Landlords and property managers can’t collude on rental pricing. Using new technology to do it doesn’t change that antitrust fundamental. Regardless of the industry you’re in, if your business uses an algorithm to determine prices, a brief filed by the FTC and the Department of Justice offers a helpful guideline for antitrust compliance: your algorithm can’t do anything that would be illegal if done by a real person.
That type of direct agreement is not necessary to prove collusion (makes it easier to prosecute certainly) but intent doesn’t matter legally. Using a software that has an inbuilt collusion algorithm is still collusion. This is also on a larger scale than mom+pop these algorithms and software were/are used by much larger companies that own magnitudes more units.
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That type of direct agreement is not necessary to prove collusion (makes it easier to prosecute certainly) but intent doesn’t matter legally. Using a software that has an inbuilt collusion algorithm is still collusion. This is also on a larger scale than mom+pop these algorithms and software were/are used by much larger companies that own magnitudes more units.
Their stance is “if it’s illegal for a person to do it, it’s illegal for an algorithm to do it”
If you use a 3rd party to collude, that’s still collusion. Here, that algorithm is the third party
The joint legal brief clarifies that it is indeed collusion. And continues to explain how this is a technological evolution of the handshake.
Interesting. To my non-lawyer mind, use of these types of algorithms is collusion by definition.
The FTC agrees.
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On the internet? It can’t be!
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