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Originally Posted by avantman42
I thought anti-trust laws concerned themselves with harm (or otherwise) to consumers, rather than competition. Is that not right?
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In the US consumer harm is the yardstick, yes.
That is exactly why Apple was doomed the moment Jobs opened his trap to yap about how Amazon prices would "be the same". Add in the email where he told the BPHs "throw in with us and we'll help you raise prices," and it was open and shut.
And the appeals court pointed out quite correctly that screwing consumers (and authors) is not acceptable, regardless of what it does to competition. Which went down, anyway. Apple apologists conveniently forget the loss of indue ebookstores, the neutering of Kobo and Sony, the loss of hardware-only ereader vendors. Competition *was* harmed.
But it was consumer harm that sealed the case.