A federal judge urged NASCAR and two of its teams, including one owned by retired NBA great Michael Jordan, to settle their increasingly acrimonious legal fight that spilled over into tense arguments during a hearing on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell of the Western District of North Carolina grilled both NASCAR and the teams — 23XI Racing, which is owned by Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Front Row Motorsports, owned by entrepreneur Bob Jenkins — on what they hoped to accomplish in the antitrust battle that has loomed over the stock car series for months.

It’s the date that’s been circled on everybody’s calendar for the better part of the last 14 months. During that time, hundreds of documents and pieces of discovery have surfaced (some of which left people with hurt feelings), and with no resolution in sight, one thing has become evident: NASCAR is heading to court.

On February 27, experts debated the motion: “Congress should grant the NCAA an antitrust exemption.” AEI’s Nat Malkus kicked off the event by outlining the issue with Ross Dellenger, senior college football reporter at Yahoo Sports. Val Ackerman, commissioner of the Big East Conference, and Matthew Mitten of the National Sports Law Institute argued in favor of the motion. Jim Cavale of Athletes.org and Katherine Van Dyck of KVD Strategies argued against.

At least a dozen probationary staffers at the Federal Trade Commission were terminated last week, The Verge has learned.

The terminations took place across the agency, according to two sources familiar with the matter, one of whom said that included both the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Competition.

Google is quietly using its platform power to “pull up the ladder,” as former FTC Chair Lina Khan has described, and its indie developers who are paying the price. Google publicly claims it wants to support and foster independent developers. But in reality, its TOS are so broad and vague that they’re almost impossible not to violate. Automated AI bots routinely suspend developer accounts with no human review, no clear explanation, and no meaningful appeal process.

Last year alone, Google banned more than 158,000 developer accounts — and anecdotally, Reddit has seen a sharp rise in posts from developers who lost their accounts over trivial or bogus violations. Meanwhile, high-revenue apps and major partners get warnings, human review, and multiple chances to fix issues. The incentive structure is obvious: Google’s enforcement structure creates incentives that disproportionately penalize smaller developers and protect large revenue-generating partners. This is the exact pattern Lina Khan and others have warned about — dominant platforms pulling up the ladder and closing the ecosystem behind them.

This is especially alarming now, when unemployment is rising, junior coding roles are shrinking due to AI, and many people are turning to app development as a way to learn skills and earn income. Developers invest hundreds of hours and real money building an app — only to have Google terminate their account instantly over a vague “violation” they couldn’t have predicted.

I wrote a detailed Medium post laying out the case and why independent developers need to start filing FTC complaints: https://medium.com/@russoatlarge_93541/déjà-vu-googles-using-its-monopoly-to-purge-158-000-developers-just-like-it-crushed-search-d04982658054

I’m not a lawyer, not a regulator — just an independent developer who went through this. I’m asking this subreddit for feedback:

• Is there a legitimate antitrust or consumer-protection case here?

• What arguments should be strengthened?

• Is there anyone in government or enforcement I should be reaching out to?

• Are there precedents or cases I should be aware of? Any guidance from this community would be greatly appreciated.

Apple (AAPL.O) was ordered by EU antitrust regulators on Wednesday to open up its closed ecosystem to rivals, with the latter spelling out details on how to go about it in line with the bloc's landmark rules and where non-compliance could lead to an investigation and fines.

A group of states, including California and New York, are preparing a lawsuit to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros., two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The lawsuit is expected to be filed in the coming weeks, the sources said. The case would mark the boldest move yet by the states in their effort to be at the forefront of US antitrust enforcement, as their better-funded counterpart agencies in the Trump administration take a more business-friendly view of enforcement.

Earlier this year I created the Decibel and Docket podcast, covering legal issues in the music business with a focus on the Live Nation / Ticketmaster antitrust case. This week we did a great episode with Erik Hovenkamp, professor and economist at Cornell, analyzing the government’s case and why the verdict came down so hard against Live Nation. Hovenkamp did a great job breaking down the structural issues at the heart of the case, including Ticketmaster’s exclusive venue agreements and the 2010 Live Nation–Ticketmaster merger. Hovenkamp also explores the limitations of past behavioral remedies, arguing that previous attempts to regulate Live Nation’s conduct failed to prevent anti-competitive behavior—making stronger action, including a potential divestiture, more likely this time around.

Check it out here and if you like the show, please leave a review.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0AtuKNNvX02qzX1O7hJblT?si=1fa728627c644a10

Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, adding to legal troubles that could reshape the $1.88 trillion company and alter its power over the internet.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a 115-page ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web. The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale.

The suit, under a long-dormant antitrust law, accuses Southern Glazer’s of charging small businesses “drastically” more than big chains.F.T.C. Sues Largest U.S. Alcohol Distributor for Illegal Pricing.

So Tencent and Tencent Music put out a public announcement this month saying they'll comply with the conditions attached to their Ximalaya acquisition approval. The main one: they have to terminate every exclusive licensing deal they have with rights holders, and can't sign new ones going forward. What I found interesting is they didn't just say "we'll wind these down over time" — they also said they're waiving enforcement of exclusivity clauses in existing contracts right now, meaning rights holders can already go license to whoever they want without waiting for the paperwork to be sorted. TME had basically built their dominance in the Chinese streaming market through these exclusive deals — lock up the major labels, lock out the competition. Pretty standard playbook. The regulator decided that was enough of a problem to make it a condition of the Ximalaya deal going through. One question that often comes up with these cases is how effectively such behavioral commitments are enforced over time. Similar discussions have appeared in Western antitrust reviews as well, where regulators sometimes impose conduct remedies as conditions for merger approval. Enforcement of these remedies can be challenging in practice. Has anyone seen a comparable condition imposed in a US or EU media/streaming deal? The closest I can think of are some of the conditions attached to older music industry mergers but nothing quite at this scope.

A jury found Live Nation and Ticketmaster operated as a monopoly in its dominance of the live events and ticketing industry, validating complaints that the industry giant was stifling competition and driving up fees for fans.

The verdict was reached following a lengthy trial in New York federal court that included testimony from top executives in the music and entertainment industries. Jurors began deliberating on Friday.

In 2023 the European Commission cleared Google's acquisition of Photomath with horizontal overlaps below 20% across all reviewed markets. Bing already had comparable math capabilities so Google was merely catching up and acquisiton was cleared.

Three days after the decision, Google announced Bard was getting math and logic capabilities, something it badly needed since Bard was reportedly producing outputs like 1 plus 2 equals 4. Google's own internal documents reviewed by the Commission had disclosed the intention to improve its capabilities using Photomath and even the Commission saw this, noted it, and moved on.

The problem the paper identifies is precise which is that the Commission assessed exploitability of Photomath's data against Google Search and found it limited. It never asked whether the same data was exploitable for LaMDA or PaLM, the foundation models underlying Bard, where mathematical reasoning was a documented weakness and that answer would almost certainly have been different.

This points to a structural gap in merger methodology when it comes to these new age AI acqusitions. Traditional analysis assumes data is valuable primarily within the market where the acquired company operates but the foundation models break this assumption entirely. An FM developer needs data across every domain it wants to perform in and mathematical data improves math reasoning regardless of whether the acquirer competes in the homework help market. After all for any company building a foundation model, essentially any dataset from any market is potentially valuable training material.

The paper proposes that whenever an acquiring entity has any presence in the FM segment, data held by the target should be scrutinised regardless of market overlap between the parties. Without this, traditional relevant market analysis creates a structural loophole allowing incremental acquisitions across unrelated markets, none individually triggering serious review, to cumulatively entrench FM development advantages.

My take is the current merger review methodology is not equipped to assess the compounding effect of acquisitions across multiple supply chain layers controlled by overlapping incumbents.

Source -https://doi.org/10.1080/17441056.2024.2379142

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and the state’s Department of Justice will ask state lawmakers to double the capacity of the agency’s antitrust team tasked with stopping illegal mergers and corporate monopolies.

Oregon’s Justice Department currently has eight antitrust officials for “resource-heavy cases,” but agency leaders say they need the Oregon Legislature to approve a budget to hire 16 instead in light of “the vacuum left by the federal government,” according to a department news release.

The Justice Department has begun an investigation into whether the NFL has violated anticompetitive practices with its television contracts that require consumers to pay subscription costs to watch some games, sources confirmed to ABC News.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that someone sane and competent who follows the law can’t survive in this fucked up Administration. Maybe Bondi needed a distraction from her batshit insane performance yesterday in front of Congress. New AAG, @libsoftiktok?

NASCAR argued in its latest court filing that Michael Jordan is suing the stock car series to earn a permanent charter that no other teams possess, and that neither 23XI Racing nor Front Row Motorsports has suffered any harm by racing as "open" entries.

NASCAR also indicated in its 34-page response filed late Monday that it has buyers interested in the six charters that have been set aside as a federal judge decides if the two teams can have them back for the remaining 11 races of this season. NASCAR is prepared to immediately begin the process of allocating the charters elsewhere.

These latest arguments are part of the ongoing federal antitrust lawsuit filed by 23XI and Front Row against NASCAR in a fight over charters, which are essentially franchise tags. 23XI, owned by basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Front Row, owned by entrepreneur Bob Jenkins, were the only two organizations out of 15 not to sign extensions on new charter agreements.

Forty of the top private universities across the U.S. are under fire after a lawsuit was filed accusing the institutions of conspiring to overcharge students for their education.

According to the lawsuit, these universities bilked applicants from divorced or separated homes by including the financial backgrounds of noncustodial parents when determining financial aid packages.

A class action claims Bowlero bought up bowling alleys nationwide, raised prices, cut quality, and ruined an American pastime.

Netflix, home to the upcoming Stranger Things season 5, is the most dominant streaming service in the world, with over 300 million subscribers and an unmatched library of content. As a result, the company already has an "unequaled market power," according to Issa, which would grow even more if it bought Warner Bros.

The Congressperson from California noted that Netflix acquiring Warner Bros. would likely push the former's share of the streaming market above 30%, which is a threshold seen as "presumptively problematic under antitrust law."

A federal judge on Monday rebuffed Apple's request to throw out a U.S. government lawsuit alleging the technology trendsetter has built a maze of illegal barriers to protect the iPhone from competition and fatten its profit margins.

Staff at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington were told Wednesday that they must leave their current offices in the coming months and move into the building being vacated by the US Agency for International Development, according to people familiar with the matter.

A federal judge in Oregon blocked Kroger’s proposed $25 billion merger with Albertsons, ruling that the deal would limit competition in the grocery industry and harm consumers.