If someone puts something for sale at a certain price and you decide to buy it for that price how is anyone harmed? Now if it was something like health insurance that you are forced to buy under physical threat that's a different story.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @09:35PM (#50022987)
https://tidbits.com/article/13912 has a good explanation of why this is illegal and how people were harmed.
In essence there's nothing wrong with putting something for sale at a certain price. However in this case harm was done. the rise in prices hurt consumers, and publishers made less money because quantity of sales were lost and more money was being taken by the distributors.
This becomes illegal because Apple colluded with publishers. The whole point of antitrust law is to prevent prices from rising due to anti-competitive measures exactly like this.
How is this illegal? (Score:2)
If someone puts something for sale at a certain price and you decide to buy it for that price how is anyone harmed? Now if it was something like health insurance that you are forced to buy under physical threat that's a different story.
Re:How is this illegal? (Score:2, Insightful)
https://tidbits.com/article/13912 has a good explanation of why this is illegal and how people were harmed.
In essence there's nothing wrong with putting something for sale at a certain price. However in this case harm was done. the rise in prices hurt consumers, and publishers made less money because quantity of sales were lost and more money was being taken by the distributors.
This becomes illegal because Apple colluded with publishers. The whole point of antitrust law is to prevent prices from rising due to anti-competitive measures exactly like this.