Amazon, Google, and Apple have moved past monopoly status to competing directly with governments

from RT, 28 Apr, 2020 16:37

© Reuters / Dado Ruvic (inset: Reuters / Pascal Rossignol)

US Senator Josh Hawley is demanding a criminal antitrust probe of Amazon as the e-commerce behemoth’s powers grow to rival the government’s own. Google and Apple, too, are now ordering governments around.

Amazon “abuses its position as an online platform and collects detailed data about merchandise so Amazon can create copycat products under an Amazon brand,” Hawley charged in a letter he sent to US Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday. The senator (R-MO) demanded a criminal probe of the e-commerce giant, accusing it of engaging in “predatory and exclusionary data practices to build and maintain a monopoly” – a textbook violation of antitrust law.

Charging that Amazon has gained unprecedented monopoly power through the sheer wealth of data it has collected on its users, allowing it to clone sellers’ products and undercut them on price, the senator likened the company’s “capacity for data collection” to “a brick and mortar retailer attaching a camera to every customer’s forehead.” With the coronavirus pandemic forcing the lion’s share of commerce online, Amazon has assumed near-omnipotence.

Even if all of Hawley’s allegations – derived from a Wall Street Journal investigation published earlier this month – are proven 100 percent true, it’s questionable whether the Justice Department would be willing (or able) to punish Amazon … Continue reading >>>

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Technology Rules You

Apple The Latest Silicon Valley Crooks To Face Justice?

A drop in the value of appple shares has pushed the godlike technology corporation back below Microsoft’s market capitalisation for the first time since May 2010,  taking a big enough bite out of Apple’s valuation to lose the company its spot as the most valuable US company.

Earlier today , Apple share proces tumbled after reports that the US Supreme Court appears willing to allow a lawsuit to go forward that claims Apple has unfairly monopolized the market for the sale of iPhone apps.

As Associated Press reports, the court has heard arguments in Apple’s effort to shut down an antitrust lawsuit.

Chief Justice John Roberts was alone among the nine justices in seeming ready to agree with Apple.

The suit by iPhone users could force Apple to cut the 30 percent commission it charges software developers whose apps are sold exclusively through Apple’s App Store.

A judge could triple the compensation to consumers under antitrust law if Apple ultimately loses the suit.

Justice Stephen Breyer used to teach antitrust law at Harvard Law School. He says the consumers’ case seemed straightforward.

Apple argues it’s merely a pipeline between app developers and consumers.

A ruling against Apple could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties. The company is sitting on almost a trillion dollars in cash. Though fanboys are claiming this would be a fleabite to Apple, which is holding a billion dollars in cash, things are more complicated than that. Apple’s cash mountain is profit (from robbing users with their monopolistic marketing policies) offshored to avoid tax. The moment they start repatriating that, the taxman is going to be on their case.

And as is usually the case with these tech companies that think they are above the law, once the case reveals how they have stolen from users, public trust will evaporate. That’s what will really hurt.

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Google Vs. Trump: “The Good Censor” On Collision Course With The Patriot President

Authored by ‘Washington Watcher’ via VDare.com,

The leaked internal Google briefing “The Good Censor” [PDF] has received suspiciously little attention from the Main Stream Media, but it represents the crassest statement yet of the Tech oligopolies’ intention to impose Silicon Valley Political Correctness on the U.S.

As American Thinker Editor Thomas Lifson puts it:

“I congratulate Breitbart.com for the scoop, and I urge everyone -I am looking at you, President Trump and Congress – to read and ponder the fate of the Republic unless this company is defanged, most likely by antitrust action, but possibly also via civil courts.” [Stunning 85-page Google memo ‘The Good Censor’ leaked to Breitbart, October 10, 2018]

What are Trump’s options? He’s certainly thinking about the issue.

The Washington Post reported recently that the White House was backing off a proposed executive order that would have required federal agencies to “investigate and/or prosecute” tech giants for bias. Administration officials told WaPo:

“Although the White House is concerned about the conduct of online platforms and their impact on society, this document is not the result of an official White House policymaking process.” [White House distances itself from reports that Trump could target Facebook, Google and Twitter with a new executive order, by Tony Romm and Josh Dawsey, September 22, 2018]

WaPo reported Trump has demanded an executive order on this matter for some time, but all of the drafts have been deemed “unworkable.” Sources tell the Watcher that the fallout from the leak deterred the President but he still considers the issue a top priority for his base and he wants it addressed.

Of course, first, we have to shoot down True Conservative notions that it’s not the government’s job to resolve tech censorship. Dogmatic Conservatism Incers insist the free market will magically fix the problem and government intervention would somehow be worse than suppression of right-wing views. Some—such as The Weekly Standard’sJonathan Last—have even celebrated this censorship as a necessary measure against “repugnant” voices. [The Case for Banning Alex Jones, August 8, 2018]

All of these opinions are absolutely ridiculous and predicated on the notion that Big Tech won’t go after “respectable” conservatives, which isn’t even the case. PragerU, a mainstream conservative outlet, has been censored numerous times by Facebook and YouTube, in spite of its painfully respectable brand. And others will soon face the same treatment once the T ech Totalitarians realize they can continue this malfeasance with impunity. [Facebook Censors PragerU Videos And Shadow Bans Posts, by Kyle Perisec, The Daily Caller, August 17, 2018]

The “free market” can’t do anything about it. Google has cornered over 92 percent of the search engine market—a higher market share percentage than Standard Oil at its peak. Big Tech has made sure that Gab, a free speech alternative to Twitter, is barredfrom ever posing a serious challenge. And no one wants to use a “conservative” Facebook. [Hate speech crackdown spreads to behind-the-scenes tech, by Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post, August 10, 2018]

Big Tech has manipulated the free market to benefit its own interests and power. Tech execs know they don’t have to worry about conservative competition putting an end to their malpractices.

That leaves only one serious alternative: government intervention.

It is in America’s interest for this to happen. The public forums and printing presses of our day are Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. If you are barred from these platforms, you are effectively eliminated from the public square. Big Tech wants to ensure right-wing viewpoints are consigned to the dustbin and no one has the freedom to share those views in public.

This is where Donald Trump can step in and halt these disturbing efforts.

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Amazon & Silicon Valley Masters of Universe Push Governments To Nationalize Music Industry

Amazon is leading a well-funded and well organised Silicon Valley campaign to force governments to nationalize the music industry, thereby creating a system where the government props up favoured corporations — such as Amazon — to be beneficiaries of and have control over, while also profiting from, music production.

The Music Modernization Act, which already been prsented in both Houses of the US Congress would create by law, if passed, a “collective” that pays the various beneficiaries of of public funds. The major problem with said “collective,” according to critics, is that it would be run by the government, specifically the U.S. Copyright Office, making it prone to cronyism, corruption, and misappropriation of intellectual property.

And if it becomes law in the USA you can bet the global media corporations will not be long before they are pushing for a similar law in the European Union, Britain, Canada, Australia and Japan just for starters. The good thing here is that such a proposal is not likely to become law as long as Donald J Trump is US President. Remember, the pernicious Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), another example of leftist control freakery rhat would have handed control of law making in sovereign states to corporate lawyers, was pushed by Obama and the EU, defeated by public opinion in Europe and killed by Trump in the USA.

“The so-called Music Modernization Act will destroy the private sectors’ progress by creating a federal mechanical license ‘collective’ which would collect payments and distribute them to the correct parties,” Bryan Crabtree, a pro-Trump author, wrote in NewsMax:

This collective would be funded by a new fee on music services and housed at the U.S. Copyright Office. The bill is perhaps a solution in search of a problem or maybe a power grab by global media corporations. The creation of the collective threatens to drive small record labes and distributors out of the marketplace, killing competition and establishing yet another monopoly in the music industry. Likely, the government would select just one or perhaps two services as their policeman on the beat. The most politically astute (and we know Bezon fancies his chance of succeeding Trump as President,) are the ones that often walk away with the deal, and the The Music Modernization Act looks to be no exception.

The bill passed the US House of Representatives with bipartisan support and made it through the Senate Judiciary Committee already, although it is misleading to talk of bipartisan politcs in the US system, there is one party, the corporate party, Senators and Representatives are its hirelings. We derailed TTIP, we must derail this latest act of corporate piracy heading our way from across the pond.

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Scholar Fired By Think Tank For Criticizing Google

Shortly after European monopolies regulators levied a record $2.7 billion fine against Google in June 2017, an influential Washington think tank The New America Foundation found out the hard way what can happen when a corporate bully is challenged.

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