Spain Antitrust Watchdog Fines Amazon, Apple $218 Million (reuters.com) 23
Spain's antitrust watchdog imposed fines worth a total 194.1 million euros ($218.03 million) on Amazon and Apple for colluding to limit the online sale of devices from Apple and competitors in Spain. From a report: The two contracts the companies signed on Oct. 31, 2018 granting Amazon the status of authorized Apple dealer included anti-competitive clauses that affected the online market for electronic devices in Spain, CNMC, as the watchdog is known, said in a statement. "The two companies restricted without justification the number of sellers of Apple products on the Amazon website in Spain," it said.
More than 90% of the existing retailers who were using Amazon's market place to sell Apple devices were blocked as a result, CNMC added. Amazon also reduced the capacity of retailers in the European Union based outside Spain to access Spanish customers, the regulator said. It also restricted the advertising Apple's competitors were allowed to place on its website when users searched for Apple products, CNMC said.
More than 90% of the existing retailers who were using Amazon's market place to sell Apple devices were blocked as a result, CNMC added. Amazon also reduced the capacity of retailers in the European Union based outside Spain to access Spanish customers, the regulator said. It also restricted the advertising Apple's competitors were allowed to place on its website when users searched for Apple products, CNMC said.
Oh look another slap on the wrist (Score:1)
$20bn and 20 executives in prison for a few years would have been the appropriate punishment. They might have learned not to do it again when hit by that.
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Not all Amazon executives are American (Score:2)
The object is to hit some high level people who are responsible for this crime. I'm sure that Amazon USA has plausible deniability, but a few Spaniards enjoying His Hispanic Majesty's hospitality would be very salutary. And remember that the Three Letter Agencies continue to pursue Julian Assange in the UK courts...
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The US locked up a German citizen over the diesel emissions scandal. He was visiting the US on holiday. I have to say, what an idiot, he should have known he was likely to be arrested if he set foot there. In Germany he was fairly safe because Germany isn't keen on extraditing people to the US due to Human Rights issues.
The US tried to have a Huawei exec extradited from Canada. I'm sure the US would gladly oblige Spain by doing the same for them.
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$20bn and 20 executives in prison for a few years would have been the appropriate punishment. They might have learned not to do it again when hit by that.
On what basis did you calculate that? What were the revenues of business affected? How does the financial impact of the result compare to crimes with similar punishments of $20bn fine and 20 years in prison?
I get it you think everything should be punitive. What else do you suggest? Death penalty for those who don't return their shopping trolley? 10 years prison for j-walking?
The European legal system isn't like the American system. Ask yourself why the fine in this case was so specific. Waterboarding the ex
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Amazon annual turnover is of the order $500bn. Fines are increasingly being expressed as a percentage of worldwide turnover, so $20bn would be 4%. Given that anti-competitive behaviour is especially pernicious to the operation of the economy, depriving ordinary people of the benefits of the free market, it should be punished very harshly...
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Fines are increasingly being expressed as a percentage of worldwide turnover
Nope. There's less laws on the books in the entire world than you have fingers on one hand that does this. It doesn't apply. A functioning legal system depends on people not making punishments up depending on how much they love / hate the parties involved.
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Hmmm
https://www.sentencingcouncil.... [sentencingcouncil.org.uk]
https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/con... [sra.org.uk]
https://www.richardnelsonllp.c... [richardnelsonllp.co.uk]
https://www.osborneclarke.com/... [osborneclarke.com]
That's just the UK and not counting GDPR... The last is the law in the UK similar to the one that Amazon got its slap on the wrist for; there are grounds for hope that we will get our national debt paid off when tech companies are done for their felonies ;) (OK - probably not, but it's a nice fantasy!)
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I get it you think everything should be punitive. What else do you suggest? Death penalty for those who don't return their shopping trolley?
There has to be a middle ground where a fine erases a significant percentage of the profit that the bad contract gave them. It does nothing to disincentivize doing it over and over again. The companies are large enough and the smallest overstep makes them so much money that the fines should probably equal the GDP of a small country.
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2018 to 2023 is an enormous amount of time in profitability and market share. The fine is irrelevant if the others went out of business or discontinued selling the products in that market. Reestablishing their piece of the market is almost impossible. I would have preferred Amazon and Apple be blocked from selling directly to customers for 5 years. That would have been a better lesson.
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Reestablishing their piece of the market is almost impossible.
There is no market establishment to speak of. When you shop on Amazon I bet you don't even look at the names of the store you're buying from. Most people don't. With a flick of a button the entire market is re-established assuming the company in question still has an Amazon account.
Why involve Apple? (Score:2)
There's no question that Apple wrote a bad contract that should never be signed. But I really think that 100% of the liability should be on Amazon for signing it because they would be the ones forced to do something they know they shouldn't. Instead, 3/4 of the fine was to Apple.
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Well that's the sad state of "justice" - go after who can pay, not after who is at fault.
Note this is not a statement on culpability here - it sounds like writing this type of exclusivity contract is indeed suspect. The devil's advocate, though, asks why are exclusivity contracts in some places acceptable but not others? A trivial example is sports venues - why are these allowed to have exclusive beverage contracts, blocking out local vendors? Why does your favorite restaurant only serve Coke or Pepsi, bu
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Between Apple and Amazon, the question isn't who can pay but why is the fine smaller than the profits they already made from this deal?
I think most exclusivity contracts are abusive in some form, but when you're a major retailer that has a significant share of all online shopping in a country, it goes beyond that into antitrust considerations.
As far as beverages, initially those contracts were probably about securing a certain size of order on a regular basis to afford to keep them on the delivery route for
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Claiming to clamp down on counterfeits by using anti-competitive contracts doesn't free you from being liable. Add to the fact it was the only way to become an authorized Apple dealer, and it only makes Apple look more guilty and the one in
Two things. There is no mention of any of the (Score:2)
money going to excluded retailers, so that looks like a shakedown and the last paragraph of TFA says this is the same as a dropped Italian lawsuit, looks like monkey-see monkey-do.
I fucking loathe Apple in particular, so I really hate taking their side but:
Apple said the agreement with Amazon was designed to limit the number of counterfeits sold online. Previously, the company was spending a lot of money and effort to send hundreds of thousands of 'take-down' notices to stop the sale of counterfeited devices, it said.
Sounds pretty fucking reasonable. Everyone knows about Amazon's massive scam product problem.
Aww Yeah. (Score:1)
Looking forward to new Macs (Score:2)