German #competition regulator fines #Amazon €59M for abuse of market power 🎉
German #competition regulator fines #Amazon €59M for abuse of market power 🎉
4/ Historical footnote. In 2002 the UK Office of Fair Trading ( #OFT) reviewed complaints about #BigDeals and other #anticompetitive practices in academic #publishing. It found market distortions but decided 𝘯𝘰𝘵 to act — because of the then-recent rise of #OpenAccess. "It is too early to assess what will be the impact of this [digital publishing & access] but there is a possibility that it will be a powerful restraint on exploiting positional advantage in the STM journals market."
http://web.archive.org/web/20051025123345/www.oft.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/A56C7602-C0BD-428D-BED2-36784363243B/0/oft396.pdf
5/ A US federal district judge just dismissed the #antitrust case against six academic #publishers (Jan 30, 2026).
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/myvmqlljdvr/24-cv-06409-HG%20Uddin%20v.%20Elsevier%20B.V.%20et%20al.pdf
Article about the dismissal:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/academic-publishers-defeat-lawsuit-over-peer-review-pay-other-restrictions-2026-01-30/
"The four scholars, scientists and professors who filed the lawsuit in 2024 had not shown sufficient evidence of a conspiracy involving publishers Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wolters Kluwer."
As Matt Stoller so often does, here he provides the most valuable (IMO) framing of the politics around #ICE
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-what-the-ice-raids
The focus question should be: why focus on policing the individual immigrants rather than the **corporations** who hire them? Or more generally, why focus on policing workers instead of policing financial crimes and #antitrust violations?
This framing bridges the partisan divides because it appeals to rule-of-law not pro-immigrant or anti-immigrant etc
🎷🧬🌐 James Boyle connects jazz riffs, gene sequences & the early web to one core idea in THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: creativity depends on a shared cultural commons, and that commons is quietly shrinking.
🎙️ Hear how expanding IP rights can fence off culture itself on the Future Knowledge #podcast.
🎧 Listen now ➡️ https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/the-public-domain
James Boyle explains why concentration of market power is dangerous—but when oligopoly locks arms with IP, it becomes a near-unbreakable set of manacles around the public domain.⛓️
🎙️ Learn more in the latest Future Knowledge #podcast.
🎧 Listen now ⤵️ https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/the-public-domain
James Boyle explains why concentration of market power is dangerous—but when oligopoly locks arms with IP, it becomes a near-unbreakable set of manacles around the public domain.⛓️
🎙️ Learn more in the latest Future Knowledge #podcast.
🎧 Listen now ⤵️ https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/the-public-domain
James Boyle explains why concentration of market power is dangerous—but when oligopoly locks arms with IP, it becomes a near-unbreakable set of manacles around the public domain.⛓️
🎙️ Learn more in the latest Future Knowledge #podcast.
🎧 Listen now ⤵️ https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/the-public-domain
Nvidia's $20B Antitrust Loophole (Not an Acquisition)
https://ossa-ma.github.io/blog/groq
#HackerNews #Nvidia #Antitrust #Loophole #Nvidia #$20B #Technology #News #Tech #Industry #Groq
Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position
https://en.agcm.it/en/media/press-releases/2025/12/A561
#HackerNews #ItalianCompetitionAuthority #Apple #Fine #DominantPosition #Antitrust #News #TechRegulation
"The permissionless #innovation enabled by #FOSS allowed smaller and non-profit business models to flourish, letting organizations develop and provide high-quality technological products and services to market sectors often ignored by commercial companies. Enforcing the #DMA could consolidate #interoperability as a foundational policy for #Europe’s digital #infrastructure."
https://www.techpolicy.press/making-the-digital-markets-act-developer-friendly/
"The permissionless #innovation enabled by #FOSS allowed smaller and non-profit business models to flourish, letting organizations develop and provide high-quality technological products and services to market sectors often ignored by commercial companies. Enforcing the #DMA could consolidate #interoperability as a foundational policy for #Europe’s digital #infrastructure."
https://www.techpolicy.press/making-the-digital-markets-act-developer-friendly/
Paramount says it could get antitrust approval for WBD before Netflix
Paramount has already proven it can get a controversial merger done.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/paramount-says-it-could-get-antitrust-approval-for-wbd-before-netflix/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
@arstechnica we’re all assuming the merger should happen, just not sure who will get to be the buyer, but why are we allowing this crazy consolidation to continue? You don’t get rid of monopolies, or duopolies by allowing unfettered mergers/takeovers of massive corporations.
#antitrust #media #wbd
“An extremely negative signal”: French court dismisses search engine Qwant's case against Microsoft
"In a ruling handed down on Thursday, the Competition Authority found that Microsoft did not abuse its dominant position. This is a setback for Qwant, which is seeking to break free from its dependence on the American giant.
The verdict is in, and it does not favor Qwant. The French search engine, which has been engaged in legal proceedings for nearly a year against Microsoft, accusing it of abusing its dominant position in the B2B search engine market, has been dismissed by the Competition Authority.
In its verdict handed down on Thursday, the authority found that Qwant had not provided “sufficient evidence” to demonstrate that the American giant was dominant in the market in question, nor that “the conditions for abuse of economic dependence were met.”
Archive: https://archive.is/q5NRx
@ueeu The press release is indeed not convincing. #Qwant may be developing its own search technology ( #ESP, with #ecosia), but until they develop it, they are dependent on #Bing. The fact that #Microsoft imposes restrictions on the development of #ESP demonstrates and strengthens that dependence. #antitrust
The Department of Justice and Texas software-maker RealPage announced this week that they have reached a settlement in a case involving price-fixing allegations in some of the nation’s largest rental markets.
#News #DOJ #Rent #Law #Antitrust #Technology #Tech #Software
"One of Biden's best photocopier kickers was and is Lina Khan. She embodies the incredible potential of a fully operational battle-station, which is to say that she embodies the awesome power of a skilled technocrat who is also deeply ethical and genuinely interested in helping the public."
#CoryDoctorow, 2025
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/15/unconscionability/#standalone-authority
Best blog passage of 2025 😅
Why exactly can I still not uninstall #Microsoft effing #Edge on a fully patched #Windows11 in the EU?
#DigitalMarketsAct #competition #antitrust #DigitalRights #SoftwareFreedom #DMA
Why exactly can I still not uninstall #Microsoft effing #Edge on a fully patched #Windows11 in the EU?
#DigitalMarketsAct #competition #antitrust #DigitalRights #SoftwareFreedom #DMA
The Federal Trade Commission has failed to prove Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp allowed it to illegally monopolize the social networking market, a U.S. district court ruled. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/11/19/tech/meta-ftc-antitrust-instagram-whatsapp/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #tech #meta #ftc #antitrust #instagram #whatsapp #facebook #apps #socialmedia #markzuckerberg #donaldtrump
