Can an algorithm break the law?

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Jamali. More than 20 years ago, 20 years ago, executives at rival auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, were found guilty of coordinating a massive price fixing scheme.

Leaders from the companies had held covert meetings where they colluded to set identical commission fees, driving prices up while eliminating

competition.

Today, active antitrust cases show that the ways in which companies might conspire are changing.

Algorithms have in some cases replaced secret meetings, but US regulators say

it's still collusion, whether it's a human or a bot pulling the strings.

I asked Joe Harrington, professor of business economics and public policy at the University

of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, how antitrust law holds up against new technology.

The antitrust laws have been, have proven to be incredibly resilient.

These laws were set more than a century ago and they've been able to handle all sorts of harmful

practices.

But I think they might have kind of stretched the limit in terms of what they can do and the reason

why is because a fundamental source of competition

among firms, what prices you set, there's now the possibility of that being set by a common

third party through such a thing as a data analytics company.

And that's fundamentally different.

So let's talk about an example of this.

There's a case involving hotel rooms in New Jersey that is getting a lot of attention

right now including from the Department of Justice and the FTC. Can you

explain what that case is about? Absolutely. What we have here is at hotels such as Caesars and Hard Rock and and

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