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Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

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Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#381

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ben_w wrote: post #314
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple This right here is why they need to be broken up. Are we supposed to have a company more powerful than a country?

I get the argument, but "country" spans many orders of magnitude in size. I mean, deliberately extreme example, but I'm fairly sure the smallest of the discount supermarket chains near me is more powerful than the country of Tuvalu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_(supermarket) Also, one party being stronger doesn't mean fighting them is worthwhile, e.g. Iceland threatening to…

Countries that small are outliers and aren't really the point. It's about the size of the company, not the size of the country. Being too powerful for the smallest country isn't that interesting. Being too powerful for the median country seems like a problem, much less for the UK, which is at the ~90th percentile by population and #6 in the world by GDP.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#382

Post by AnthonyMouse »

immibis wrote: post #335
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors don't control Apple, the CEO of Apple does. The investors are random people holding shares of it in their 401k. The company being so big is also they reason they can't control it effectively, because the people holding it are so diffuse that they have significant coordination costs.

The investors with effective voting rights are not usually people with retirement funds, but rather the administrators of those retirement fund pools.

So another case of it not being the investors then.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#383

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ben_w wrote: post #318
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors don't control Apple, the CEO of Apple does. The investors are random people holding shares of it in their 401k. The company being so big is also they reason they can't control it effectively, because the people holding it are so diffuse that they have significant coordination costs.

In the same way, one could say that the president, prime minister, or similarly titled person controls a democracy. Investors are "one share, one vote", rather than democracy "one person, one vote". The recent thing with Musk/Tesla and his trillion dollar options is being voted on, and Apple face campaigns and have votes, too: https://apnews.com/article/apple-dei-shareholder-proposal-an...

> In the same way, one could say that the president, prime minister, or similarly titled person controls a democracy.

That depends how big it is. For something the size of the US, sure, and that's a problem. It's one of the reasons the central government was meant to have limited powers.

For something the size of a small town or local business, absolutely not, because then each vote both matters more to the outcome and has more direct consequences to the voter, which dramatically lowers the coordination costs. A single individual could change the outcome just by convincing a small number of local people who are each more inclined to care about it.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#384

Post by mrguyorama »

array_key_first wrote: post #355
wkat4242 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't jail a company. And breaking one up is pretty much impossible considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies like this.

It's also not really desirable to punish a company or dissolve it. It's mostly made up of laborers - you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay. Also, we don't really want to just burn the IP. That stuff is useful.

>Also, we don't really want to just burn the IP.

You absolutely want to burn the IP in the sense of make it freely available to use and build upon. Every time history has weakened IP protections for the few, the many have benefited.

A lot of the success after WW2 was the immense amount of patents that were no longer protected and could be built upon without 25 years of monopoly extraction. You can't rent seek something that isn't patent protected, so you have to build and improve.

For example, several German and Italian patents around good motorcycle engines were completely nulled out, and every company that built motorcycles made a popular model from it. It basically invented a portion of the industry.

The same elimination of patent protections after WW1 boosted tons of chemical industries, and spurned immense innovation in pharmaceuticals, dyes, explosives, etc.

"Oh you want to do illegal anti-competitive stuff? In addition to any fine, you have forfeited your IP benefits"

Breaking antitrust laws and similar is an explicit admission that you cannot compete fairly, and therefore it does not benefit society to let you continue to monopolize anything and someone else should be allowed to take your place.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#385

Post by [deleted] »

pacifika wrote: post #276
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!" I feel like fines aren't even an appropriate remedy for this. They're both inherently arbitrary and not something that actually fixes it. And that combination gives governments a perverse incentive, because they get $2B to put in their own pockets…

Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple

[deleted]

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#386

Post by LexGray »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #281
pacifika wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple

> Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple This right here is why they need to be broken up. Are we supposed to have a company more powerful than a country?

It is not just Apple. The UK is going after every company with their porn filtering laws. Imagine the response if people did not stand up to their tyranny and the Uk kept pushing their agendas further and further. This is why the UK needs to be broken up.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#387

Post by wkat4242 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #379
wkat4242 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU. Exactly, also, the US would prevent that geopolitically.

> also, the US would prevent that geopolitically. Everybody keeps saying that Trump is eroding US power etc. etc. Are they all lying or is the EU just too chicken to actually do it when it comes up? According to the TACO principle it goes the other way, right?

Oh he certainly is. But he is eroding it. It's only just starting and the EU is only just starting to disconnect itself from the US. So right now he still has a lot of pull.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#388

Post by LexGray »

lopis wrote: post #304
vladvasiliu wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which situation does the end user not pay for everything? Even a fine or a tax on a company ends rolled up in the price paid by the end user. Same thing with programs paid for by the government. It’s the taxpayers who foot the bill. I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.

> I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone. People don't necessarily choose the option that is better for them long term. The existence of monopolies stifles innovation, so users are worse off. For example, Apple's ecosystem works great if you go all in, but what would have ha…

That sounds like a fun thought experiment. What exactly would happen?

I think is why the EU and UK pushing so hard to open the gates is so they have the excuse to take control themselves and slam the gates back shut hard. I predict the outcome in even a ten year period is all apps will need governmental approval.

Opening the gates is not necessarily the best long term decision either.

You have to remember most governments are corrupt and it will devolve into a situation on who pays the best bribes over the current flat rate extortion.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#389

Post by estimator7292 »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #329
amelius wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If a shoplifter steals from one shop, the judge will not take into consideration all the shops they didn't steal from.

Charging devs a percentage App Store sales is very different from shoplifting and equating the two is extremely misleading. Devs voluntarily choose to publish apps on the App Store and doing so gets them both another discovery channel and a low-friction sales channel. Stores being robbed by shoplifters don't voluntarily enter that arrangement and they get no benefit from it.

There is no choice involved. You either pay Apple the required blood sacrifice or you lose access to more than half of all possible customers for your business.

This is like saying that every American can choose to trash their car and take public transit. It sounds like a choice, but the real world has consequences and in fact most Americans do not have the ability to eschew private transport. That is just simply not how the world works.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#390

Post by kvemkon »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #376
kvemkon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and operating systems This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices. > regions People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate. > buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region i…

> This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices. Why are you excluding phone-like devices? That's where it's currently the bigger problem. You can't do it at all on iPhones and Android devices malign you with locked boot loaders, attestation failures and undocumented blob drivers tied to an ancient kernel version. > People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacture…

> Why are you excluding phone-like devices?

Actually not, for me *smart*phones are PC-like devices. Smartphone, especially modern one, is obviously a miniature personal computer.

> It's discriminating against the poor people of any country that also happens to have rich people in it.

I think, poor people are discriminated in every country generally if they need to buy products designed by an international company. While I've mentioned average income, it should be strictly speaking median income.

> Price discrimination

I mean that countries with lower median income deserves cheaper products. So that relatively there should be only minimal difference for poor people to be able to buy such products, regardless of the country of origin.

> International companies aren't "based" anywhere in particular except for on paper,

That's a good question. This "on paper" is crucial for all the legal stuff. US-based companies must obey not only EU rules but also US. Especially problematic is when they'd need to break a EU law to comply with the US law but they are never allowed to do this vice versa. This way I'd define where a company is based.

> anywhere is that the government says

It will be problematic due to multiple governments would be involved (typically US, EU, UK, China).

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