After a lengthy confirmation process, Makan Delrahim has been confirmed by the Senate to serve as the next U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. While President Donald Trump originally announced Delrahim’s nomination back on March 27, 2017, the confirmation process has been slowed due to paperwork issues and opposition by some lawmakers in Washington, D.C. over the past few months.
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Is Antitrust Law a Viable Substitute for Net Neutrality?
In April 2017, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a Notice of Proposed Order, Restoring Internet Freedom, seeking to reverse the FCC’s previous adoption of “net neutrality” principles in its March 2015 Open Internet Order. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (“ISPs”) should treat all data equally, regardless of source.
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Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Joint Conduct
Over the past few years, sophisticated pricing algorithms and artificial intelligence have attracted the attention of antitrust and competition enforcers. These new technologies interpret and respond to market conditions with far more precision, agility, and consistency than their human counterparts. As a result, they may require practitioners to develop new ways of thinking about joint conduct such as price-fixing conspiracies. But to what extent do these innovations really alter traditional antitrust analysis under Section 1 of the Sherman Act? In a recent article published in Competition Policy International’s Antitrust Chronicle, we analyze existing legal doctrines and principles to see if they can offer antitrust and competition practitioners any guidance before we jump into this “brave new world.”
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A Quick Take on Justice Scalia’s Legacy on Antitrust Law
The late Justice Antonin Scalia was not the biggest fan of antitrust law. As he famously quipped during his Senate confirmation hearing: “In law school, I never understood [antitrust law]. I later found out, in reading the writings of those who now do understand it, that I should not have understood it because it did not make any sense then.”
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Pricing Algorithms and the Digital “Smoke-Filled Room”
On December 3, 2015, the DOJ unsealed an indictment against Daniel William Aston and his company, Trod Ltd. (doing business as Buy 4 Less, Buy For Less, and Buy-For-Less-Online), for conspiring with third-party sellers to fix the prices of posters sold online via Amazon Marketplace. According to the indictment, Aston and his co-conspirators agreed to adopt specific pricing algorithms to coordinate changes in their respective prices. The DOJ claimed that because of this conduct, shoppers faced the same prices for the same products, regardless of what seller they chose.
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