DOJ Confirms Google Antitrust Investigation 186
An anonymous reader points to Digital Daily, writing "Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act."
Finally, some hope (Score:5, Insightful)
The move is the strongest sign yet that the DOJ may block the settlement, which critics claim would grant Google (GOOG) a monopoly on orphaned works-copyrighted texts without an identifiable copyright holder.
Heh, really? Maybe if there was some copyright reform no deal would be necessary. Maybe if copyright was an opt-in system, publishers could publish out of print books without having to worry about being sued by an absentee copyright holder.
I'm ok with this, as long as..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Serves you right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid companies.. Stop getting too big! Stop making so much money! Stop being so much better than your competition that everyone only uses your product. Being competitive means allowing the other guys to catch up! It also means you can't branch out too much..so keep your focus narrow.
Anyone else think this is a little over zealous?
Sorry I dropped my pitchfork (Score:2, Insightful)
First let me say, don't ever trust the government...but when you have a very large company and a deal that is being called questionable by some. Isn't this what the DOJ is supposed to do, investigate and see if there is any merit to the complaints?
Re:Serves you right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didnt they investigate microsoft properly (Score:3, Insightful)
back at the time ? in the last 8 years, microsoft got major fines from regulators and antitrust institutions around the world for anticompetitive practices, including European Union. yet, doj doesnt do any serious shit about microsoft. what gives ?
Re:Anti-trust punishes success (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should we listen to anything Alan Greenspan has to say?
The DOJ is after the wrong company! (Score:5, Insightful)
Over the years, Microsoft has proven to be particulary inept at getting any traction with their search business. In January 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo. Their efforts were frustrated when Google came to Yahoo's rescue. To get their revenge Microsoft mobilized their army of lobbyists in a Plot to Kill Google [wired.com]. Microsoft persuaded other companies and trade groups to lend support to their FUD campaign against their arch enemy. You will recall that the powerful American Corn Growers Association was among them - this same organization who's members get billions in subsidies to produce environmentally unfriendly ethanol from corn.
An article [nytimes.com] in the New York Times details Google's public-relations offensive to counteract the Microsoft generated FUD.
The Times articles states about Google: "regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with ... Microsoft. (My bold)
Why is it - "as they once did with Microsoft"? Microsoft never changed the behaviour that lead to civil actions filed against Microsoft [wikipedia.org] in May of 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 U.S. states.
They have made a big mistake. The DOJ is after the wrong company! With a new administartion in place, their first priority should be to get Microsoft under control. The EU has really shown the world the the US DOJ has been asleep on its watch. If the DOJ woke up and stepped up to its long neglected responsibilities, it would be the USA raking in the billions in fines it will take to get Microsoft to behave itself, instead of the EU. Why in the world are they going after Google at this time?
Google has been a shining example of how a good corporate citizen should behave, and Microsoft should be encouraged to emulate Google's example. Google doesn't lock people into its software or services. Any time you want you can use another search engine or pick up your Google docs and walk away. If there are some justifiable concerns about Google, I suggest that the DOJ first take care of elephant in the room - Microsoft - before turning to Google. It is just so disheartening to see the good guys getting DOJ's attention while the bad guy slips away. Microsoft, you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from Google's eye.
PS: I couldn't have written this short essay without Google there by my side the whole time as a friend to help me with the research.
Re:Need Some info.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Serves you right! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll stop worrying about companies getting too big when I stop hearing about how companies are "Too big to fail." Or when they aren't big enough to put serious economic pressure on other people/businesses. Or when they aren't big enough to be able to legally harass people despite having a flimsy case. Or when common people are able to routinely exact damages from them.
Until then, I'm perfectly happy with society telling companies that they are too big and need to limit their scope. Large businesses have disproportionate power over me. Even more so if there are only a few options. I don't like being coerced, whether its by private companies or governments.
Re:The DOJ is after the wrong company! (Score:2, Insightful)
Another way of looking at it is that the Yahoo! board completely screwed the pooch when they turned down the offer. Yahoo! currently has a market cap of $21 billion, just under 47% of the $44.6 billion that Microsoft offered for the company. Even if the deal had been entirely for Microsoft stock (much of it was for cash), Yahoo! shareholders would have something like 75 cents on the dollar today, instead of the 47 cents the board so gracefully awarded them.
Re:Serves you right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is simply good at what it does so people keep coming back. MS simply forces people to use them.
Re:Anti-trust punishes success (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Serves you right! (Score:3, Insightful)
The government is behind all of those problems: "Too big to fail", laws favoring business over individuals, and persecution of successful businesses.
You are taking a "I'm fine with it until it changes" stance - but how does that attitude help anything? You are not even identifying the source of the problem, which is the power that the government wields over individuals and businesses.
Once you have named this source, you can fight against it, explicitly, instead of taking an "I'm fine with it until it (magically) changes" approach.
Re:Serves you right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see, I could use any browser or search engine or media player or OS I wanted.
No, for a long time if you used something other than IE, you would get an incorrectly rendered page because of IE having a huge chunk of the marketshare of browsers and thats what people used to only code for. Sure, you could use any search engine you wanted because of two main things A) The learning curve for a search engine is nearly non existent, if you can use MSN you can use Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, Live Search, etc. and B) it takes less than 2 minutes to change the homepage on nearly every modern browser. But lets say you wanted to use any media player, too bad you won't be playing any WMAs unless you want to fork out for a patent license or break the DMCA by reverse engineering your own codecs. As for your own OS, how are you going to return the Windows license you unwillingly paid for? Sure, there are ways, but its not as simple as going into your local Best Buy and coming out with a $50 in your hand.
If the USA had A) No software patents, B) No DMCA and C) mandates that all government files/programs must use an open standard with an open implementation we would have no MS monopoly. However we do have software patents to the point where they can sue a GPS manufacturer for using perhaps the most basic filesystem in order to maintain compatibility with MS's own OS (want to use something patent free? Too bad the Ext drivers won't work in Vista due to changes by MS). We have the DMCA which won't let you hardly reverse engineer anything even for non-commercial use, and we have a government that still could require you to use proprietary technologies to do things like file tax returns.
Re:Serves you right! (Score:3, Insightful)
Theres a big difference between MS and Google.
No - there really isn't - not in a fundamental sense.
Both companies make voluntary deals with everyone involved, to mutual advantage. Both companies make products that people like and want, and people are willing and glad to pay for them. Both companies provide technologies that help their customers make a lot of money, using them.
As long as companies are dealing with everyone voluntarily, the government should not be involved. Only when a business violates an invidual's rights through force or fraud should the government get involved.
Anti-trust is based on the altruist idea that the more successful you are - (aka "selfish") - the more evil you are, and the evil successful need to be brought down to favor the less successful, or failures. This also happens to be the moral underpinning for bailouts, welfare, "soak the rich", government healthcare, and many more.
Oh yeah, it's also a Christian ideal.
Re:Anti-trust punishes success (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer that to what we've seen lately, which is rewarding companies for failures of sufficient global impact.
Re:Need Some info.. (Score:2, Insightful)
They are doing this because:
If you want a book with questionable copyright status, YOU HAVE TO GO TO GOOGLE, no one but google has the power to deal with that type of book. How would this sound: You want a OS, you HAVE to go to Microsoft. You want a PC, you HAVE to go to Dell. You want to eat, You HAVE to get your food from the Government. You want to sleep, you HAVE to sleep on a bad from Acme.
Re:Serves you right! (Score:1, Insightful)
well I did file tax returns by using Fedora (T..tax online version)... but kinda agree with other claims ... ... and would love to get that $50 check from my local , but one can always dream ...
why not comcast and AT&T? (Score:4, Insightful)
they're monopolies also.
Re:Finally, some hope Mt Pot Meet Mr Kettle (Score:1, Insightful)
"along with clauses allowing for non-commercial use and distribution of any book, movie, program, etc. which is not being sold to the general public or is not available in the USA."
That from a nation whose major corporations ideas of copyright are being forced upon the rest of the world. Maybe there is a reason some works are not available in the USA.
Maybe as the author I didn't like the terms offered so you can just steal my work because your American?
Re:Finally, some hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the "monopoly" in question is called "copyright". If companies are worried about the monopoly of orphan works, the answer is easy. Orphan works should fall into the public domain.
What kind of idiots in the DOJ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe that anyone in the DOJ is stupid enough to believe that Google taking the initiative to provide orphaned works to the public constitutes some sort of monopoly. The original work must still exist somewhere in print. It's not like they're engaging in Fahrenheit 451-style tactics to control all knowledge. Furthermore, making a settlement to get rid of a nuissance lawsuit doesn't represent an admission of wrongdoing. It's not like the idea of mass book scanning and indexing was an original idea of Google's that they have some exclusivity over. If anyone want's to engage in their own mission to do so they can. In fact there were academic projects to do just that before Google came along with their idea of how to do things. Google worked with them to help develop better technology to improve the throughput over existing scanner systems. The whole history of the books project [google.com] is available for anyone to peruse if they are interested. I don't see how anyone can construe the actions described therein as monopolistic.
The only thing that's questionable is how far they're stretching the fair use principle in what they're doing. A strict interpretation of the law suggests that any complete duplication of a protected work constitutes infringement even if it is kept in private with only excerpts revealed to the public. Considering that the complaint centers around orphaned works still under copyright but with no one making a claim to them it isn't clear who the potentially damaged party is in this case. If someone wanted to acquire an orphaned work in its original form how would they do it? Resale of existing copies doesn't deprive the copyright holder of any income. If the publishing industry is wringing their hands over the inability to contact the copyright holder then they obviously can't be producing new copies of these works. So where is the damage?
What's wrong is that it is saddeningly easy for MS to use it's network of lobbyists to buy their own special government services when they need them. What you have is a publishing industry that is scared of being obsoleted like the buggy whip manufacturers. MS loves to take advantage of organizations like this and use them to do their bidding such as how they used SCO to spread FUD on the use of Linux. A previous poster had it right when they surmised that this is payback for Google's interference in the attempted Yahoo buyout.
Re:Serves you right! (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're saying that companies must operate under the same principles as public schools where the stupidest kid sets the pace for everyone else? That's brilliant. I was under the impression that the whole notion of antitrust was participating in anti-competitive behaviors not out-competing others.
What has Google done to prevent Yahoo, Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter to secure a similar agreement with copyright holders of books so that they can create a competitor product? Shall we next go after Toyota because more people want their products than they do GM or Chrysler?
Antitrust laws were created to protect society from organizations such as AT&T, Clear Channel, Intel, Microsoft, etc. that do/did not compete on the merit of their products but on their ability to squeeze out or prevent competition from ever starting by engaging in aggressive and generally unethical practices. Such companies do not focus on providing maximum societal benefit through their products and services but on maximizing their bottom line by any means possible usually to the detriment of society.
Can you provide a ration argument for how Google by enabling the dissemination of knowledge once locked in less accessible, much more difficult to search printed media is causing societal detriment? Business paradigm shifts do not count as a society detriment. Society is none-the-worse for having lost the need for horse drawn lauries roaming cities emptying out privies, telegraph operators, milkmen, or the local blacksmith.
Re:Finally, some hope Mt Pot Meet Mr Kettle (Score:3, Insightful)
Anti-Trust is also for those too big to fail (Score:2, Insightful)