French Court Slashes Apple Antitrust Fine in Blow to European Regulators (reuters.com) 28
"Apple won a massive reduction in a 1.1 billion euro ($1.1 billion) antitrust fine from French competition regulators," reports CNBC, "in a blow to the ambitions of European authorities to crack down on the dominance of Big Tech companies."
The Paris appeals court on Thursday lowered the fine to 371.6 million euros, roughly a third of the value of the original penalty and a reduction of 728.4 million euros, an Apple spokesperson confirmed.According to Reuters, the amount was slashed because the court decided to drop one of the charges related to price fixing, and lower the rate originally used to calculate the fine....
In 2020, the French competition watchdog fined Apple 1.1 billion euros for allegedly pressuring premium resellers into fixing prices of non-iPhone products, such as its Mac and iPad computers, and abusing the economic dependence of its outside resellers. Tech Data and Ingram Micro, two global electronics wholesalers, were also fined 76.1 million euros and 62.9 million euros, respectively. The regulator accused Apple, Tech Data and Ingram Micro of agreeing not to compete and preventing independent resellers from competing with each other, "thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products."
Apple response, according to Reuters: "While the court correctly reversed part of the French Competition Authority's decision, we believe it should be overturned in full and plan to appeal.
"The decision relates to practices from more than a decade ago that even the (French authority) recognised are no longer in use."
In 2020, the French competition watchdog fined Apple 1.1 billion euros for allegedly pressuring premium resellers into fixing prices of non-iPhone products, such as its Mac and iPad computers, and abusing the economic dependence of its outside resellers. Tech Data and Ingram Micro, two global electronics wholesalers, were also fined 76.1 million euros and 62.9 million euros, respectively. The regulator accused Apple, Tech Data and Ingram Micro of agreeing not to compete and preventing independent resellers from competing with each other, "thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products."
Apple response, according to Reuters: "While the court correctly reversed part of the French Competition Authority's decision, we believe it should be overturned in full and plan to appeal.
"The decision relates to practices from more than a decade ago that even the (French authority) recognised are no longer in use."
Re: In your face, EU!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: In your face, EU!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
The EU is trying to make up for its relative lack of a real tech industry with fines and taxes on American tech giants.
The EU is applying fines for breaches in the law. The fact that you think this is a target on a specific country just shows how you care more about geo-political bias than any facts of the matter. While you sit here and cry foul over the treatment of the poor Amewikans the EU fines EU based companies at a far larger rate which kind of spoils your narrative a bit.
Maybe the real story here is American tech companies are aresholes who don't consider laws of other nations?
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Americans, in general, don't consider laws at all. Whether it's the seatbelt law, stopping at a red light, torturing prisoners, illegally retaining PPI, running a company on fakery and trickery, or blatantly abusing monopolies, from the individual through to the police, the government, and the corporate sector, America tries to recreate a fantasy Wild West of utter lawlessness. That they hold foreign laws in even lower regard seems an obvious consequence of that mentality.
Re: In your face, EU!!! (Score:2)
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You must be a small-dicked European. Hah. Put your penis back in your pants before we come and give you some more freedom.
How you're going to give us more freedom? Put out a press release? A bilateral summit no one cares about? Maybe you can teach us how to destroy our democracies and remove the rights of women over the bodily autonomy. You don't even give enough of a shit to stop Iran's nuclear program, or the annexation of Crimea. Typical all talk no show.
Also Europeans have a larger average dick size than North Americans so I think this your post is a bit of an own-goal. In related news we also drive smaller cars, I think t
Re: In your face, EU!!! (Score:2)
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I wouldn't even consider the EU a "protectionist bloc" compared to most other regions in the world, including the US. Most US companies sell very well in the EU competing only on price with EU companies, even when that price is artificially low given the R&D has been paid by government contracts.
On the other hand, in the US, a non US-based company has little chance of winning any bid which is even remotely funded by government agencies.
Oh, that's OK then (Score:4, Insightful)
"The decision relates to practices from more than a decade ago that even the (French authority) recognised are no longer in use."
Your honor, I murdered that man over a decade ago, who cares?
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I was going to write almost exactly the same thing. I can't make up my mind whether it's a case of "Great minds think alike", or "Fools seldom differ".
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You stole candy from the store 10 years ago when you were 18. We are now going to execute you.
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Which Apple executives were 18 when they made the decision to act anticompetitively?
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If the thief was a minor we just cut off his hand.
Apple is not a person. It is a legal fiction created specifically to separate responsible parties from responsibility, like all corporations.
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Your metaphor. Murder implies a person perpetrator
That's right. Corporations fundamentally do not do things. People who work for corporations do. Human beings decided to act anticompetitively for the purpose of maximizing profit. "Apple" didn't do shit, people employed by Apple did — on behalf of the shareholders, who demonstrate their approval for this behavior by investing. The whole purpose of the corporate structure is to shield the people investing in behavior they know to be harmful from responsibility for their actions, and the executives as w
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The fact that they continue to not allow any browser engine on Ios devices means they are still on a killing spree. That alone is enough to warrant a $1billion euro fine for all the trouble it causes forcing their inferior Safari browser engine on everyone with an Ios device.
Wrong.
Apple's decision to only allow WebKit as the Rendering Engine other than on macOS is 100% based on the fact that Apple realizes that there is simply not enough testing in the world to keep up with vetting multiple Rendering Engines for even innocent Vulnerabilities; let alone maliciously-intentional ones.
This is not a weakness of their App Security; nor of their Testing abilities; but rather, an acknowledgement of the massive complexity of a typical Rendering Engine.
Price of doing business versus actual deterrence? (Score:2)
Unfortunate that companies do bad things based on acceptable penalties. Just a cost of doing business. Not "What is the right thing to do?" but "How much will it cost us if we get caught?"
But fortunate for all of the lawyers involved on every side. (The interesting lawsuits have LOTS of parties involved.)
Seems pointless to offer solutions for consideration on Slashdot, but I still favor tax code revisions to favor smaller companies over bigger ones. Too bad the bigger companies are best able to bribe the ch
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A simple taxation system would be to make both income tax and corporate tax follow an S-curve. The next dollar/pound/euro is taxed at the next point along the curve.
One benefit is that you don't have tax brackets, so there's never any discontinuity where earning more means less income, even at the extreme. Another is that you achieve your stated goal in that smaller companies pay less tax. The third is that it's a relatively simple curve that can be integrated so that you can tax individuals and companies a
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I think you are trying to focus on the income tax system and you are also trying to oversimplify that. The basic principles of progressive income taxation are actually simple enough, but the details are full of devils. However I don't know if I have an actual opinion on income taxation these days because it's clearly too easy to redefine the meaning of "income".
My current thinking about taxes is focused on two tax (imaginary) streams. One would be a relatively simple tax on corporate profits, where the main
They are guilty of price fixing (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the one place I would like to see the US government exert some pressure. No manufacturer should be able to set the price of a product for sale to consumers.
And if you bring up apps and e books, that is not the manufacturing setting price, that is the retailer. Amazon has a right to sell e books at the price it wants. The manufacturers went to court and won the right to price fix. So it is legal in the US. As a retailer, Apple has the right to set the price of products it sells to the end user. And if it chose to, use that power to set a de facto maximum price for products.
Again and again... people are subjective. (Score:2)
We need to remove the personal leeway that individuals have for "justice". Either it's against the law or not. Either they did it or didn't. Everyone who does it should get a fair penalty, but it should be applied uniformly.
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What we need to remove is precedent, it makes law confusing and variable and situations like that only exist to provide opportunities for selective enforcement. Laws also need expiration dates for review, and if a jury refuses to convict then that should also trigger review.