Posted on 04/11/2012 4:23:25 PM PDT by NoLibZone
The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Corp., Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming collusion over eBook pricing.
Apple and Macmillan, which have refused to engage in settlement talks with the Justice Department, deny they colluded to raise prices for digital books, according to people familiar with the matter. They will argue that pricing agreements between Apple and publishers enhanced competition in the e-book industry, which was dominated by Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
it is that time of year, election cycle requiring more campaign contributions..
Apparently the campaign donation wasn't enough?
Aaarrgh....double post!
No one is being cheated; certainly not by Apple.
Did prices rise? Yes, but why? Before the agency model Amazon was selling ebooks at a loss.
They were abusing their monopoly position (they had 60%+ of ebook market in 2011) to artificially undermine natural prices and forestall competitors from being able to enter the market fairly. Selling at losses abused publishers and harmed the market. Angry at Amazon's tactics, publishers banded together to pursue an agency model for ebooks.
As they're not a publisher, just a reseller like Amazon, Apple's part in this was to ensure its own customers were not forced to pay higher prices to make up for Amazon's Kindle ebook pricing games.
Price fixing, by definition, involves players on the same side of the market ... in this case, publishers.
The agency model, and Apple, brought actual competition to ebooks, whereas Amazon presented only an illusion of a competitive market via artificially lower prices.
Apple has become wildly successful and that success, coupled with its billions of dollars in cash hoarded away, is a great temptation for Holder and his "redistribution of wealth" cronies.
its sarcasm.
The left is saying that Apple cheats people , hence the DOJ suit.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
The Obummer may be able to "get away" with non-sensical absurd assertions, but it can't work for Apple this time.
"Dominated by Amazon?" Another absurd statement. Is the argument that Amazon was coercing the publishers to set a price to their liking? No.
Was Amazon demanding that they were entirled to set the price at which the publishers could sell their ebooks to other retailers? No.
Was Amazon selling their ebooks at too low a price to lose money? Their choice, so long as they were not coercing others to do the same. And not likely, in any event.
So what other absurd argument can they scrape up?
Apple wanted to set a template for ALL ebook retailers on their terms, and enticed the publishers with unconscionable new profit for themselves in the deal. Still not a crime.
But when Apple demanded, and got, a commitment that, in return for their huge ipad market potential customers, the publishers would force other retailers to accept the same collusion and screw the consumer, things were bound to become unraveled, sooner rather than later.
Apple is getting slapped hard, and it's long overdue. So long as only interior decorators and gamers are willing to pay outrageous prices for a fruit, and left everyone else alone, no problem.
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