Er, no, we would like to continue suing Facebook, US state AGs tell courts Attorneys General from 46 US states, plus Guam and Washington DC, have appealed a district court’s decision to dismiss their antitrust lawsuit against Facebook that claims the social media giant illegally acquired its competitors to maintain a monopoly. That appeal [PDF] was filed on Wednesday in DC. It comes after federal …
In common law legal systems, laches is a lack of diligence and activity in making a legal claim, or moving forward with legal enforcement of a right, particularly in regard to equity. This means that it is an unreasonable delay that can be viewed as prejudicing the opposing party. Wikipedia
Right. Laches means "you waited too long". It's sort of the civil-law equivalent of the statute of limitations in criminal law.
At least in the US, it seems to be particularly applicable to the part of civil law called "equity", which is the part of the law, as I understand it, where rights are asserted, and so remedies aren't just monetary but can also include things like injunctions (forbidding the defendant from doing something) and decrees (obliging the defendant to do something).
All of these anti-trust Breakups that have occurred throughout (at least) American history have not resulted in the result those who started them expected.
Lets look at 2 prominent examples:
Standard Oil: When Standard Oil was broken up, essentially to limit the earnings of the founder John D. Rockefeller the result was that Rockefeller obtained a controlling interest in virtually all the subsequent companies that resulted from the breakup. Rockefeller's earnings actually increased after the breakup of Standard Oil. In regards to the consumer, the price of oil related products was not significantly effected.
AT&T: While the breakup of AT&T did result in the creation of many regional phone companies (to which AT&T had if not controlling, at least significant interest) The quality of service did not improve much. The advent of Wireless technology and the internet did more for consumer prices. The end result today is that these regional communications companies all collapsed and were acquired by 3 major carriers, AT&T, Verizon (who acquired World Comm) & Century Link. The most significant event that occurred to improve service and cost for consumers was the advent of VOIP phone service. Allowing internet/cable companies to provide phone services without the investment into standard switching equipment and running lines or paying the 3 big carriers to lease space on their lines.
Government bureaucrats and idiot elected politicians, who are clueless as to how the real world works, should think twice before they embark on ill conceived efforts without understanding the ramifications of such efforts. Do they really think that if Zuckerburg is forced to sell off WhatsApp and SnapChat he will not buy up a controlling interest in these now separate companies? What will be the end result for consumers? It certainly will not be that their personal data will no longer be monetized. It most certainly will!
Your assertions regarding AT&T are off by more than a bit.
The breakup into the 7 RBOCs allowed such innovations as allowing one to connect his/her own phone sets to the network. Which included the ability to connect cute little things known as modems -- remember them? -- to the network as well. This provided the incentive for manufacturers to create devices of higher capabilities than the 1200 bps boxes (and even slower 300bps acoustic couplers) that the original Bell system would limit one to; in short order 19200 bps modems became commonplace, and at very reasonable prices as well.
Independent service providers were allowed to connect to the network to provide long distance service at cheaper rates. Remember MCI? These service providers were also allowed to provide additional services not available from Bell. MCI, for example, provided the first commercially available e-mail service that interfaced the fledgling internet with the phone system. T1, then T3, and higher, data services were made available to the hoi polloi laying the groundwork for broadband communications as we know it today.
All this happenned long before "wireless", and certainly would have had to have happened before "wireless" could become a thing.
Were all these things "improvements in service"? YMMV, but for those of us who were there (and who lived through the growing pains), would have to refute your assertion that "The quality of service did not improve much", and say ," Hell, yes it did!"
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