Posted on 04/11/2012 7:31:07 AM PDT by xzins
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
By AppleInsider Staff
Published: 10:05 AM EST (07:05 AM PST)
An antitrust suit accusing Apple and a number of book publishers of price fixing and collusion was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday.
The complaint was filed in a New York district court against Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Penguin, according to Bloomberg. Indications first surfaced on Tuesday that the Department of Justice was readying an antitrust suit.
The justice department is expected to settle with "several publishers" this week, as Reuters reported earlier that Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, Macmillan and HarperCollins are involved in negotiations. Apple and Macmillan have reportedly refused to engage in settlement talks, and have argued that Apple's pricing agreements have enhanced competition in an industry that was previously dominated by Amazon.
Word of the government's interest in e-book price fixing first came to light in March, when ti was revealed that the Department of Justice had warned Apple and five major publishers of its plans to sue them. The government has taken issue with Apple's alleged role in convincing e-book publishers to switch to an "agency model" for sales, rather than the "wholesale model" that Amazon had implemented with its own Kindle store.
Under Amazon's method, publishers would sell their books at wholesale and let the bookseller set its own prices. Amazon repeatedly upset publishers by selling titles at a loss.
Since they are and in reality likely to remain the only source of energy, with their extortion racket they are able to extort any amount for the economic life blood of the world's nations,by holding a pillow over the face of the national economies of the entire world.
I've been hearing our leaders promise an energy policy for about a half century. The energy we have now is the one we always have had since the turn of the last century, whatever the oil companies tell us.,p. The only time we have ever had plenty of oil, the oil companies tell us, is when we start halfheartedly looking at other sources of renewable, clean, unlimited energy,then the oil companies tell us we have plenty.
With their wealth and power they have successfully set and controlled our energy needs to their great profit. They have set the world's energy policy and it is this ,oil is going to be your main source of energy and you are going to pay our price for it period.
We have been ,we are and we will be the world's source of energy,there will be no competition from other sources of energy and since we eliminated most all of the hundreds of independent companies in the seventies the real purpose of that so called shortage.
Then you were stupid enough to let us complete the rest of our plan which was to reform our monopoly we had at the turn of the last century. To break out our giant umbrella using the excuse the standard excuse the other giant companies are using to form their monopolies, you know that they need to be large so they can complete in the Global Economy.
Well we are again and NOW we pull in more money each year than most countries and we have met the enemy [your politicians] and they are ours.
Did any you ever stop to wonder who we had to compete with and who and what we were going to control once we were large, powerful and rich enough. ?
One of the major goals of big business is to beat the competition.
Monopolies do not beat they completely eliminate them. Without competition the Free Enterprise System cannot work as that is the only source of price control in it to protect society from unreasonable prices and uncontrollable greed on things they must have to work, live and maintain reasonable standard of life,
We to have a large middle class to keep enough cash flowing to keep the economy and country healthy.
Without some form of price control, either artificial or that bought on by competition on the vital necessities needed to live food ,clothing, shelter medical and energy which affects the cost of all the others our economy and country will fail and violence, death and anarchy will prevail.
We are further along the way than most think and time is vital before we pass the point of no return if we haven't already.
There is no time left to wait on an election of more of same useful idiots we have been getting, regardless of party.
Our leaders and their their rich benefactors had better ask themselves how or they going to reason with millions of jobless, homeless and starving angry people made that way by a bloated, all consuming, corrupt, extremely wasteful,totally out of control spending Congress and Executive Branch.
Do not be foolish enough to think that sooner or later you or yours will not feel some of the pain of the result
Welcome to the New World Business Plan.
My apologies for the lenght.MSRN
Before I read the remainder of your post, I want to comment that I don’t think the oil companies drive the program here. I think it’s the oil countries that do so, and I think their power is not addressed.
After all, our own president bowed to the king of mecca.
None of this would be happening if Jobs was still alive. They just want Apple’s money.
How can you be a trust.... when you aren’t even #1??
Can they actually explain this in a way that makes any sense?
I doubt it.
You aren’t #1 and you definitely do not dominate the market and you are not the only source for the product.
How can you be in violation of “anti-trust” laws?
Of course they will settle because fighting in court is more expensive.
I can explain to you as a consumer. My wife has a nook. She has to pay full price for books that are simply digits because of the agreement Apple has with the publishers.
If you use an Ipad, you pay the digital price....very low in the neighborhood of a buck or so.
IOW, this agreement removes the value of digital books reading from all those who don’t have IPads.
It is very annoying, but it’s probably annoying to other businesses that Amazon can underprice them so badly and sell at a loss until the competition is out of business.
The vast majority of oil is owned by governments.
My niece has a Nook and our laptop has a Kindle app and we can also order through other websites or go to new and used book stores. On my laptop I have only downloaded free ebooks from the Kindle app, like the original Dracula and stuff.
I don’t think government involvement will improve the system any. I think its very possible we end up with much less competition.
no it would be happening. I think the actual case has merit.
the issue was the collusion.
publishers and apple colluded to have a universal price and lock out any competition. Apple wants ALL books to go through their apple store and the publishers want to control all prices to prevent any price other than the one they set.
Amazon was dictating to publishers and publishers did not like that. They banded together to fix prices. That is totally illegal.
the issue was the collusion.
publishers and apple colluded to have a universal price and lock out any competition. Apple wants ALL books to go through their apple store and the publishers want to control all prices to prevent any price other than the one they set.
Amazon was dictating to publishers and publishers did not like that. They banded together to fix prices. That is totally illegal.
Starting out with the acknowledgement that I don’t think that there’s any place in the Constitution for anti-trust prosecution, if they are going to abuse the copyright clause’s directive to make it limited time and turn it into infinite, then I suppose this is the end result...
ANYWAY, Apple colluded with the major publishers to establish agency pricing and ban the wholesale sale of books. The theory is that the publishers merely decided to no longer sell eBooks, but instead are selling licenses to read them. This, therefore, is the foundation for the legality of the agency pricing. Since it is a license, it doesn’t really matter what the product is, or who made it, they’ve set a price for that, and offer those who wish to sell those licenses (and administer them) a commission of 30% of the retail price.
This is price fixing to me. Wouldn’t mind the investigation broadening a bit into Apple’s software market. Because every legal argument used against Microsoft over the years applies in spades to Apple.
Amazon was dictating to publishers
That sounds like an anti-trust violation
Book publishers have every right to set the wholesale price of their products to distributors. It happens in every business.
Apple wanted to ensure its customers wouldn't be abused by premium prices and subsidizing Amazon or other devices. They insisted on best pricing in exchange for access to their customers. Apple didn't care what the pricing was, that was for publishers to determine for their books, it only wanted to make sure its customers got the best deal.
We see this all the time with Walmart and others commanding best prices from suppliers, for example. We even see it with nations' trading, Canada has been selling the US its oil at a substantial discount--something Obama's Keystone XL mess has jeopardized.
According to figures from last year, Amazon has 52-67% of the ebook market, Barnes & Noble has 20-22%. Apple operates out of that last piece of the ebook market.
What's really happening here is Democrats see a wildly successful capitalist venture, one which until recently has been hoarding billions in cash and they're looking for creative ways to get at those dollars and interfere in the emerging marketplace.
Amazon's monopoly position in ebooks and Godzilla position for bookselling generally meant fresh competition could only thrive if the rules changed and publishers had more control. Apple's platform offered publishers a bit of leverage to change their pricing model.
Price fixing depends on participants on the same side of the market to agree. However, in this case Apple is just an ebook reseller, not a publisher. Publishers set the pricing; Apple wasn't setting prices with Amazon & BN. It makes little sense to drag Apple into this case other than for notoriety and access to its deep pockets.
This is just a shakedown...
Chevron’s estimated profit per gallon of gasoline or diesel produced: Approx 2 cents per gallon.
Average retailer’s profit per gallon: 7 cents per gallon.
Federal taxes per gallon of gasoline: 18.4 cents per gallon.
California’s taxes per gallon of gasoline: 50.5 cents per gallon.
YES! Let’s go after the actual monopolies that are driving up the cost of gasoline - the GOVERNMENT. Because ‘’big oil’’ isn’t the problem here, and never was.
“Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.” There is only one difference in the legal treatment accorded to a criminal or to a businessman: the criminal’s rights are protected much more securely and objectively than the businessman’s.”
Ayn Rand
OH HOW I HATE THIS GUBMINT
Yeah, smells to me like Apple didn’t give enough to the Obama re-election fund...and now Obama’s having Holder shake them down for it.
One publishing CEO in refusing to submit to the government, by filing this action, stated that the "Justice Department is going to destroy true competition for the MERE APPEARANCE of competition!"
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