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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

The lack of strategic thinking here is staggering. These sort of shenanigans violate antitrust laws https://twitter.com/stacyfmitchell/status/125340839841607270... and these days more and more AGs at different levels look at FAANG (minus Netflix) with antitrust in their mind. It's just not worth fueling the fire.

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This is not the first time Amazon is caught doing this. I don't believe they suffered any substantial consequences so far. They just continue ripping off products of businesses that are their partners, but Amazon as a sales channel is so vital to companies that I'm not sure even companies getting so blatantly copied are taking their products off the Amazon marketplace. This goes to show the stranglehold Amazon has on online distribution, and why it is appropriate to label it a monopoly in the light of such typically monopolistic practices and abuses. From what I could see Amazon is currently estimated as having a market share of about 50% of all ecommerce in the US.

https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...

Thanks for sharing this! Just the executive summary and core findings, readable in a few minutes, pack quite a punch. And they don't shy from criticizing other parts of government for failing to conduct proper pre-merger checks, for example. The recommendations do seem to stop short of asking for a breakup of the existing monopolies, instead seeming content to make their further growth more difficult, which may be far from sufficient to address the issue at hand.

To be fair, it is very hard for the government to successfully prosecute an anti-trust case, because of jurisprudence by Robert Bork (yes, that Bork of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre infamy and failed Supreme Court nomination) that essentially gutted antitrust law in a shameless example of judicial activism in opposition to the plain letter of the statutes:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/robert-bork...

(that's a right-wing publication, by the way, not one that's ideologically predisposed against Bork).

Trouble is - I don't know what sort of consequences Amazon would find 'substantial' at this point. All the FAANGs have enough cash to shrug off billions of dollars in fines if they have to.

The solution to these problems is spinning off business units. That's why people say "break up big tech" and not "fine big tech."

Exactly which antitrust law does it violate? I read through the Twitter thread linked, it doesn't say.

It's HN. Everything is "antitrust" if it involves a slightly large company, even when it isn't.

Realistically actions like this can cost some political support, and in aggregate that can make a difference. But Amazon broke no laws here.

...

Your dismissive comment shows you know nothing about these matters and while my comment was a quick one as I presumed everyone is aware of these facts, let me show you a few more qualified bodies/persons who believe Amazon might have violated antitrust laws.

1. The EU Competition Commissioner is already investigating. https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-union-probing-amazon-s...

2. Predatory pricing has long been a concern with Amazon. This is prohibited under the Robinson‑Patman and Sherman Acts. Since Matsushita v. Zenith such cases have been few and far between but https://doi.org/10.1093/jaenfo/jnz006 provides a roadmap on how this could be proven for Amazon.

3. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee antitrust subcommittee issued a report last year. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig... has this "The companies investigated by the Subcommittee—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—have captured control over key channels of distribution and have come to function as gatekeepers. Just a decade into the future, 30% of the world’s gross economic output may lie with these firms, and just a handful of others.

In interviews with Subcommittee staff, numerous businesses described how dominant platforms exploit their gatekeeper power to dictate terms and extract concessions that no one would reasonably consent to in a competitive market."

None of these are about the practice of copying designs of other vendors.

I agree Amazon may have anti-trust issues, but it's not obvious how this is one.

If they have an online seller monopoly position which they might have AND they are using the marketplace data to copy what sells well that's exactly the abuse of a monopoly position which antitrust protects against.

a) Amazon isn't a monopoly.

b) Retailers have been doing this for decades e.g. Walmart and their Great Value brand.

c) Patents and copyrights are the defences that companies like Peak Design need to use.

> c) Patents and copyrights are the defences that companies like Peak Design need to use.

In this case a design patent[1] (which is NOT the same as a normal patent) is the only hope. But that's pretty unlikely to succeed here given how similar the PD version is to older designs.

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/types-patent-applicatio...

Whether Amazon is a monopoly is a question for the DOJ, I feel.

You can't copyright fashion.

> FAANG (minus Netflix)

You could just write FAAG

Not for nothing but because that is close to a slur (and would probably be pronounced the same way), that’s probably not a good choice.

Or GAFA (glasses in Spanish) :)

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