<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">The article is so vague, there's something in it for everyone. The overall thrust is definitely about unilateral behavior abusing a dominant market position.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I'm not sure what gave the author the idea that the panelists were talking about mergers weakening privacy protections. The article goes on to discuss the EU's fining of Facebook for making misleading statements to the EU Competition authorities during their review of the WhatsApp acquisition (FB said they wouldn't mingle FB user data and WA user data, but they did; however the concern seems to have been that the combined data store might have given FB too much market power, but FB said it was told that this was not material to their review. In a separate matter, the EU is apparently considering whether FB's changes to WA's privacy policy in 2016 raise any legal concerns.)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Here's a quote from an earlier interview with Mundt from the Bundeskartellamt website, touching on the same subject. I haven't been able to find any transcripts or more detailed reports of Mundt's speech at the Oxford Conference. From what little I can find, it appears Mundt was talking about unilateral behavior resulting in antitrust violations, rather than merger antitrust analysis or horizontal (oligopoly/cartel) behavior. This dovetails with Paul Keating's point -- Mundt is talking about abuse of a dominant position (so these particular concerns would be limited to the dominant industry players). As you can see below, Mundt has voiced concerns that " the use of illegal terms and conditions may constitute an abuse, in particular, if the acceptance of these illegal terms follows from the dominant position." As such, he seems to be taking a broad view of what constitutes "antitrust harm".</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><p style="font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box;font-size:12.0084px;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><strong style="margin:0px;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box;font-size:12.0084px">The Antitrust Source: </strong>The Federal Cartel Office recently announced that it’s initiating an antitrust investigation, a competition law investigation of Facebook, for its data collection practices. And the investigation suggests that your agency believes that antitrust competition law may have a role to play in protecting the privacy of consumers. I just want to make sure I understand that correctly. What is the connection that you see between competition law and consumer protection law in this regard?</p><p style="font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box;font-size:12.0084px;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><strong style="margin:0px;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box;font-size:12.0084px"><span lang="de" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box;font-size:12.0084px">Andreas Mundt:</span></strong> It’s a pending case and therefore we can just share some initial thoughts on it. We look at whether Facebook has abused its possibly dominant position in the market for social networks with its specific terms of service on the use of user data. We have indications that Facebook’s conditions of use violate German data protection rules. Of course, not every law infringement by a dominant company is also relevant under competition law. But we have a ruling by the Federal Court of Justice that there can be a link between the violation of the law on general terms and conditions and the assessment of exploitative abuse in the case of a dominant company. According to this decision, the use of illegal terms and conditions may constitute an abuse, in particular, if the acceptance of these illegal terms follows from the dominant position. So what we have to do in this case is to take a very close look at whether there is a link between a data protection infringement on the one hand and the abuse of market power of a dominant firm on the other. We are at a very early stage. For the time being we will investigate the relevant product market to see if Facebook is dominant here or not, and then we will look at the possible link between the possible dominance and the violation of data protection rules. By the way, it’s an administrative proceeding so there are no fines at stake, of course. And this is a case where we will cooperate very closely with the European Commission, which we already did before we initiated the proceeding. We will work closely with the national competition agencies in Europe and of course with the data protection agencies in Germany, and maybe in other countries.</p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box"><font color="#333333" face="Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12.0084px"><a href="http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Interviews/EN/the%20antitrust%20source%20-%20Interview_with_Andreas_Mundt.html">http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Interviews/EN/the%20antitrust%20source%20-%20Interview_with_Andreas_Mundt.html</a></span></font><br></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box">Here is a link to an article on the Oxford conference panel (unfortunately, no quotes or transcript): <a href="https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-05-26-online-markets-and-offline-welfare-effects-internet-competition-society-and">https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-05-26-online-markets-and-offline-welfare-effects-internet-competition-society-and</a></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box"><br></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;box-sizing:border-box">Greg</p></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 6:01 AM, Paul Keating <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:paul@law.es" target="_blank">paul@law.es</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div>They would have to show economic damage flowing from an excess of market control. Not likely unless you are the size of google. <br><br>Sincerely,<div>Paul Keating, Esq.</div></div><div><div class="h5"><div><br>On Jun 6, 2017, at 11:36 AM, Volker Greimann <<a href="mailto:vgreimann@key-systems.net" target="_blank">vgreimann@key-systems.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
<p>I am not sure you read the same article I did, but to me it
suggested the exact opposite (emphasis added):</p>
<p>"Mundt’s words may have sounded mundane, but his implication was
anything but: the world’s foremost antitrust regulators were
publicly discussing
<i><b> whether they should intervene if a transaction weakens
consumer privacy protections</b></i>, a pervasive concern in
the era of big data."</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Volker<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="m_5300618644688190619moz-cite-prefix">Am 05.06.2017 um 16:49 schrieb jonathan
matkowsky:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:small">Interesting
read. Thanks for sharing. This article would be a reason to
keep Whois publicly available without restriction. The kind of
private data mining analysis discussed in the article is
pretty much irrelevant though to the issues we are dealing
with.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all">
<div>
<div class="m_5300618644688190619gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">Jonathan Matkowsky</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all">
<div>
<div class="m_5300618644688190619gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 5:35 PM,
Carlton Samuels <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com" target="_blank">carlton.samuels@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>..its a
competition issue, says the head of the German
antitrust agency.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><font face="comic sans ms, sans-serif"><a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/06/ntitrust-watchdogs-eye-big-techs-monopoly-data/" target="_blank">https://www.wired.com/2017/06/<wbr>ntitrust-watchdogs-eye-big-tec<wbr>hs-monopoly-data/</a></font><br>
</div>
<div><font face="comic sans ms, sans-serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="comic sans ms, sans-serif">-Carlton</font></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div class="m_5300618644688190619m_-3071681394023212515gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><br>
==============================<br>
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