> The act was designed to restore competition, but it was loosely worded and failed to define such critical terms as "trust," "combination," "conspiracy," and "monopoly." Five years later, the Supreme Court dismantled the act in United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895). The Court ruled that the American Sugar Refining Company, one of the defendants in the case, had not violated the law even though the company controlled about 98% of all sugar refining in the United States. The Supreme Court reasoned that the company’s control of manufacture did not constitute a control of trade.
The reality is that the law itself was not very well written, and takes an extremely litigious executive branch to do anything with.
Even if you agreed with the premise (the idea that Standard Oil arose purely through conspiracy is clearly wrong), it's ultimately a very ticky tacky set of definitions and has failed to achieve anything meaningfully as policy (do we actually feel strongly that breaking Microsoft's productivity suite from their OS division was really worth all the effort?)
(The notable exceptions being actual illegal coordination - like was recently uncovered in the egg industry. But these have more to do with price fixing amongst competitors and less with actual Trusts/Monopolies)
The only practical way that countries have tackled monopolies has been to write legislation that specifically puts oversight on that industry.
There is a surprisingly high amount of legislation that seems shockingly poorly written unless one thought that as a feature rather than an bug.
E.g., while the 25th amendment prohibits someone from being elected president more than twice, it does not prohibit succession into presidency, such as by becoming the Speaker of the House (which position does not require one being a US Representative in the House) and President and Vice President resigning. That may seem unlikely or an outlier but on a site like hackers news, I would assume that we would relish the outliers that have bedeviled our software career
I wish we had statutory antitrust mechanisms instead. Get to be a certain size, you have to be a public company. Have a sustained supermajority of the market? You have to file a plan to split up.
The part i've not been able to wrangle is what to do about companies which are internationally monopolies? Couldn't they just pick the winners/losers of local companies and ensure their own supply chain is the one that survives? That seems worse than a national monopoly that is at least HQ'd inside your borders.
> The model that underlies Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 is a step forward in general capabilities. However, during the model’s training, we took steps to limit advances in the specific research capabilities that could most directly accelerate AI development. Thus, in relevant areas, including accelerator kernel optimization and improving large language model architectures, Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 perform at about the level of Opus 5.5. Importantly, we ensured that the training changes did not affect related capabilities like agentic coding, hardware development, and traditional AI or machine learning research (including interpretability research). We do not alter these capabilities as the model is being served to users (that is, at inference time). As described in Section 1.5 of the System Card and similarly to previous models, Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 also include transparent fallbacks to Opus 5 for a small set of topics in this domain, including kernel development on certain nonstandard accelerators.
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> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
> Sec. 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust or other- wise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, at the discretion of the court.
> Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof; shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
The implication of the comment is that Anthropic is limiting the capabilities of their external models to prevent other companies from building models that can compete with Claude, and that this constitutes anticompetitive behavior under the law.
>...shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Wow, I believe violating Section 1201 of the DMCA carries a stiffer penalty these days.
That quote is from the original 1890 text. The statute has been amended and criminal violations are now felonies with bigger penalties including $100 million fines and 10 years in jail.
> punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Something tells me that's not gonna do much to dissuade the AI cartels...
> The act was designed to restore competition, but it was loosely worded and failed to define such critical terms as "trust," "combination," "conspiracy," and "monopoly." Five years later, the Supreme Court dismantled the act in United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895). The Court ruled that the American Sugar Refining Company, one of the defendants in the case, had not violated the law even though the company controlled about 98% of all sugar refining in the United States. The Supreme Court reasoned that the company’s control of manufacture did not constitute a control of trade.
The reality is that the law itself was not very well written, and takes an extremely litigious executive branch to do anything with.
Even if you agreed with the premise (the idea that Standard Oil arose purely through conspiracy is clearly wrong), it's ultimately a very ticky tacky set of definitions and has failed to achieve anything meaningfully as policy (do we actually feel strongly that breaking Microsoft's productivity suite from their OS division was really worth all the effort?)
(The notable exceptions being actual illegal coordination - like was recently uncovered in the egg industry. But these have more to do with price fixing amongst competitors and less with actual Trusts/Monopolies)
The only practical way that countries have tackled monopolies has been to write legislation that specifically puts oversight on that industry.
There is a surprisingly high amount of legislation that seems shockingly poorly written unless one thought that as a feature rather than an bug.
E.g., while the 25th amendment prohibits someone from being elected president more than twice, it does not prohibit succession into presidency, such as by becoming the Speaker of the House (which position does not require one being a US Representative in the House) and President and Vice President resigning. That may seem unlikely or an outlier but on a site like hackers news, I would assume that we would relish the outliers that have bedeviled our software career
I wish we had statutory antitrust mechanisms instead. Get to be a certain size, you have to be a public company. Have a sustained supermajority of the market? You have to file a plan to split up.
The part i've not been able to wrangle is what to do about companies which are internationally monopolies? Couldn't they just pick the winners/losers of local companies and ensure their own supply chain is the one that survives? That seems worse than a national monopoly that is at least HQ'd inside your borders.
> The model that underlies Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 is a step forward in general capabilities. However, during the model’s training, we took steps to limit advances in the specific research capabilities that could most directly accelerate AI development. Thus, in relevant areas, including accelerator kernel optimization and improving large language model architectures, Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 perform at about the level of Opus 5.5. Importantly, we ensured that the training changes did not affect related capabilities like agentic coding, hardware development, and traditional AI or machine learning research (including interpretability research). We do not alter these capabilities as the model is being served to users (that is, at inference time). As described in Section 1.5 of the System Card and similarly to previous models, Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 also include transparent fallbacks to Opus 5 for a small set of topics in this domain, including kernel development on certain nonstandard accelerators.
-----
> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
> Sec. 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust or other- wise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, at the discretion of the court.
> Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof; shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
The Anti-Trust act makes it illegal for business to conspire to restrict markets.
Anthropic is engaging in some product engineering to level set their offerings against each other.
I'm not sure I am understanding the connection you are trying to make.
The implication of the comment is that Anthropic is limiting the capabilities of their external models to prevent other companies from building models that can compete with Claude, and that this constitutes anticompetitive behavior under the law.
> Anthropic is limiting the capabilities of their external models to prevent other companies from building models that can compete with Claude.
Uhhhh... that seems like quite a logical leap. "The only reason Apple doesn't release a faster phone is so other companies can't copy it."
Antitrust generally does not compel companies to make product lineup decisions, especially if the industry itself is acting quite competitively.
1. Anthropic is not coordinating with competitors so there's no "conspiracy"
2. Anthropic doesn't have much market power. The competition is intense.
3. Anthropic doesn't have a legal requirement to provide it's strongest internal model to competitors.
>...shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Wow, I believe violating Section 1201 of the DMCA carries a stiffer penalty these days.
In 2026 dollars, $5,000 1890 would be around $185,131.87. I guess they didn't foresee inflation working against the fine.
That quote is from the original 1890 text. The statute has been amended and criminal violations are now felonies with bigger penalties including $100 million fines and 10 years in jail.
That was for a different, less civilized time full of very rich people, so called "robber barons".
Didn't they have the cool mustaches that you can twirl around and look cool?
I guess we are going back to that era with a different flavour.
An oligarch by any other name, something something...
> punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Something tells me that's not gonna do much to dissuade the AI cartels...
Please add a closing parenthesis. Its absence is driving this Scheme hacker bananas.