YouSaid · the spoken record

Makan Delrahim

lines on the record: 122
first: 2018-09-01
most recent: 2018-09-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Bad precedent. But the opinion were so flawed that I thought it was really important. In this area, there isn't guidance. To the business community, what are the contours? What should be the limits? And many people said, well, this is so fact-based that this is limited to this, but not an antitrust. There's not that many antitrust litigations. So these have an outsized impact on the business community. And I think it's important to have guidance and clarify the errors. Now, if the court rules that we were wrong”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, you always consider whether you should or not, because there's a risk that you would then set a bad precedent now that is a larger.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we could agree with you. If the appeal court agrees with us, it could be, for example, remanded to a district court. For reconsideration according to whatever they rule? Or they could deny our appeal and uphold the district court. And that'll be, that could be the end of that. But both parties will also have the chance to either go further in appeal. So if let's say AT&T loses, presumably they could ask for either an en bonk hearing or go to the Supreme Court. And we would. But that would be our choices. But whether or not this is the type of case.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what antitrust merger law is. You have to look what happens in the future. In the future. And you have to dip it in the bud.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you believe in the same unit entity, Working to maximize the overall profit because you're now competing to get market share. If it was implausible that they would ever eliminate this, so you can't have this internal inconsistency in the opinion, which in my view is the 13 chime of the clock. It puts a big shadow on the question of the logic that was applied in this case. The judge said, look, I can't believe that this was the first antitrust case, that I have to have a crystal ball to look ahead prospective.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that only goes when you combine a distributor and a content provider. A concept in economics called elimination of double marginalization, then both of them will seek to get some kind of a profit to survive. Once they're combined, you presume maybe they could do away with one of those margins in order to compete with their competitors. So technically prices could go down. And we said that's that could, but that only happens.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is something that has been recognized by the Supreme Court. That has been recognized by every economist that that is one of the most fundamental parts of when you have one entity. And then at the same time, he said that there's benefits, there's efficiencies that the consumer would benefit. And we said that there could be up to a certain amount.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which pure economics says if any of those subsidiaries every single day and three times on Wednesdays, you'd be willing to give up one dollar to get $3.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said it's implausible that subsidiary A would ever sacrifice. Let's just say that they get $2 of revenue a year. That they would sacrifice one dollar of revenue a year in order for the parent to be. To make an extra three”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's what the judge, you know, one of the mistakes in that ruling that we assert out in our appeal is... He said that it is implausible that a subsidiary of a company, a wholly owned subsidiary. So let's say there's company parent that owns two subsidiaries.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somebody else as the merger goes forward. Well, the merger, yeah, they close. We let them, yeah, yeah. And as a condition, you know, we did not seek emergency appeal. If we sought emergency appeal, the deal could have unraveled. And two-thirds of that deal was not problematic. And as long as they kept that business separate, then we go through a regular orderly process. So in the simplest form,”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the judge ruled almost that we didn't make a single point in this case and that it was implausible, some of the evidence that was put forward. So it was an interesting application of some of the evidence and standards. So we'll see what a court of appeals will decide later this year, hopefully. We entered into an understanding with AT&T that they would keep the Turner business separate until February 2019, pending appeal or earlier if the appeal decides that they're fine. So that allows, in the event we win, to allow for a structural remedy for them to sell that business off.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that there was some fundamental mistakes and logic that apply to that case. It's laid out in our appellate brief. It's also laid out in six amicus briefs that were filed on our side, including one from 29 very prominent scholars, including Professor Hovenkamp, who writes the treatise on antitrust law out of University of Pennsylvania. Professors Doug Mello at another.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The area of sports was the area that our economists found. And that's what we did. But the district court judge did not agree. The district court judge, you know, one of our issues on appeal.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so there's ways of doing that. And the studio was fine. They could own the studio. Could they keep some of that content away? Yes, but there was a competitive studio market. You have seven other studios that create the content.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it was available. I mean, I'd say probably 80% of the merger. I would have found what we found in our model and economic models would be actually pro-consumer, pro-competitive. AT&T could own HBO. But that doesn't mean another distributor could not own a showtime. Maybe it is not as good as HB, but they could. Right. Because now they'll have the incentive to be better. Or, you know, stars or you name it, Flicks or Netflix.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you would, you know, who knows if it will, you hope that there's, but certainly the marketplace hasn't really changed to a certain degree now. There was a hope that there would be online competition by streaming and cord cutters. And we do have that.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To not to bite people And maybe you'll agree for five years, but after five years, you're going to bite people. So it requires the antitrust enforcer to now step into the role of a regulator of that business, which again, I don't think I or many people are smart enough to guess seven years from now where technology will be.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get rid of And let's create the same competitive landscape by having somebody else run it with the incentive to maximize it.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As opposed to what we call a structural settlement, saying, okay, hey, this is the problem. That causes the competitive consumer harm? You better sell off that business”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comcast NBC, what are called behavioral remedies. So a behavioral settlement. And what it means is that you, Kara, cannot do certain things for the next seven years or five years or 20 years.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. Which many times happens, absolutely. But so there's different types of settlements. So, in that particular one, this is Comcast.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also a vendor to a competitor And so that dynamic changes. Sometimes these concepts can be complicated, but it's relatively simple, is, you know, do those bargaining powers change with that type of a merger? Some people, including the merging parties, criticized us that it's the first time we've ever enforced. Well, that's not the case because if people remember Comcast and NBC and the prior administration, it was settled. It was a case that was actually filed and simultaneously settled with a seven-year consent decree that prevented Comcast from taking certain actions in violation of the antitrust laws. And so the issue wasn't that it wasn't, it was just not settled. And those settlements I've given speeches, I've written about these, I think, is actually not good for the consumer because you're”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If ATT as a distributor owns it, those incentives change of whether or not they want to sell it to other distributors because all of a sudden they're now the owner.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, it depends on where in that chain of supply it is. So a vertical would be a distributor. That buys an input, a product that they would sell. So let's say, well, a perfect example is AT&T or Comcast. They're distributors of programming content and Time Warner or NBC and Universal, they're the creators of the program. Time Warner would normally be incentivized to sell to all distributors that ultimately get to the marketplace.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, look, it's an important case. It's one of the first that has been litigated, not the first challenge. There's a lot of folks talking about vertical mergers versus horizontal vertical mergers.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's fast forward then to your recent case. I know you can't talk things that are currently in litigation, but you lost a case, the AT&T case, and you have all since appealed. What can you talk about it? What can you say about that case right now?”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Making sure, I think, timely and vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws, like in Microsoft or other cases that may come up, is really important because if you don't do that, then you do have failure in the market. And that's when there's calls for regulation. That's where Congress then steps in and says, well, you can only have 30% programming. And now you have a very static. Government rules that might be arbitrary, but that's what the law is. And those only come in when there's been a failure in the marketplace. And to me, a failure in the marketplace can mean failure in enforcement of the free market.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the time when we were looking to see whether we should be focused on markets and let markets decide prices and direction as opposed to the government directing, remember around that time after the World War and leading up to World War II, we were debating whether or not we should set prices and determine what product and output should be out there because of steel and other needs. And there was a big debate. And I think he prevailed and allowed the free market to survive. Now, we make mistakes in enforcement and we get corrected by the courts and the Supreme Court that sets the guidelines and determines kind of the contours of antitrust over time. But I think there's the right balance. We need to be vigilant.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. He is an absolute legal. Why is that? Oh, he's one of the greatest legal minds. He had a huge impact that to this day we feel it. I mean, he wrote some of the dissents in Koramatsu and some of the, you know, some of the most significant.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it depends. So, my job isn't really one of my legal heroes as former justice and head of the antitrust division at one point, Robert Jackson, who in FDR about 80 years ago has given some great speeches and I've read all of them.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the way I look at it. Europeans see it differently. They feel as if these companies have gotten untold power and are advantaging themselves. And the U.S. government has been relatively hands-off on a lot of it for a long, long time. And you feel that's the best policy still.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't want them to, once they are there. Now try to block and create a moat around themselves in an inappropriate way. So that's the way I look at it”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That competitor who we've encouraged them to compete and succeed once they succeed, we do not want to get them out of the business. So it's really important that our policies don't discourage that. It's not, you know, go out, compete, be successful, but only to a limit. That's not our economy, and I don't think that is good for our economy. We want them to, we want every one of them to become monopolists as long as they're behaving properly.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they create something new that people want. And then that is emulated. And then folks try to kill them again because now this creating competition. So I think that what they do could be temporary as long as the barriers to entry for competition Are still low Somebody can enter, can, you know, there was room for Snapchat to come out and compete at some level, partly because consumers preferred maybe a disappearing snap in 24 hours. And I think there's room there for consumers to try out and for innovators. And that's what we do not want to punish.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In some ways, I think that is true. The question is, is that momentary? Is that a reward of their superior acumen investment risk that they have taken? It wasn't that long ago where Netflix was considered one of the Fang companies was under siege. They were nowhere. They shouldn't have survived. But I think kudos to Reed Hastings and those folks who...”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Try, fail, succeed, and have a very fertile ground for innovation. And innovation, in my view, is really what ultimately helps the consumer. It's dynamic competition. When you have those new products, new services being brought to the consumer, and we just don't know what we don't know. We have no, who would have thunk 20 years ago we would have the technologies we have today. That every one of these phones can be a television, which they are now. You can broadcast and have podcast without having to go through a local broadcast or a TV station. So I think the consumers have benefited immensely. And what it has allowed is it's allowed dissemination of information to a lot more people than otherwise would be able to get.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I look at it with a sense of pride as an American, but also that we are able to have some of the best minds and a community that is able to”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Valley right now because a lot of people in Europe and elsewhere feel like it needs to be pulled back. And we'll talk about, we can't talk specifically about your case, or maybe you can a little bit, but how do you look at it overall when you're thinking about these powers? We've created It's really an American made industry right now, and of course it's getting a lot of pressure from China and other places, largely from China. How do you look at it overall when you think about the tech industry here in this country?”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the only search engine you could have had. Because without it, you wouldn't have been able to have access to the operating system. Then, where would that search engine have been? You might not even have.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could Google have survived Had Microsoft wanted to put its own search engine as the preferred search engine in every operating system, which was 98% of every computer and then every phone.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A new phone would have come on, and you would have had to have had the Microsoft operating system rather than the Apple, which then flourished in App Store and others. So I think a lot of innovation has occurred. Probably because of that, but who knows?”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it had a number of impacts. One, importantly It reinforced the consensus antitrust view, which was upheld by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals under traditional And I trust analysis that was applied to those acts. So Joel Klein and the Justice Department who brought the case and tried that. There's a lot of folks, naysayers. You guys are crazy what is happening there, whether it was certain editorial pages. You're interfering with business. But at its core, in my view, antitrust protects that free market. We're wrong, and they were crushing innovation So I think it made perhaps Microsoft, I think, a better corporate citizen. You know, their business hasn't been harmed, but other businesses were able to get off the ground. I think, I don't know if Apple would be the trillion dollar company had it not been for that, partly because”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That provides consumers what they wanted, then they could have probably had the many MVPDs allowed for that. MVPDs being the cable operators or others. But when the incentives aren't there financially to do that, all of a sudden you have now with the advent of internet and online streaming.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's, I think, our most important aspect of U.S. antitrust law is not hindering that and actually creating the culture for innovation, partly because, not partly, but largely because innovation is actually what creates competition to topple incumbents.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you also, you know, that's why sometimes the job is difficult. You always have to come in every day and try to get it right.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you question, you kind of never know. That's one of the always the challenges in antitrust enforcement. It's always prospective.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back then. So a lot of these things kind of come back. And then copyright as well. It was the digital millennium Copyright Act. I wasn't the principal staffer on that, but I was there when that was happening. And there was an interesting time because there were a lot of provisions and laws that were made.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This company cannot include Netscape. We had Netscape. That was the one where Mark Andreessen and Jim Barksdale. You also had Scott McNeely at Son at the time and Larry Ellison. Right.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I saw not only the power of Silicon Valley, but power of technology. You saw a lot of companies who were coming together. You saw what was the anti competitive conduct, what was alleged, and you had many cases of folks who were saying, hey, I'm getting crushed.”
2018-09-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyer Makan Delrahim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT