. The question is if the way Apple controlled the market fell afoul of legal standards in a way that effected makers and users. If this is deemed so it would be true regardless of what percentage of users would install apps fr…

You're begging the question. Whether Apple in fact controls the market is the key point of contention here. If the company is simply responding to market demand then there is no credible theory of harm. I don't have any hard data but anecdotal evidences indicate people want more curation of apps, not less.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

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Post by Spivak » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #323

threeseed wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple can legitimately claim that the App Store protect users as well. And it's not extraordinary at all. These days any device with apps/games has their own store e.g. Nintendo, PS, XBox, Fitbit, Thermomix etc.

Phones are transitioning from devices to make phone calls to computers. Even the original iphone was more like a computer than a telephone.

So? What makes it okay to lock down a telephone but not a computer? What would prevent a computer OEM from locking down devices to a single store like Windows 10S?

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#338

Post by Spivak » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #317

Spivak wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look I want to have full control of my devices but I don't think owning the physical hardware entitles you to any rights other than you may do with the device as-is as you please. If we decide that designing a toaster to only accept $vendor's bread is illegal that's all well and good but the justification for such a law will be that it's monopolistic behavior, not that the end user owns the toaster.

The thing is that fundamentally you can in software undermine any degree of real ownership. Say I sell you a car outright. I decide to push an update that bricks the car and pops up a window on the in dash entertainment with an offer to re enable it for a monthly fee or an offer to buy it back for pennies on the dollar. I think we can agree that I basically just stole your car and offered to rent it to you. My abilit…

I'm in no way saying that companies should be allowed to do evil things like that, only that the justification for preventing them would be consumer protection, not device ownership. Which I guess in your world is option 1.

I actually think the option 1 world would actually be better than deriving rights from device ownership because then it would be super easy to get around by renting devices or by using SaaS services; consumer protection litigation protects you against various types of fucking in all cases.

I don't really want to live in a world where companies are allowed to be maximally evil with their software but it's okay because you are technically allowed to replace it with your own. All this would do is allow a tiny tiny fraction of the population to enjoy their devices while everyone else would be fucked.

I'm on the side of "I would personally love if companies were required to allow/support device modification but the justification for such a thing is weak and wouldn't actually protect or solve problems for consumers."

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#339

Post by bduerst » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

Fellshard wrote: post #206

bduerst wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, a consumer using something doesn't justify anti-competitive behavior with companies. If the bar for antitrust was whether or not a person bought it, then there wouldn't be a need for antitrust law.

I would recommend looking up what antitrust does and does not cover. This is not suitable grounds for antitrust arguments as the law is currently given; if you were arguing 'Apple has a monopoly on Apple-exclusive apps', you might have a case, but even then there are many apps that are cross platform, and those that choose to develop exclusively for Apple are making a market decision that they may be liable for if th…

Vertically integrating and excluding competition is exactly what antitrust covers! The monopoly that Apple has on the app store for the devices it sells allows it to exploit consumers with pricing. That's the case that the Supreme Court has allowed to move forward.

AWS is also a platform but they don't lock customers into only using AWS or AWS-licensed services. This is almost as preposterous as saying, "Someone bought it, so it's not anti-competitive".

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#340

Post by Fellshard » Tue, May 14, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #339

Fellshard wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend looking up what antitrust does and does not cover. This is not suitable grounds for antitrust arguments as the law is currently given; if you were arguing 'Apple has a monopoly on Apple-exclusive apps', you might have a case, but even then there are many apps that are cross platform, and those that choose to develop exclusively for Apple are making a market decision that they may be liable for if th…

Vertically integrating and excluding competition is exactly what antitrust covers! The monopoly that Apple has on the app store for the devices it sells allows it to exploit consumers with pricing. That's the case that the Supreme Court has allowed to move forward. AWS is also a platform but they don't lock customers into only using AWS or AWS-licensed services. This is almost as preposterous as saying, "Someone boug…

All the vertical integration Apple has been able to muster hasn't prevented more open competition from growing in the smartphone market, so your point continues to remain moot.

Again, to make your case, you must argue that Apple products are categorically different from any other device available on market and that they are preventing new entrants from competing with it, which is so blatantly not the case here.