Re: SkyRiver Files Antitrust Suit Against OCLC

On Thu, 29 Jul 2010, Susan McHenry wrote:

> Thank you Brian for reminding all of us that this, personal opinions 
> aside, is whether OCLC violated Antitrust Laws.

  In the words of Isabel Paterson "As freak legislation, the antitrust laws 
stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid."

  Wikipedia (Monopolization):  "Under long-established precedent, the 
offense of monopolization under Section 2 [of the Sherman Antitrust Act] 
has two elements. First, that the defendant possesses monopoly power in a 
properly-defined market[*] and second that the defendant obtained or 
maintained that power through conduct deemed unlawfully exclusionary. The 
mere fact that conduct disadvantages rivals does not, without more, 
constitute the sort of exclusionary conduct that satisfies this second 
element. Instead, such conduct must exclude rivals on some basis other 
than efficiency [e.g predatory pricing]."

  Wikipedia (Antitrust): "Alan Greenspan [yeah, I know ...] argues that the 
very existence of antitrust laws discourages businessmen [!] from some 
activities that might be socially useful out of fear that their business 
[!] actions will be determined illegal and dismantled by government.  In 
his essay entitled Antitrust, he says: 'No one will ever know what new 
products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into 
existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can 
ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by 
inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living 
lower than would otherwise have been possible.'

  "Those, like Greenspan, who oppose antitrust tend not to support 
competition as an end in itself but for its results --low prices.  As long 
as a monopoly is not a coercive monopoly where a firm is securely 
insulated from potential competition, it is argued that the firm must keep 
prices low in order to discourage competition from arising.  Hence, legal 
action is uncalled for, and wrongly harms the firm and consumer."

[* Is a non-profit entity an integral part of a profit-motivated "properly 
defined market" and can it be considered to have economic rivals, or are 
the for-profit copy-cats simply taking an independent economic risk at 
turning a non-profit venture (e.g. soldiering or libraries) into a 
for-profit enterprise?  How would any non-profit "public" organization 
survive such arguments as in this suit if not given special protection?]

jgm
                                             John G. Marr
                                             Cataloger
                                             CDS, UL
                                             Univ. of New Mexico
                                             Albuquerque, NM 87131
                                             jmarr_at_unm.edu
                                             jmarr_at_flash.net


     **There are only 2 kinds of thinking: "out of the box" and "outside 
the box."

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