Monopoly Question.. (not the game)

I read somewhere yesterday that having a monopoly is illegal somehow??

what are the curcumstances that make a monopoly illegal?

It depends on the monopoly.

I take it you are thinking of Vince McMahon, right?

He wouldnt be brought up in front of a monopoly’s company because he owns 2 private companies. As long as he runs them a seperate entities, which he will, he won’t get into trouble.

Well, under American law, having a monopoly per se is not illegal, and in fact is sometimes protected by the government.

For example, if you own the patent to the lightbulb, the government will help protect your monopoly.

Or, if everybody buys your computer operating system because it’s so superior to the competition, there’s no problem.

What’s unlawful is getting a monopoly in an improper manner. Also, it’s unlawful to abuse your monopoly power once you have it.

Having a monopoly is not inherently illegal. But there are restrictions on your conduct once you have a monopoly. A good example is a cable TV system. Each city grants a 100% monopoly to a cable operator, sometimes it takes a public vote to approve the contract. In return, the cable operator agrees to stiff regulatory conditions.
But of course you’re referring to Microsoft. Even Microsoft admits it is a monopoly, they stipulated to it in court. The problem is what you DO once you are a monopoly. If you use your monopoly power to crush any competitor that could be a threat to your monopoly, or use your market power to force customers to buy products they do not want (product tying) then that is illegal.

If I recall economics correctly, sometimes the government has a monopoly on industries such as postal services, where private, profit-driven ownership would be detrimental to the quality of service.

For both monopolies and ogilopolies, an activity like price fixing would be illegal - the problem is proving that price fixing does in fact occur.

I think monopolies are illegal if they use their monopoly power to restrain trade. For example if McMahon tells a PPV company that they can only have WWF/WCW paper-views if they refuse to carry any other wrestling shows. Or if they go into a town and sell tickets at a loss to try to drive the local wrestling federation out of business.