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Intel Government

Intel Settles NY Antitrust Case 46

Posted by samzenpus from the show-us-the-money dept.
clustermonkey writes "Intel Corporation and the New York Attorney General have agreed to terminate the lawsuit alleging violation of U.S. and state antitrust laws that was filed by the New York Attorney General in November 2009. Intel did not have to admit any violation of law (if there ever was any) nor did it have to admit or deny that the allegations in the complaint are true. Most importantly, the settlement does not require any changes to how the company does business. The settlement includes a $6.5 million payment that is "intended only to cover some of the costs incurred by the New York Attorney General in the litigation." Here's the full settlement, and Intel's official press release."
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Intel Settles NY Antitrust Case More

Intel Settles NY Antitrust Case

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  • Legal Extortion? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Thursday February 09, 2012 @09:27PM (#38990792)
    I don't understand. From the Summary it looks a lot like Legal extortion in that Intel paid to have this go away.

    • It's pretty much a one-sided decision - Intel has bought out the Democrats of New York and they capitulated !!

      6.5 million dollars ? What's that, again?

      • Re:New York Capitulated !! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Thursday February 09, 2012 @09:58PM (#38991053) Homepage

        6.5 million dollars ? What's that, again?

        Pocket change for Intel.

        With the prosecutors having a case that's pretty much botched anyway, it's a way of saying "no hard feelings, but do fuck off". The AG folks who worked on this can spin the payment to look like they didn't completely screw up, and Intel doesn't admit to any wrongdoing.

        It's as close to a win-win situation as any lawsuit will reach.

    • Re:Legal Extortion? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Thursday February 09, 2012 @10:01PM (#38991067)
      That's the problem with these "regulations" these days. Who benefited?

      First, the corporations get fined a lot less than they cost other people... which isn't the way that's supposed to work. They're supposed to be fined enough to prevent them from doing it again. In general, that means MORE than whatever they cost other people.
      Second... they don't have to admit any wrongdoing. What's the point then?
      Third, who gets the money? The people Intel harmed? Hell, no! The government gets the money.
      It's all a crock of sh*t. This needs to change. I mean it really, really needs to change.
      • And again, the government isn't here to help you. Figure that out and this all makes a lot more sense. The laws written to govern these industries, were written by the industries themselves. The government officials involve either worked for the very businesses they are now prosecuting prior to their government jobs, or will soon after retirement. You can't stop that, it's always going to happen. Government is always bad, but sadly necessary. The only real hope for freedom and justice is a weak, timid gover
        • "The government officials involve either worked for the very businesses they are now prosecuting prior to their government jobs, or will soon after retirement. You can't stop that, it's always going to happen." Of course you can. You just need laws that limit political funding to reasonable amount given by individuals. Also forbid industrial ownership of medias, and things will be in a better shape. There is also room for far much radical change, for instance you could dump elections and randomly select th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by zill ( 1690130 )

            You just need laws that limit political funding to reasonable amount given by individuals.

            Too bad SCOTUS shot it down. [wikipedia.org]

            Also forbid industrial ownership of medias

            Let me be the devil's advocate here: wouldn't that be infringing on the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech? In trying to safeguard democracy you're ironically abridging the two essential freedoms that make democracy possible in the first place.

            • Re:Legal Extortion? (Score:4, Informative)

              by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Friday February 10, 2012 @12:11AM (#38991905)
              As Henri Lacordaire said "Entre le fort et le faible, entre le riche et le pauvre, entre le maître et le serviteur, c'est la liberté qui opprime et la loi qui affranchit." Google translates this into "Between the high and low, between rich and poor, between master and servant, it is freedom which oppresses and the law that liberates."

        • "And again, the government isn't here to help you. Figure that out and this all makes a lot more sense. The laws written to govern these industries, were written by the industries themselves."

          I am aware of this. That was part of my point.

          But actually the government *IS* here to help me. That is the reason for its existence. It has increasingly been failing to do so, granted. But that is what it's for: national defense, etc. Things that are difficult for me to do on my own.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          Yeah, those central African nations are a real paradise! Why are you still here?

    • Re:Legal Extortion? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday February 09, 2012 @10:15PM (#38991157)
      Not really upstate NY near Saratoga has a Global Foundry (AMD) chip facility that is expected to revitalize the area around NY capital (Albany). It is just as likely that New York State did the lawsuit just to get rid of the competition.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday February 09, 2012 @10:57PM (#38991421)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Complaining that the Intel compiler optimizes instructions differently/better for Intel CPUs and not for other vendors is not an anti-trust matter. It is akin to saying MSFT is violating anti-trust because they "rig" their OS to run apps built using .Net extensions "better" (faster/prettier/etc) than apps cross-compiled using Qt. Yes, they are in the business of writing tools that support their business model -- that is not anti-trust.

          If Intel was crossing the line into predatory pricing, then that may qu

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )

            "Complaining that the Intel compiler optimizes instructions differently/better for Intel CPUs and not for other vendors is not an anti-trust matter"

            It most certainly is when a chip NOT from Intel is identified as an Intel and suddenly has this massive performance increase in the same benchmark.

            That's called fucking rigging, and it's a goddamned deceptive lie and totally anti-competitive.

            • Actually I would disagree with you - Intel isnt required to know the features of non-Intel chips as well as it's own, so is perfectly within it's rights to not apply any optimisations to such chips.

              From earlier discussions on this topic, that's all Intel were doing - they weren't going out of their way to gimp non-Intel chip, they were just treating it as an unknown and the chips performance would suffer as a result. Make the chip masquerade as a known entity and it would be treated as that known entity.

              W

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Read it again. We're not talking about Intel compilers working better with Intel chips. We're talking about Intel compilers arbitrarily running a processor faster if it's ID is an Intel one. You can take a Via chip- same architecture, same everything- and fool the computer into thinking it's an Intel product, and it'll run faster for no reason at all.

            This would be the equivalent of MS Windows arbitrarily running code slower unless it has a unique "made by Microsoft" identifier.

        • Frankly Intel should have been busted just like MSFT

          It sounds like they were. Microsoft got away with a slap on the wrist; there was no remedy in the PC market that removed their monopoly, or it's influence. By the time the Microsoft trial concluded, the damage was done, so major intervention would have been required. Even Judge Jackson's remedies were a little on the soft side, and they got overturned for much weaker ones.

          The one thing Intel didn't get was the "convicted illegal monopolist" label, which really hasn't hurt Microsoft much. People still have t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      yes, it's just cashing on the company.

      ridiculous really, that you can settle without guilt being established.

    • US Attorney trying to get hired for some stupid show on MSNBC (or any of the crap channels) .............. Great way to spend tax money!!!!! Intel knew they were in the wrong, or they felt the US Attorney could prolong this for years, this is often what the US Attorney offices does.. No proof of anything but that will not stop us. LOL

    • Worse than that. The taxpayers of new york paid the salaries and benefits of a bunch of people in the AG's office, who failed to produce a result, but got reimbursed for their efforts. Is that money being returned to the taxpayers? Yeah, I didnt think so. Nothing like a nice double dip, with a boatload of incompetence to show for it.

      How about this? The AG's office returns the money to the taxpayers, the people who worked on this all get fired because they start lawsuits they dont win against a company

  • TFA

    This comes on the heels of a late-2011 court ruling which “greatly reduced the scope of the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit.”

    Which court ruling?
    I can't remember to see something on /. at the time

    • Re:Can somebody link, please? (Score:5, Funny)

      by zill ( 1690130 ) on Thursday February 09, 2012 @10:21PM (#38991189)
      Here you go. [scribd.com]

      On a related note, I wish there was a job where you just google things for people. That seems to be the only thing I'm good at now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by c0lo ( 1497653 )
        Thanks in heaps.

        May the mods offer you heaps of +Informative!! (I would, but since I posted...)

      • If only there were a way to search [lmgtfy.com] for information like that

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by karnal ( 22275 )

        I vaguely remember commercials for a service that you could dial up by phone and ask questions - and they'd find you answers - probably using any search engines available. This was maybe a year ago? Haven't seen any thing like that since. But since smart phones have taken off, I don't (didn't?) see much use for that service. Probably out of business by now....

        Maybe you could google it for me to see if it's still around lol

  • It's a Sweetheart Deal, Not Extortion (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In the end, Intel gets double-jeopardy protection for the bargin-bin price of funding the NY AG office for a couple years. It's like bribery, but way more efficient.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by c0lo ( 1497653 )

      In the end, Intel gets double-jeopardy protection for the bargin-bin price of funding the NY AG office for a couple years.

      Might not be... there's no court ruling on it (this means another AG may want to restart the brouhaha)

  • Let's call it what it is (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    a bribe.

  • ...Chriss Dodd wanted things to work for his interests. No wonder he was crying, he bought way more wheel grease than 6.5 mill and still got denied.

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