Henry Hauser spoke on the podcast Sold Out: How Ticketmaster Became the Anti-Hero of the Live Music Industry about what constitutes an illegal monopoly.

When people hear about anti-trust, they think about monopolies. And there’s a good reason for that. Monopolies can hike prices. They can restrict output. They can exclude competition. But the key thing to understand about U.S. anti-trust law is size alone does not determine guilt. Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you violated an anti-trust law. It doesn’t mean you have an illegal monopoly.

What we don’t want is the act of monopolization. So, doing something to acquire a monopoly or to protect your monopoly— that is not competition on the merits. Competition on the merits means a better product, a more efficient cost structure, just getting lucky, maybe, having the right song at the right time and the right cut of t-shirt that you’re selling at the right time. What we don’t want is using that monopoly power to exclude others and to preserve that monopoly through something that’s not competition on the merits of what you’re offering.

Listen to the podcast here.