The Corner Newsletter: October 29, 2020
Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we announce the publication of Sally Hubbard’s new book, Monopolies Suck, and we showcase three groundbreaking articles by the Center for Journalism & Liberty analyzing the crisis of the news industry in America and how to address it.
To read previous editions of The Corner, click here.
Sally Hubbard Publishes“Monopolies Suck: 7 Ways Big Corporations Rule Your Life and How to Take Back Control”
Open Markets Institute is excited to announce that Sally Hubbard, our director of enforcement strategy, on Tuesday released her first book, “Monopolies Suck: The 7 Ways Big Corporations Rule Your Life and How to Take Back Control.” The book was published by Simon & Schuster. It is the easy-to-read guide that citizens need to quickly learn how monopolists harm their economic and political well-being, and what we can do to fight back.
In the book, Hubbard provides a savvy and candid overview of how corporate concentration makes our lives harder — from jacking up prices for lifesaving medicines, to causing income to stagnate, to imperiling the American dream, to fueling inequality, and even weakening our food systems. Only by dismantling monopoly power can we begin to create real change.
Hubbard is a former antitrust enforcer for New York’s attorney general, has testified at multiple Congressional antitrust hearings and was cited throughout the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee’s recent 450-page report on digital platforms.
“This is an outstanding and important read, and the kind of book you can give to a furious, puzzled friend to help them put the picture together — and to launch them on a lifetime of advocacy for better, more pluralistic world,” said Cory Doctorow, author, activist, and entrepreneur.
“In this important book, Sally Hubbard explains with winning clarity, concision, and humor the many ways monopolies hurt us all — and what citizens can do to combat the hydra-headed menace of concentrated corporate power,” said Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.
“The creative community is paying a steep price in monopolized America, with millions of artists struggling to make a living under rules that prioritize Big Tech profits. Sally Hubbard lays out the case for how we fight back — and why we must,” said Don Henley, musician, songwriter, producer, and founding member of The Eagles.
Order a copy of “Monopolies Suck” here.
CJL Shows How to Defend America’s Free Press From Monopolists
In a special issue of the Washington Monthly, the Center for Journalism & Liberty, a program within the Open Markets Institute, published three groundbreaking pieces this week on how monopoly threatens the future of America’s free press, and how to restructure this entire marketplace to ensure that Americans can count on a truly independent and robustly funded news media.
In “Starving the News,” Open Markets Policy Director Phillip Longman shows how illegal monopolization of digital advertising markets by Google and Facebook has cut off the flow of resources needed to sustain a free press. Longman lays out a three-part plan for fixing the problem through the use of antitrust enforcement, prohibitions against discrimination by digital platforms, and bans on the trading of personal data by third parties.
CJL fellow Nikki Usher wrote a groundbreaking story titled “HowFacebook and Google Buy Off the Press.” Usher shows how the two corporate giants have become the two largest sources of “philanthropic” grants to media organizations, doling out a total of more than $700 million. She then describes some of the harms caused by this corporate funding of the news. A longer version of Usher’s piece can be found here.
In “The Coming Era of ‘Civic News,’” Steven Waldman, president and cofounder of Report for America, lays out a plan for revitalizing local journalism through the use of a refundable tax credit. The article builds on work that Waldman did for the CJL on new business models for journalism, a discussion of which can be found here.
CJL and Open Markets also contributed to another article in the special issue:
In “Big Tech Comes for Podcasts,” Grace Gedye shows how the podcast industry is danger of being taken over by monopolistic platforms that will starve content creators of revenue and impede diversity and competition unless antitrust laws are vigorously enforced. The article quotes Open Markets Reporter and Policy Analyst Daniel Hanley, who was an important source for the article.
🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
The Department of Justice filed a historic antitrust lawsuit against search giant Google on Oct. 20. The lawsuit demonstrates how Google used a series of anti-competitive practices and restrictive contracts with manufacturers to entrench its monopoly power in search and digital advertising. The case, which is the first anti-monopoly lawsuit by the DOJ against a tech corporation since the Microsoft case in 1998, builds on the landmark House antitrust subcommittee report released earlier this month. (Wall Street Journal)
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation held a hearing on Wednesday on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. At the hearing, senators discussed how the statute should be modified to hold Big Tech corporations such as Google and Facebook accountable for the content published on their platforms. Lawmakers focused on the arbitrary nature of the platforms’ enforcement polices regarding content regulation. (CNN)
An online trade advertising group submitted an antitrust complaint to the French Competition Authority about Apple’s new privacy requirements for its iOS platform. The trade group says that Apple’s new rules stifle competition and push app developers to adopt a subscription payment model — from which Apple takes a 30% cut. (Financial Times)
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
Pro Market published the preface from Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty from All Masters. In the excerpt, titled “The Monopolists and the Pandemic,” Lynn details how the looting of America’s industrial systems made the COVID-19 pandemic far more destructive and dangerous. ProMarket also published an interview with Lynn about his new book and hosted a discussion among Lynn, former FTC Chairman William Kovacic, and European antitrust scholar Cristina Cafarra about the fundamental role of anti-monopoly in protecting individual liberty and democracy.
Beth Baltzan published an article on international trade, “The Modern Agreement of Amity and Commerce: Toward a New Model for Trade Agreements.” through the Open Society Foundation. Baltzan proposes an overhaul of the rules that structure international trade, with the ultimate goal of fostering greater equality, widespread prosperity, and positive relations among participating actors. Baltzan’s proposals include improved labor and environmental standards, the sovereign right to regulate corporations, and rules to dramatically increase the transparency of corporations’ tax jurisdictions.
Sally Hubbard published a piece in CNN about the Oct. 28 Senate hearing on Section 230. Hubbard focused on the corporations’ dangerous concentration of control over speech. “We must drastically deconcentrate control over speech so that any single company's bias or business model cannot have a sizable impact on public discourse,” said Hubbard.
Barry Lynn, Sandeep Vaheesan, and former Open Markets staffer Lina Khan were highlighted in a report by the American Bar Association as leading proponents of a new approach to anti-monopoly law and the overthrow of the “consumer welfare” philosophy.
Daniel Hanley published an op-ed in Newsweek arguing that the Justice Department should pursue a structural breakup of Google, as the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee’s report recommended.
Barry Lynn was quoted in Tech News World and Ranzware discussing the Oct. 28 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act featuring testimony from the CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter. "Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple pose an extreme and growing threat to our democracy, to our liberties, and to America's system of competitive capitalism," Lynn said.
Barry Lynn was quoted in Killer Robots discussing the potential effects of next week’s election on the antimonopoly movement. “No matter who wins in November, this fight against Google, Facebook, and Amazon, this anti-monopoly movement, has reached a level of maturity,” said Lynn. “There’s almost nothing the folks in Washington could do to stop it.”
Sally Hubbard was mentioned in Stock News discussing how Facebook uses its digital advertising monopoly to suppress competition from independent newspapers and journalism.
Barry Lynn was quoted in Expert Investor explaining some of the positive impacts that breaking up Big Tech monopolies would have on smaller competitors. The House report “is laying the foundation in the United States certainly, for a radically different approach to [antitrust enforcement], which means that we have a lot to build upon,” said Lynn.
Washington Monthly editor Paul Gleason reviewed Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty from All Masters. Gleason discussed Lynn’s ideas about how to use the weapons that conquered old trusts to stop Big Tech today. “Lynn ends his book with a call for renewed civic engagement, with the end goal of bringing about more active antitrust enforcement, ‘structuring and regulating open markets designed to ensure an absolute liberty to share ideas and goods with one another, to protect our democracy through the careful distribution of power.’”
Daniel Hanley and Sally Hubbard’s report, Eyes Everywhere: Amazon’s Surveillance Infrastructure and Revitalizing Worker Power, was mentioned in Reuters, The Market Wire, and KT News Live, in reporting about U.S. senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, questioning Amazon’s employee surveillance methods.
Sandeep Vaheesan’s op-ed in Slate, about the Federal Trade Commission’s ability to ban exclusionary contracts, was mentioned in the Economic Security Project in a discussion about the House antitrust subcommittee report and how Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon threaten our economy and democracy.
Open Markets staff members were quoted by a wide variety of news outlets responding to the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google for abusing its dominance of online search and advertising:
Sally Hubbard was quoted in AP News, The Washington Post, BBC, Vox, and The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Traditionally, Republicans are hesitant to speak of breakups,” she said. “Personally, I’ll be very disappointed if I see a settlement. Google has shown it won’t adhere to any behavioral conditions.”
Barry Lynn was quoted in the Financial Times, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times and Financial Review. “We are looking at a once in a century opportunity to realign what the political economy of the United States should look like,” said Lynn. Lynn was also quoted in Columbia Journalism Review, examining the timing of the lawsuit. “It’s actually a very strong case and a well-written case. So this was anything but a rush job,” Lynn said.
Sandeep Vaheesan was quoted in Bloomberg Law discussing how the lawsuit contradicts the Justice Department’s prior stances on similar cases. Under the Trump administration, the department has continually “pushed for narrower interpretations of monopolization claims,” said Vaheesan. “And this case, the Google case, is now the biggest monopolization case in more than 20 years.”
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📈 VITAL STAT: 14% to 21%
The percentage of Apple’s annual profits that derive from its exclusionary search contracts with Google.
📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
“Labor Organization in Ride Sharing – Unionization or Cartelization?”, by Mark Anderson and Mark Huffman, Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law: Anderson and Huffman analyze the legal position of workers in the sharing economy. They argue that current laws are woefully inadequate, in that they appear to make it illegal for gig workers to organize to protect and pursue their rights as employees.
“Le Renouveau de la democratie en Amerique,” Renaud Lassus, Odile Jacob. In his book, Lassus chronicles democratic decay in contemporary America, but he surveys a multitude of signs demonstrating the continued resiliency of American democracy. He focuses on the vitality of civil society and markets, particularly the surging popular movement to rein in the harmful power of dominant corporations.
BARRY LYNN’S NEW BOOK:
Liberty From All Masters
The New American Autocracy vs. The Will of the People
St. Martins Press will publish Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty From All Masters, on September 29. The book is Barry’s first since Cornered, in 2010. In it, he details how Google, Amazon, and Facebook developed the ability to manipulate the flow of news, information, and business in America, and are transforming this power into autocratic systems of control. Barry then details how Americans over the course of two centuries built a “System of Liberty,” and shows how we Americans can put this system to work again today. Purchase your copy here.
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