Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we share highlights from the Open Markets Institute’s all-day conference on how to protect the free press and democracy from Google and Facebook, we highlight Dan Froomkin‘s Open Markets-funded expose of how Facebook funnels dark money to The New York Times, and we celebrate Open Markets fellow Beth Baltzan joining the Biden administration. 

🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:

• This week, Columbia Law professor and former OMI legal director Lina Khan testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, for confirmation as a commissioner to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Khan’s nomination signals a tougher approach to antitrust enforcement of the tech industry. Khan worked for the Open Markets Institute for four years, and was a fellow of Open Markets for three years. She has also previously worked as counsel to the House antitrust subcommittee and a staffer at the FTC. (The New York Times)
   

• Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed the FTC’s decision in Impax v. FTC. The case involved an “pay-for-delay” scheme in which opioid maker Impax struck a deal with a rival company to postpone the rival’s generic drug from entering the market. (JD Supra)
   

• Associated Newspapers Limited, the owner of the U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in Manhattan federal court this week, alleging that the corporation has harmed online publishers by abusing its market power in online advertising. The lawsuit alleges that Google linked its ad platform and search engine to pressure publishers that don’t sell enough advertising through its marketplace. Publishers that diverted ad traffic away from Google’s platforms were dropped in rankings in Google’s search engines, according to the lawsuit. (WSJ)
   

• The Butler Eagle, a local newspaper in Pittsburgh, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google and Facebook for monopolization of the digital advertising market and threatening the profitability of the newspaper industry. The suit alleges advertising revenue of newspapers dropped by $32.5 billion over the course of 11 years. The suit also notes that from 1990 to 2016, 30,000 jobs in the news industry have disappeared as a result. (Post-Gazette)
   

• Prominent House Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline, wrote a letter calling for the Justice Department and FTC to investigate Live Nation’s acquisition of Ticketmaster in 2010. The letter argues Live Nation has monopolized the ticket sale market and the secondary market. Live Nation is also believed to have engaged in anticompetitive practices to maintain its monopoly. (Deadline)

• Open Markets published a “Code of Conduct,” meant as a public guide for maintaining a harassment-free space for all people of all races, gender identities, sexual orientations, physical abilities, neuro(a)typicalities, socioeconomic statuses, appearances, mental illnesses, and religions. In the statement, the Open Markets team made clear that “One of the things we love most about the antitrust and anti-monopoly movement is the wide range of political, academic, and economic beliefs held within the community. We recognize that such differences can be provocative and difficult to navigate. Respectful disagreements and arguments are productive. Demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, racist, offensive and any other similarly oppressive behaviors are not.”
   
• Open Markets Institute filed an amicus brief in support of stock photography company Dreamstime in its lawsuit against Google for abusing its monopoly in online search. “In dismissing Dreamstime’s meritorious monopolization lawsuit against Google, Judge Alsup blessed Google’s use of its monopoly power in search to squeeze rivals in adjacent markets.”
   
• Brian Callaci published a piece in Forge Organizing about the need for the labor movement to embrace anti-monopoly. “The evidence in recent decades points to concentration as harmful for workers and their unions.”
   
• Barry Lynn was interviewed by Andy Fitch in the Los Angeles Review of Books about his book, book Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People.
   
• Johnny Ryan was quoted in The Irish Times, Vice, CNBC, Decipher, and Independent.ie commenting on tech giants refusing to share how many foreign companies to whom they provide sensitive bidstream data from U.S. users. “’Data about (almost) everyone online, where they are and where they have been, what they are reading, watching, and listening to, is being broadcast to thousands of companies without any control at all, ’Ryan added.”
   
• Sally Hubbard was quoted in Fintech Zoom reiterating that Apple and Amazon are still likely to face legal action even though Google and Facebook have been the focus of current antitrust cases. “The fact that cases were filed against Google and Facebook doesn’t mean Apple and Amazon are off the hook,” Hubbard said.
   
• Nikki Usher spoke to CNN about the power dynamics between journalists and police as a source. "Unfortunately those institutions and people who are always quoted have more power than those who are never quoted — it's all knowns vs. unknowns — and the knowns are known because of their power and appearance in the news." She concluded: "How do you dismantle literally 200 years of beat cop reporting?"
   
• Nikki Usher was interviewed in Poynter about the importance of news outlets’ physical location. “Maybe it would be better to take up storefronts around a city in different neighborhoods, Usher said. Maybe we need taco trucks on regular neighborhood rotations, but with a newsroom inside. ‘We have the tech to do that,’ she said.”
   
• Open Markets was mentioned in Politico for sending a joint letter to White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients urging the U.S. government to strip pharmaceutical companies’ coronavirus vaccine patents in order to ensure that shots are accessible worldwide. “While the U.S. is nearing the end of its own COVID-19 pandemic, the world at large will still need access to this technology for years to come.”

📈 VITAL STAT:

6%

The percentage of employees Amazon strives to get rid of annually. 

📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:

• “Monopolizing Sports Data” (Marc Edelman and John T. Holden, William & Mary Law Review): The authors argue that U.S. professional sports leagues have attempted to gain exclusive ownership rights over valuable sports betting data by asking legislators to mandate that bookmakers exclusively use data sold through the league. The authors analyze whether the leaguewide sale of sports game data should be viewed as a form of collusion among individual sports teams, and whether leaguewide efforts to secure exclusive rights to sell sports game data should constitute a potential form of exclusionary conduct.

Simon & Schuster published Monopolies Suck by Sally Hubbard on Oct. 27. The book is the first by Hubbard, who is Open Markets’ director of enforcement strategy. Hubbard examines how modern monopolies rob Americans of a healthy food supply, the ability to care for the sick, and a habitable planet, because monopolies use business practices that deplete rather than generate. Monopolists also threaten fair elections, our free press, our privacy, and, ultimately, the American Dream, Hubbard shows. In Monopolies Suck, Hubbard reminds readers that antitrust enforcers already have the tools to dismantle corporate power and that decisive action must be taken before monopolies undermine our economy and democracy for generations to come. In Monopolies Suck, Sally provides an important new view of America’s monopoly crisis and of the political and economic harms of concentrated private power. Order your copy here. 

St. Martin’s Press has published Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty from All Masters. 

Liberty is Lynn’s first book since 2010’s Cornered. In his new work, Lynn warns of the threat to liberty and democracy posed by Google, Amazon, and Facebook, because of their ability to manipulate the flows of information and business in America. 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. Lynn also offers a hopeful vision for how we can use anti-monopoly law to rebuild our society and our democracy from the ground up.

Liberty from All Masters has already made waves for its empowering call to restore democracy by resurrecting forgotten tools and institutions. “Very few thinkers in recent years have done more to shift debate in Washington than Barry Lynn. In Liberty from All Masters, he proves himself as a lyrical theorist and a bold interpreter of history. This book is an elegant summoning of a forgotten tradition that can help the nation usher in a new freedom,” says Franklin Foer, author of World Without Mind and national correspondent for The Atlantic.

You can order your copy of Lynn’s book here. 

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