Justice Department Calls Apple the "Ringmaster" In e-book Price Fixing Case 192
An anonymous reader writes "Back in April 2012, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and a number of publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of e-books on the iBookstore. As part of its investigation into Apple's actions, the Justice Department collected evidence which it claims demonstrates that Apple was the 'ringmaster' in a price fixing conspiracy. Specifically, the Justice Department claims that Apple wielded its power in the mobile app market to coerce publishers to agree to Apple's terms for iBookstore pricing."
Provide the proof (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you read the article. "Under the old model, Amazon controlled about 90 percent of the market, but after the publishers instituted the new pricing scheme, Amazon's share fell to 60 percent." http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/299875-doj-accuses-steve-jobs-of-being-ringmaster-in-price-fixing-scheme [thehill.com]
Amazon didn't get caught because its done nothing wrong. (well its done lots of things, just not in this instance)
Re:Except its not. (Score:2, Interesting)
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/299875-doj-accuses-steve-jobs-of-being-ringmaster-in-price-fixing-scheme [thehill.com] "Under the old model, Amazon controlled about 90 percent of the market, but after the publishers instituted the new pricing scheme, Amazon's share fell to 60 percent."
Its not amusing at all. Amazon dominate by competing on old fashioned things like price, Not being corrupt. I find it sick that your defending a mega corporation (again), when the illegal corrupt actions affect everyone.
It's quite... fascinating, how you can defend a monopoly and demonize the company that broke the monopoly, doing the very thing you just defended the monopoly for doing in the first place!
Apple entered the book market and competed against Amazon doing the very thing you laud Amazon for doing: they competed on price!
That's some highly potent fanboy fanaticism in action!
violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S (Score:4, Interesting)
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/ebooks04112012b.pdf [wsj.com] from the filing
"The purpose of this lawsuit is to enjoin the Publisher Defendants and Apple from further violations of the nation's antitrust laws and to restore the competition that has been lost due to the Publisher Defendants' and Apple's illegal acts. Defendants'
ongoing conspiracy and agreement have caused e-book consumers to pay tens of millions of dollars more for e-booksthan they otherwise would have paid"
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it really only takes a couple of people at the top level, everybody else will just follow orders. See the price fixing on DRAM and LCDs to see how you had price fixing covering companies halfway across the world from each other but it really only took a handful of high level board members to get it set up.
This is why I've been saying that while its great we're not seeing "site requires IE" anymore we have to be vigilant so we don't replace one master with another. Just look at how Apple is trying to ram through DRM into HTML V5 after killing an open codec minimum for HTML V5 for patent trolls MPEG-LA (which of course doesn't hurt them as they can pay the license fees) and how everybody tripped over themselves to kiss the ring of St Steve and cheering the death of Flash...when in reality it was simply Apple making sure nothing ran on Apple hardware that they didn't get a cut.
So we really have to watch it, because unlike MSFT whose efforts are hamfisted and so obvious Stevie Wonder could spot them the marketing team at Apple is fucking brilliant and can sell AC units to Eskimos and as we saw with IE once you let a company get too powerful it takes ages to undo the damage.