[thelist] Business practices and Anti-Trust

[zac]

>> This fallacy keeps cropping up and I keep wondering why as its total
>> rubbish. Please check your facts before you continue to propagate this
>> type of nonsense.
> 
> have you got anything to say, definitively, that this is not the case?
> i ask for two reasons... 1) i'd love to discuss some rates and 2) i've
> never seen anyone prove this assertion isn't true, but i've had a
> couple lawyers tell me that i can't discuss it in forums like this...

No URLs on hand but I have read in other lists that this type of reasoning
isn't valid.  This thing borders on being an urban myth (net version) .

I would suggest that the best way to prove that this is true is to come up
with an FTC case against a developer or producer who discussed prices on a
public mailing list and was then charged with price fixing by the FTC.

Flying monkeys will pop out of my butt with an air of shocked awe if you
find any such case.


The main points against it are

1) discussing standard, or suitable,  rates is not the same as fixing prices

2) Many people on this list aren't even Americans or even live in the US
(what the FTC would be able to do to me is highly debatable)

3) There is a dramatic difference between, say, all the web developers in
Minnesota getting together and setting (or fixing) prices and people in a
public list from different communities discussing pricing for clients. That
should be fairly obvious

4) This sort of reasoning would prohibit the publication of pricing
guidelines of the sort published by the graphic design industry for years.


-- 

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as
the earth!

Henry David Thoreau


email: zac at pixelgeek.com
web: http://www.pixelgeek.com/