Antitrust law isn't about protecting competing businesses from each other, it's about protecting competition itself on behalf of the public.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Regardless of the industry, antitrust law is meant to benefit consumers - not competitors.
The history of antitrust law enforcement shows that successful antitrust prosecutions have often strengthened and brought vitality to extremely large companies and businesses.
Changing technologies, changing marketplaces, and even changing trends in anti-competitive practices have all presented challenges to antitrust enforcement.
From search and books to online TV and operating systems, antitrust affects our daily digital lives in more ways than we think.
Most Americans don't think about antitrust law when they look at their cable bill, flip channels on TV, or worry about what their favorite website knows about them. But they should.
Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.
If a company is not a monopoly, then the law assumes market competition can restrain the company's actions. No problem. If a monopoly exists, but the monopoly does not engage in acts designed to destroy competition, then we can assume that it earned and is keeping its monopoly the pro-consumer way: by out-innovating its competitors.
Being a 'monopoly' is not illegal, nor is trying to best one's competitors through lower prices, better customer service, greater efficiency, or more rapid innovation.
Everybody agrees that you want competition. But you have to have rules of fair competition if you want to have competitors to enter the market.
Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.