DOJ Hits Apple With Antitrust Lawsuit Over App Monopoly

The US Department of Justice has teamed up with 15 states to file an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit claims that the company has created a monopoly with their devices that squeeze out competitors and make it harder for independent developers to get their apps in the app store. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The US Department of Justice has teamed up with 15 states to file an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit claims that the company's created a monopoly. Really? Like this is new business. With their devices that squeeze out competitors, they make it harder for independent developers to get their apps on an app store. Again, how many times have you done this story, that you have done this story just on your segments? How many times have you and I done this story? We've been talking about this for years, right? So this is the new development.

It really is. And look, okay, it's a good thing that they're finally taking this on. But let's compare it to what's happening in Europe. Okay. In Europe, a couple months ago, maybe even just a full month ago at this point, they passed this new law that outright calls out these social media companies and says, you essentially have to be broken up because of what you're doing. So less than a month after passing that, they're already enforcing it. And they're saying, look, Apple, you gotta pay up $2 billion for violating this law we just passed a couple days ago. Pay up right here. And in the US we're, all right, well, I guess we'll file a lawsuit and we'll see what happens.

You know what's so interesting about this? You have all of these so-called progressives pushing the progressive agenda. The guy in charge of Google, oh my God, every day it's some new push that he does. And we think, oh, he's not capable of breaking the law because of what he's saying in public. Same way with Facebook, with Zuckerberg, same place, Instagram. Oh this is, you know, this is okay because they're pushing a progressive agenda. You know, what they're doing is the same thing that's been done for generations. It's antitrust, it's monopoly, but we don't wanna call it that. We don't wanna call it that. The information is overwhelming in this case. Would you agree?

Oh, absolutely. You have concrete evidence that Apple is squeezing out these competitors, making them jump through hoops, charging them exorbitant fees just to get this, I developed a little game, you know, and I want to get it on the app store.

You don't have a chance of getting your game on do you?

Right.

Unless, unless you do what?

Well, you've gotta either pay up big bucks, or most likely you have to sell yourself to Apple. So then Apple owns you and then your app can go, but you get nothing from it.

We see this in the music industry. Used to have, and it probably still goes on, if you were an emerging entertainer, you could not get into the business unless you paid money. It was either Nashville, Detroit, New York, LA, you had to pay to play. That's what these sites are doing. They've learned, we had years and years of that history going on in the music industry. They're doing the same thing here.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's a lot like the old days of Hollywood where they owned the movie studios, they owned the actors and they own the movie theaters. So you could only see this actor in this movie at this theater owned by MGM or whoever it was. It is exactly the same with these apps.

It's called lateral systems.

Exactly.

Lateral systems, own the thing that might help this kid launch his new app, own it, and don't let him do it unless he pays homage to us. Homage means you pay us big money or we buy you out and you disappear. Right?

Yeah.

Farron, thanks for joining me.

Thank you.

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