WikiLeaks Planning Legal Action Against PayPal, MasterCard & Visa

from the thought-this-would-go-away? dept

There hasn't been much talk lately over the fact that PayPal, MasterCard and Visa all cut off Wikileaks late last year, after the US government freaked out about the release of some State Department Cables. None of the firms has done a very good job explaining why this makes sense (or why they continue to allow other groups, such as the KKK to receive funding, while singling out Wikileaks). I'm sure those three firms, which took quite a public bashing when the news originally dropped, would prefer that there not be any more talk about it. However, Wikileaks and the payment firm they used, DataCell, are apparently planning to file a legal complaint this week against all three firms in Europe. A draft of the complaint, which was obtained by Andy Greenberg at Forbes (linked above and embedded below), claims that the three firms violated Articles 101 and 102 of the EU Treaty, effectively a form of antitrust law. While I tend to think many antitrust claims are merely attacks on successful companies, this seems like a case where they could make sense. Here you have basically the only three ways for most people to transfer money easily, all agreeing to block a single (small) client from receiving money, despite no legal ruling against the operation (hell, charges haven't even been filed). It certainly would make for an interesting case.

Filed Under: antitrust, collusion, europe, wikileaks
Companies: mastercard, paypal, visa, wikileaks

Microsoft Still Claiming That It Can Use The DMCA To Block Competing Xbox Accessories

from the not-what-it-was-designed-for dept

One of the many problems with the DMCA is the way that companies try to abuse it and twist it to stop competition. Thankfully, the courts have been pretty good (but not perfect) about shutting down such attempts, but more companies keep trying. You may recall cases such as the time Lexmark tried and failed to block competing ink cartridges from being used in their printers, by claiming that the cartridge violated the DMCA, by getting around a bit of software whose only purpose was to stop competing printer cartridges. The court correctly realized that this was not at all what the DMCA was supposed to cover. There was a similar case involving garage door openers (though the losers in that case, have figured out a workaround via its terms that effectively allows it to do the same thing).

The latest example of a company trying to abuse the law this way is... Microsoft. We've been following this story for a while. Back in 2009, Microsoft suddenly announced that it would break third party memory cards for the Xbox, basically because it could. This pissed off a lot of people, and kicked off an antitrust lawsuit from Datel one of the third party makers of such cards. That case is now moving forward, with Microsoft arguing there's no antitrust issue, because its merely blocking Datel and others because they're violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, in that third party cards have to get past some software used to block them.

If I had to guess, I'd say Microsoft is going to lose this case. It seems that courts are seeing through attempts to abuse the DMCA when it comes to stopping hardware competition. That's not the case when it comes to software, where things get murkier, but this seems like a pretty obvious attempt by Microsoft to abuse the intent and language of the DMCA solely to stop third party competition of a physical product. Hopefully, the court recognizes this.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, storage, xbox
Companies: datel, microsoft

UK Politicians Want To Regulate Google... Because It's Good At What It Does

from the searching-for-a-clue dept

I recognize that there's been a weird backlash against Google in the UK, since Prime Minister David Cameron has been asking questions about why companies like Google aren't starting in the UK. Rather than actually looking into the core issues, it appears that many are simply trying to take Google down a notch instead. The latest, as pointed out by Glyn Moody appears to be a bit of a retread of some older arguments. However, it's being done by British MPs. Yes, they're suddenly calling on the UK government to regulate Google.

Why? Well, as far as I can tell, the argument is that Google is good at what it does, and people like it, so thus it must be punished. I really wish there were more to it than that, but that really does seem to be the heart of it: let's regulate Google because we're jealous that it's successful.

The debate apparently was kicked off by MP Dominic Raab, repeating the old story about Foundem, whose only purpose in life seemed to be to bitch about Google. Foundem, of course, was a tiny search engine that no one heard of that offered little value, and was exactly the kind of website that people hate getting pointed to in search results, because it feels spammy. Google -- quite reasonably -- buried Foundem's results. It wasn't -- as Foundem's execs and Raab now claim -- because Google was "scared" of this competitor and was shutting it out of the market, but because Foundem sucked and people didn't like it.

Yet Raab uses this example of Google better serving its customers, as an excuse to regulate the company:

Mr Raab said that the effect was to suppress Foundem in Google search results. Mr Raab pointed out that the alleged treatment of Foundem would be sufficient to bury and kill off many businesses. He accused Google of deliberately "stacking the deck" against small competitors and called for government policy to address what he called ‘search engine transparency'.

Mr Raab accused the regulators, Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading, of complacency. He called on them to take action against companies abusing dominance. "Search engines are the gateways to the Internet, and with a 95% share, Google is in a dominant position"

"If Google does not allow consumers to access potential competitors via its search engine gateway, they will be choked out of the market-place" he said.

First of all, search engines are less and less the gateway to the rest of the internet in an age of social media. Even if Google dominates in search traffic, more and more people are finding out about other sites online from their friends via social media. Second, and more importantly, nowhere does Raab explain why what Google did was bad. He just assumes that it must be bad. However, if Google is suppressing bad results that users don't want, isn't that a good thing? Serving customers better is a good thing, and if Foundem's having trouble getting users, the fault is clearly with Foundem, not Google. And it's pretty weak for politicians to be looking to prop up a failed company, just because another company is good at what it does.

Filed Under: antitrust, monopoly, regulations, uk
Companies: google

Microsoft: Hey, If We Had To Go Through Europe's Crazy Antitrust Process, Why Shouldn't Google?

from the at-least-they-see-the-irony dept

I've suggested in the past that neither Microsoft nor Google should be pointing the antitrust/monopoly finger at each other. After all, both companies seem prone to getting accused of antitrust violations. Yet, as a competitive tool to whack at competitors, it's apparently way too tempting. Not long after Microsoft spent years defending itself against antitrust charges in the EU, it has now filed a complaint against Google in the EU, alleging antitrust violations. To be fair, the company is pretty upfront about how this might seem ironic:

There of course will be some who will point out the irony in today’s filing. Having spent more than a decade wearing the shoe on the other foot with the European Commission, the filing of a formal antitrust complaint is not something we take lightly. This is the first time Microsoft Corporation has ever taken this step. More so than most, we recognize the importance of ensuring that competition laws remain balanced and that technology innovation moves forward.

To be fair, the specific antitrust concerns that Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith lays out against Google appear to be a bit more compelling than some of the previous attempts by Microsoft to make Google out to be a monopolist, such as silly claims about where companies appear in search results. Specifically, Microsoft highlights Google blocking access to certain YouTube data, so that only Google can provide good searches of YouTube videos, as well as blocking Microsoft's mobile platform from accessing more YouTube data, which is done by Android.

First, in 2006 Google acquired YouTube--and since then it has put in place a growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing it for their search results. Without proper access to YouTube, Bing and other search engines cannot stand with Google on an equal footing in returning search results with links to YouTube videos and that, of course, drives more users away from competitors and to Google.

Second, in 2010 and again more recently, Google blocked Microsoft's new Windows Phones from operating properly with YouTube. Google has enabled its own Android phones to access YouTube so that users can search for video categories, find favorites, see ratings, and so forth in the rich user interfaces offered by those phones. It's done the same thing for the iPhones offered by Apple, which doesn't offer a competing search service.

Unfortunately, Google has refused to allow Microsoft's new Windows Phones to access this YouTube metadata in the same way that Android phones and iPhones do. As a result, Microsoft's YouTube "app" on Windows Phones is basically just a browser displaying YouTube's mobile Web site, without the rich functionality offered on competing phones. Microsoft is ready to release a high quality YouTube app for Windows Phone. We just need permission to access YouTube in the way that other phones already do, permission Google has refused to provide.

While the full details aren't clear, and this is only one side, those do seem like valid concerns if it's true that Google is really limiting such access. The concern over antitrust is always in whether or not the company is abusing its position to hold back competition unfairly. I don't know if Microsoft has a case, and I'm especially skeptical of the EU's antitrust process, which seems more focused on punishing success than on making sure there's no real consumer harm. However, this is certainly going to be a case worth paying attention to over the next few years...

Filed Under: access, antitrust, eu, youtube
Companies: google, microsoft

Justice Department Investigating MPEG-LA For Antitrust Violations Over VP8 Patent Threats

from the monopolies dept

This is quite a surprise. We'd already covered how MPEG-LA, the private company that has set up patent pools around web video, had announced its intention to set up a patent pool focused on the patents that holders believe are infringed upon by Google's VP8/WebM video standard. This definitely seemed like a typical shakedown situation, with one company basically asking a bunch of others to team up to demand a bunch of cash from Google.

What's surprising, however, is that the US Justice Department is apparently jumping into this particular battle, and investigating if MPEG-LA's response violates antitrust law. Apparently, the Justice Department (which is not exactly known as being a Google supporter...) is questioning whether or not this move by MPEG-LA and its members represents an attempt to stifle competition in the marketplace. Of course, the answer seems to be yes, but part of that is the very nature of patents. They are, by definition, a monopoly right. So if they want to stop monopoly abuse from stifling competition, perhaps the government should stop handing out so many monopolies.

Filed Under: antitrust, patents, video, vp8, web video, webm
Companies: google, mpeg-la

Rock & A Hard Place: Will Google Dropping H.264 Lead To Antitrust Questions?

from the of-course-it-will dept

There was a lot of attention paid to the news that Google was going to drop H.264 support for Chrome. The reasoning makes perfect sense. H.264 is a proprietary standard, run by MPEG-LA, a group that has been quite aggressive at times on the patent front, and which could eventually turn around and charge websites for using it (right now it charges for hardware, but lets websites use it royalty free, and has promised to keep it that way until at least 2015). Getting locked into proprietary standards is bad, so getting away from those standards is good. I'm all for it, especially given MPEG-LA's views on patents. However, I wonder how long it will be until someone claims that this move shows that Google is violating antitrust laws. After all, part of doing this is to push its own WebM format forward.

Of course, this demonstrates the difficult position that Google is put in on this subject. Lots of folks keep trying to play gotcha with Google pushing its own solutions. That's what some of the various antitrust investigations have been about. But when pushing its own solutions means getting away from proprietary, locked down standards, that seems like it can only be a good thing for consumers. And, really, shouldn't the determination of any sort of antitrust argument be about the impact on the overall market?

Filed Under: antitrust, h.264, video
Companies: google

Wait, Can Anyone Explain Why Google Should Promote Other Search Engines?

from the i'm-confused dept

As the EU continues to use its Tim Wu-sian definition of monopoly where "being successful" equals "monopoly," it is has taken the step that everyone expected and has begun investigating Google for supposedly anti-competitive practices with regards to "competing search engines" such as Foundem. Foundem has been on this kick for a while. It has a crappy search engine that sucks and then it complains that Google doesn't link highly enough to them. The whole thing almost feels like it was set up purposely to have an excuse to go after Google.

As per usual, the absolute best response to this investigation comes from Danny Sullivan, who satirically notes that when he searches Google, obviously it had better link to other search engines as the top results:

I did a search at Google today for "cars" and was shocked. Rather than list links allowing me to search for "cars" on Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Voila, Naver and Yandex, Google instead favored its own search results. I’m glad the EU will be investigating whether this favoritism violates anti-trust laws.

He goes on from there. It's worth reading the entire piece, because at the end he dismantles the entire argument of Foundem and the EU. It simply makes no sense. The whole thing is based on a basic fallacy that some companies who failed to actually get the market to come to them somehow think Google owes them traffic. Here's a tip: if your business model depends on getting traffic from Google, you are making a poor strategic decision.

And this is more true today than ever before. It wasn't that long ago that the vast majority of our referral traffic came from Google (the majority of our overall traffic comes from direct access/RSS readers). These days, however, while Google is still high up there, there's a wide mix of alternative sources that bring us traffic: StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and a variety of other sources. Most of these aren't search engines -- but they are massive traffic generators, showing that people find stuff via social means at an increasing rate, and the idea that any business is totally reliant on one company, Google, to survive, simply suggests a poor business strategy. Regulators should never reward poor business strategies, but that appears to be what they're looking to do over in the EU.

Filed Under: antitrust, europe, search, search results
Companies: google

Once Again, Security Company Suggests Microsoft Making Its Own Software Secure Is An Antitrust Violation

from the rock-and-a-hard-place dept

For many years, we've pointed out that Microsoft is in a bit of a rock and a hard place when it comes to security software. The company more or less created an entire outside industry in having its software be so incredibly insecure that various other firms had to step up to secure it. But, that puts Microsoft in a really tough position. Does it fix its own security flaws... or is doing so a way to abuse its market position to put the security firms out of business? It's hard to see how that latter position makes much sense to anyone other than those who work for the security companies, but they continue to make those claims. The latest is from Trend Micro, who is complaining that Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is an antitrust violation. The article linked here notes that this is even more ridiculous than you might expect, in that MSE is an optional download. Either way, it seems like a pretty huge stretch to claim that fixing your own security holes could possibly be an antitrust violation. The real problem may be that Trend Micro jumped into a business that relied on another company continuing to suck.

Filed Under: antitrust, security
Companies: microsoft, trend micro

FTC Not Interested In Giving Newspapers Antitrust Exemption

from the well,-that's-a-start dept

We were pretty nervous, earlier this year, when an FTC report with ideas on how to "save" journalism appeared to focus mainly on saving newspapers, rather than on actually saving journalism. It had a number of really troubling and potentially dangerous ideas. The FTC is now planning to release a report by the end of the year that details its proposals for helping journalism, but at least one scary suggestion appears to be off the table: granting newspapers antitrust exemptions. FTC chair Jon Leibowitz dismissed it, saying "I'm not sure that would be a good policy," and then clarified that the "government shouldn't be picking winners and losers and should be platform neutral." Hopefully the plan really does stick to that idea... though it's still not clear why the government needs to be involved in "saving journalism" in the first place.

Filed Under: antitrust, ftc, newspapers