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posted by martyb on Monday March 16 2020, @07:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-must-be-a-European-thing dept.

Apple fined a record $1.2 billion by French antitrust authorities

French antitrust authorities ordered Apple on Monday to pay a 1.1 billion euro ($1.23 billion) fine for anti-competitive behavior.

The French competition authority said the iPhone-maker was guilty of creating cartels within its distribution network and abusing the economic dependence of its outside resellers.

Two of Apple's wholesalers were also fined for agreeing on prices: Tech Data and Ingram Micro received fines of 76.1 million euros and 62.9 million euros respectively. Both companies were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

The French authority said this penalty — totaling 1.24 billion euros — was the largest ever handed down in one case.

"Apple and its two wholesalers agreed not to compete and prevent distributors from competing with each other, thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products," said Isabelle de Silva, president of the French Competition Authority.

[ . . . ] Monday's announcement is the second fine that French authorities have imposed on Apple in two months. The regulators hit Apple with a 25 million euro fine in February over its software updates, which were concluded to have slowed down older iPhones.

Maybe they should have kept the headphone jack.


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  • (Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @08:09PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @08:09PM (#971994)

    That's also bogus. A person has a right to buy an Apple product no matter where he resides. State interference in commerce is fascist, or is it communist? Eh, whatever, they're both the same, dictatorship.

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  • (Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Monday March 16 2020, @09:39PM (1 child)

    by gtomorrow (2230) on Monday March 16 2020, @09:39PM (#972020)

    You're absolutely right. It's better to just allow corporations to implicitly dictate law. Maybe we should just move on to explicitly instead of all this hemming and hawwing.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:11AM (#972084)

      It's better to just allow corporations to implicitly dictate law.

      That already happens when their puppets are reelected to 40 year careers in "public service".

      I've already stated, the obvious solution is compulsory licensing of all of Apple's patents and copyrights. These fines are really stupid and ineffective, not meant to correct the problem. It is showboating to win votes and keep the game running.

  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:18AM

    by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:18AM (#972096) Journal

    That's also bogus. A person has a right to buy an Apple product no matter where he resides. State interference in commerce is fascist, or is it communist? Eh, whatever, they're both the same, dictatorship.

    That's also bogus. A person has a right to buy cocaine or heroin no matter where he resides. State interference in commerce is fascist, or is it communist? Eh, whatever, they're both the same, dictatorship.

    Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing, but be careful where that libertarian thinking takes you.

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:37PM (#972154)

    I think you have that reversed. It is legal to buy Apple products. Apple is acting fascist.