Judge Rules Apple Colluded With Publishers to Fix Ebook Prices 383
Despite many publishers themselves settling with the DOJ over allegations of price fixing ebooks, Apple held firm and recently went to trial. And now the verdict is in: Apple conspired with major publishers to control ebook prices in violation of anti-trust laws. A trial for damages has been ordered. Quoting Reuters: "The decision by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan is a victory for the U.S. government and various states, which the judge said are entitled to injunctive relief. ... Cote said the conspiracy resulted in prices for some e-books rising to $12.99 or $14.99, when Amazon had sold for $9.99. 'The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy,' Cote said. 'Without Apple's orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the spring of 2010,' she added."
Update: 07/10 16:36 GMT by U L : The ruling is now available (160 page PDF).
and yet Amazon is raising prices now (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/business/as-competition-wanes-amazon-cuts-back-its-discounts.html?hpw&_r=0 [nytimes.com]
As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
By DAVID STREITFELD, NY Times
Published: July 4, 2013
"Jim Hollock’s first book, a true-crime tale set in Pennsylvania, got strong reviews and decent sales when it appeared in 2011. Now “Born to Lose” is losing momentum — yet Amazon, to the writer’s intense frustration, has increased the price by nearly a third.
Jim Hollock wrote a true-crime story set in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Hollock’s first book had decent sales when it appeared in 2011, but now that it is losing momentum, Amazon raised the price.
“At this point, people need an inducement,” said Mr. Hollock, a retired corrections official. “But instead of lowering the price, Amazon is raising it.”
Other writers and publishers have the same complaint. They say Amazon, which became the biggest force in bookselling by discounting so heavily it often lost money, has been cutting back its deals for scholarly and small-press books. That creates the uneasy prospect of a two-tier system where some books are priced beyond an audience’s reach."
permanent sale not illegal in USA? (Score:5, Interesting)
around here you can't have a product listed on "sale"(as in firesale or whatever) permanently.. why? because it's deceiving. if it's never at the normal price then there's never a special sale price... just the usual price. so if something is 10% or 20% off permanently, all the time, it's just a trick to fool the customer and therefore there are statuary limits on how long a sale can last..
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Re:and yet Amazon is raising prices now (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because it's not illegal to change your prices?
And it's authors who are complaining? Authors are the ones who control the supply - if they're upset about other people controlling the pricing of their work, then maybe they shouldn't have sold that right off. The barrier to entry for distributing e-books is minuscule - if an author wants to maintain control over the distribution of their work, there is absolutely nothing stopping them these days.
Re:and yet Amazon is raising prices now (Score:5, Insightful)
if they're upset about other people controlling the pricing of their work, then maybe they shouldn't have sold that right off. The barrier to entry for distributing e-books is minuscule - if an author wants to maintain control over the distribution of their work, there is absolutely nothing stopping them these days.
Wow, just no barrier to stupidity on the internet, is there. Do you realize how fantastically low the success rate is for e-books? No distribution, no public awareness, no marketing ... other than the seventeen people following you on twitter. I'm not saying publishers go out of their way to push every book (far, far from it) but without a physical presence on the bookshelves you chance of getting noticed or even an ounce of publicity is fantastically low.
Your suggestion is akin to suggesting a farmer open a fruit stand instead of working with wholesalers.
At this point you will likely point out one or two of those exceptions as some sort of straw man argument. Me, I've just worked in and around the industry for decades (on both sides).
Authors control the supply ... I'm going to laugh about that one for a while.
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And yet I know of originally self-published authors [amazon.com] who conveyed that into breaking into the Dead Tree Edition market. And others, who remain mostly self-published [amazon.com], have networked and promoted their works on social media and make a respectable income doing so. . .
The key, of course, is a campaign of marketing and establishing (or leveraging) a community. . .
Almost not news (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think € is allowed.
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No, they had a dominant position in the smartphone and tablet market which they attempted to leverage in order to get a dominant position in the ebook market. Having a monopoly by itself is not considered to be a crime. Using the monopoly as leverage to enter a separate adjacent market is.
Re:Almost not news (Score:5, Insightful)
It's tricky. Amazon did have a dominant position in the market and were selling at very low prices, sometimes below cost. They were willing to this because they could make profits on other sales that they were happy with, and also arguably because they could price everyone else out of the market and then use their dominance to raise prices (though this is speculation and it never got that far). This created a considerable barrier to entry for other players in the market. So Amazon might well count themselves lucky that they weren't on the wrong end of a competition probe themselves.
When Apple wanted to get into that market, what they probably should have done was complain that Amazon's business was anti-competitive and got the regulator involved. Instead, what they did was go to all the publishers and convince them to switch to the agency model. In this model, the publishers don't sell books to the retailers. Instead the retailer acts as an agent for the publisher and the contract of sale is direct between the consumer and the publisher, through the agency of the retailer. It means that the publishers get to set the price of books, not the retailers. An extra term in the contract said that the publishers wouldn't enter non-agency agreements with any other retailer and they wouldn't sell through any other publisher for less than they sold through Apple. Funnily enough, the price the publishers chose was basically the old retail price + Apple's 30% cut.
This was obviously good for Apple, as it meant Apple could compete with Amazon while still taking their 30% cut on every sale. It was also good for the publishers, because it helped break Amazon's dominance and so gave the publishers room to negotiate prices upwards. It might even have been arguably good for the market, at least in the long term, as Amazon were using their position to fend off new entrants and increase control. They might then have used that control to increase prices.
So this prosecution is basically saying to Apple, "Two wrongs don't make a right." Amazon wasn't behaving very well before Apple entered the market, though it looked like short-term good for consumers, but collusion and price-fixing is not an acceptable way of breaking that sort of market dominance, either.
What's going to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody who ever bought any number of books will get a single $1-5 credit toward buying another book. States and Federal government will collect
millions of dollars and fines.
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Amazon sent out an email a while back when this case first started, basically saying that the expected result will be $1-3 credit per book purchased over their preferred $10 price point. How that actually works in terms of who pays who what I have no idea; but I doubt Amazon would send that out if they weren't pretty sure that would be the end result.
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I know, right?
Funny that (Score:2)
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The punishment should fit the crime (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The punishment should fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Prices couldn't go down; Amazon was selling below wholesale as a means to control the market. Apple's got deep pockets too, so they probably could've done the same, but it's not really a sustainable business model.
Really, Apple's error here was not understanding the legal position that this put them in. They should've waited for what I think was the inevitable anti-trust case against Amazon and entered the market afterwards. This was a freebie given to Amazon and Apple detractors by some Apple executives being impatient.
Amazon should send Apple a gift basket (Score:4, Interesting)
The way Amazon was doing business before this all went down was a sure-fire track to an anti-trust case. They priced books below their own wholesale costs to keep competitors out of the business (the margins on Kindles are pretty slim to nil; I don't think you can even call the cheap books a loss leader, since it just leads to more losses). They controlled (still control?) over 90% of the eBook business, and their DRM BS isn't even compatible with the DRM BS that other companies use. (I can buy books from the Kobo bookstore and use a Sony eReader, for instance. And vice versa. No such luck if I buy a Kindle book, though. I have to have a Kindle.)
Apple did Amazon a favour by stepping in and gathering the publishers together. Now Apple's lost a lawsuit, but as far as I know, the agency model will still persist. Amazon dodged a bullet there.
Re:Amazon should send Apple a gift basket (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Amazon should send Apple a gift basket (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a false equivalence. If I want a widget that Wal-Mart sells, it's not necessarily the case I that I need only buy Brand-X widgets. Brand-Y widgets, which Target sells, are probably just as good.
If I want to buy Game of Thrones, I can't buy some off-label Game of Thrones and get the same thing. They're not equivalent. If Amazon is selling it at lower than their cost basically 100% of the time, how can a competitor hope to break into the market?
Basically, they can't. Not in a meaningful fashion. This is why Amazon still rules the roost when it comes to book sales.
Amazon's wrong doesn't absolve Apple in particular; the judge thinks what Apple was doing was shady, and so I'll accept that decision since they know more about the legality of such things than I do. I maintain, however, that given the course that Amazon was on, they would've been subject to an anti-trust trial at some point. They were using their near monopoly position to maintain that position and keep other entrants out of the marketplace. If sales are anything to go on, they were doing a good job.
Next? (Score:2)
So now can we work on the major publishers as well?
Another Flamewar . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Summarized:
Apple got them to agree to sell the books to them at X percentage of the sale price.
They also negotiated that if someone else can sell the book for price N, they have to allow apple to do so, but with Apple's cost still being a percentage of a sale price.
Music Industry:
The music industry was dead-set against selling digital music, DRM or not. Period.
Apple made the heavy DRM concessions up front, but negotiated hard to get a profitable model. By the time digital music was mainstream (through Apple's active marketing/etc.), the music industry was so desperate that they had to turn to Amazon to shake stuff up, and they lost DRM in the process . . .
Amazon had the book industry by the book-bindng . . . don't you think it was just the industry trying to save itself?
Amazon is NOT lillywhite, nor are the book publishers; authors are NOT always compensated for Kindle/Nook editions, the same way that Music Artists don't get a 'fair' (meaning what they SEEMED to agree to previously) cut.
Oh S'hit (Score:2)
Books must then be sold like gasoline at 9/10ths subject to availability, wars and costs not obvious to consumers like IP lawyers, patent suits, web-hosting outages, alternative energy hosting costs, etc...
Kick them out of the market for 5 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Dont nail them for some arbitrary amount that will be isolated and written off by the accountants. Hit them where it really hurts them: deny them the right to compete in a market. That would be a real punishment for them.
After all, they cheated. Let them be forced out of the game for a while. Then when they try to come back in, they will be so far behind they may actually have to offer some benefit to the consumer.
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Evil, by telling you what they're doing and you voluntarily doing choosing their products (which you can export the data out any time)? Explain.
Reducing contrast to confuse older folks and people with bad monitors into clicking ads to make more money is pretty evil in my book.
http://search.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3904125&cid=44103749 [slashdot.org]
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"TWiTfan", eh.
John C. Dvorak, is that you? Still trying to rile the Mac fanboys after 30 years?
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Compare so-called private "trusts" to real-life monopolies with actual power (threat of p
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I don't know what the correct shape of a potato is, but if one plopped out of a big potato-making machine in front of me I'd be quite justified in calling it artificial.
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Actually, given the plethora of eBook reader apps for other formats (even Amazon has an iOS app FFS), even that argument pretty much falls flat. You can still buy your eBooks cheaper elsewhere (or get them for free). Or, you can read PDF files. Or .txt files. Or .doc files.
Re:Abusing their monopoly power (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Abusing their monopoly power (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that "monopoly power" is the ability of *one* player to reset the price above the what would normally be a market price. Since the deal Apple brokered among publishers raised the cost of ebooks across all platforms, the term should apply here.
I disagree. In this market, you had en extremely dominant player with 80-90% market share [cnn.com] selling products at a loss. One of the benefits of this was extending and maintaining the market share of the Kindle eco system, thus raising the barrier to entry to the market. Another was to train customers into a certain price range. Combining these, it is likely that they could later impose these prices on the suppliers.
Apple entering this unstable market gave the unhappy suppliers an option, which they took advantage of. A new player entering a previously almost monopolized market, and still being a by far smaller player - Kindle still has 50-60% of the market [paidcontent.org] - and being hit by anti-trust laws sounds strange to me. Sure, they probably guessed that prices would increase but that was caused by the intrinsics of this specific market with the 800 lb gorilla selling at a loss. While I think Apple's MFN tactic [cnn.com] should be disallowed - at least as far as MFN being applied to the customer price, rather that what Apple would be paying - Amazon also had MFNs in their contracts [cnn.com].
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"I disagree. In this market, you had en extremely dominant player with 80-90% market share [cnn.com] selling products at a loss."
How can this possibly true given that the paperback versions were pretty much always cheaper again and producing a paperback product is always drastically more expensive than producing a digital version.
I think the publishers might have been telling a little white lie about the whole "loss" thing.
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So I guess now all those people who said that Apple bundling their browser with their OS is okay (because, unlike MS, they've not been found guilty of abusing their monopoly) are now going to reverse their stance and admit that Apple is evil too, huh?
No because apple is not in a monopoly position. Microsoft was convicted not just because they bundled a browser but because in doing so they tried to use their monopoly in the desktop to try and gain a monopoly in another market. this is what is called abuse of monopoly.
apple is evil but it is not evil for the same reasons as microsoft.
Ah! No, that is not the case. (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, no company evil and it can't be. A company isn't sentient, the people are.
Group dynamics, dude.
Groups act like a single entity - case in point military. It has been shown time and time again, put a person in a uniform and have them identify with the organization and you can get them to do just about anything. The Nazis were expert at this. (I will bitch slap the first person who improperly invokes Godwin's law on this!)
It's the same with a company. When folks are working for a company, they identify with that company. That's why when speaking to a representative of a company and you slight the company - not them personally - many times they'll get irate as if you DID insult them.
If a company "culture" can be just a like a personality. I mean, why is that the cell providers, satellite tv, airlines, and cable companies, even though they are made up of individuals, treat their customers like garbage and have no problems ripping them off?
It's because of a company personality or "culture".
So, yes a company CAN be Evil.
Re:Ah! No, that is not the case. (Score:5, Funny)
No, a person cannot be evil. Each and every one of the cells in the body can be evil, but the person cannot. A person doesn't exist without cells.
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Almost missed the sarcasm there. :)
For GGP: Corporations already get some of the benefits a person might get. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood)
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Corporations are people!
So's Soylent Green.
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You hire Cole Sear.
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From Wikipedia, Groupthink [wikipedia.org] is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome. So, the fact that a group of people can result in deviant outcomes that would not result from the individuals alone seems to indicate that a "group" (or company) can be evil (or more evil) while the individuals may not be (or be less evil).
Re:one step in a series. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can sell, loan, or even copy a book easily and anonymously. You missed the point.
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Copy a book easily?
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There is one fundamental difference from books vs ebooks: ebooks can be cloned perfectly in a split of a millisecond. Books cannot. This was a limitation of the analog world. Now, in the digital age, this limitation has vanished. It's this change that the GP rambles about in his post, and yes, things have changed. The industry can adapt or suffer. Their call. Litigation and legislation will maintain their old business model only so far. In the end, digital will prevail.
Re:one step in a series. (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one fundamental difference from books vs ebooks: ebooks can be cloned perfectly in a split of a millisecond. Books cannot. This was a limitation of the analog world. Now, in the digital age, this limitation has vanished.
Meh. There's no technology that favors pirates more than it does legitimate publishers. At most there is parity; a publisher can whip up millions of ebooks with minimal effort and cost just as easily as a pirate can. At worst the publisher will have an advantage if only due to being able to work openly.
Before ebooks, pirates could operate printing presses. Before presses, pirates could employ scribes. Before literacy, pirates could memorize the epic poems that were passed down orally.
I fail to see how the landscape has changed so radically. All that's changed is that the up front costs to publish a book quickly and easily -- legitimately or as a pirate -- have dropped a lot.
Re:one step in a series. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me clarify: a publisher can whip up copies of a book as easily or more easily than a pirate can. Yes, the initial creation of the book is difficult and costly, but the marginal cost of each copy thereafter is not greater for the publisher than the pirate merely due to the state to which technology has advanced. I was never addressing the issue of paying for the labor needed to get the book ready to publish to begin with; those sunk costs are not going away and are not too closely linked to publishing technology. Hell, some authors still write books longhand.
For example, if the cheapest way to print a paper book is to use a huge offset press, publishers likely have an advantage over pirates who will either have to conceal their huge illegal printing operation or use inferior techniques, such as xeroxing books one at a time. OTOH, if xeroxing books one at a time somehow happened to become a cheaper means of printing than anything else, the legitimate publishers would have the offset press hauled away, install a bunch of xerox machines, and still not be behind the curve of the pirates.
Digital distribution has greatly reduced the risks, while digital copying has eliminated the investment and greatly increased the profit margin
That only brings pirates toward technological parity. Legitimate publishers are not prohibited from using the latest tools. It may be difficult for them to figure out how to make money whilst selling books over Bit Torrent or whatever the kids are using these days, but they needn't be shackled to the old ways.
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The "fundimental concept of an e-book" is a document format intended for distributing books*; it has nothing to do with DRM and we were using the term back when your go-to standalone reader was a Palm PDA. Rage against the DRM, do but get the facts right.
*There's a reason we don't just use multi-megabyte Word files.
Re:one step in a series. (Score:5, Informative)
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now if we can just get a judge to rule the fundamental concept of an "e-book" is bullshit and nothing more than an encumbered text document designed to peddle locked down e-garbage hardware and fleece the ignorant.
I asked the same thing sitting on Santa's lap last Christmas. He told me he was an "atheist" and he would be pressing charges for the things my ass said to his lap.
Re:Why shouldn't they be free to decide their pric (Score:5, Informative)
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Collusion was never shown. The publishers were never shown to get together on pricing.
Apple had conversations with each publisher individually. Reflected in the different agreements for each publisher.
So, what's the problem then?
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Apparently, you are not a lawyer.
The publishers were shown to "get together" on pricing. It doesn't necessarily mean that they all flew into a conference room all at once and had a meeting scheduled for "price colluding 2013".
But then again, if you really cared about what the problem was, what the facts were, and the law, you would go read the court documents.
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No, they colluded to use a different pricing model than Amazon had forced on them through a near-monopoly position on e-books.
And now, in the end, there is more competition. Welcome to modern-day America, where breaking a monopoly is itself considered to be an anti-competitive practice.
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You have got to be kidding. For a couple years, the entire entry way for a B&N was crowded with Nooks. They were shoving them down peoples' throats more than a Krisha at an airport.
They are not even in the same market. There's no competition. Putting an e-reader on the iPad was even a last-minute thought. Eddie Cue convinced Steve Jobs to do it just before the iP
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Collusion breaks the principle of a free market by removing competition.
How can free individuals interacting voluntarily without violating the rights of others, lead to the loss of others' freedoms? Are you assuming people have a right to buy a product at an affordable price? I do not understand how a free interaction (where rights are not violated) can lead to a non-free market. Isn't it by definition a free market?
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An artificial price is one decided by fiat and not by market forces. By definition, when a trade group decides on a single price, that's an artificial price.
There are no others to set up competing services in this context; the group that decided the prices is composed of every major publisher in the United States.
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If you don't know what market forces are with relation to the price of goods I'm going to have to pull the loud handle on this conversation. Goodbye.
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if, by some weird chance, 17 different publishers were to COMPLETELY INDEPENDENTLY decide that $9.95 was the price point for a book, then there is no collusion.
If on the other hand, those same publishe
Re:Why shouldn't they be free to decide their pric (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you have the same opinion if the oil companies together decided that you should pay $30 a gallon for gas?
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It's laughable that you don't even realize that anti-trust laws are protecting your "individual rights".
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When all beverage manufacturers get together and decide that they are all going to raise prices 5000% because together they have the market cornered, and customers really don't have a choice, then perhaps you will rethink your ideology when sipping that $100 bottle of water. I mean, isn't that fair? It would be something like water $100, coffee $102, starbucks coffee $108, pepsi/coke $101.
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Individuals can set their prices however they want, because they're heterogeneous and competing, i.e. the marketplace is free. A single group cannot be permitted to control an entire market, because that market is no longer free.
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A single group cannot
You mean a group of individuals? Why do those individuals lose their inalienable rights when they enter into voluntary agreements with eachother?
because that market is no longer free
How are individuals made unfree while all interactions remain voluntary?
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hmm.. they could have set their prices higher as individuals, but they didn't.
it's when they form a cartel and decide to do it as a cartel that it becomes a problem with the law. they might just as well have merged into a single monopoly corporation, that would then have been broken up.
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I also do not understand this statement - "artificially raise prices". This assumes there is a correct price for a given product, that sellers know that correct price, and have chosen not to use it. Is that what you are claiming? In a market, the "correct price" is what a buyer and seller are freely willing to agree to, so you could not
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Multiple sellers are not allowed to agree to set a price on products. That isn't as you say "what a buyer and seller are freely willing to agree to", as the seller is not free to agree to anything other than what they already agreed to with the other sellers.
Re:Why shouldn't they be free to decide their pric (Score:5, Informative)
The case had little to do with the 'correct' price of ebooks, and a whole lot to do with elimination of the word 'freely' that you used.
Prior to the agreement Apple made with publishers, the publisher could set their own price that the retailer paid. Nothing wrong with that. In turn, the retailer set their own price that the consumer paid. Nothing wrong with that either.
After the agreement with Apple, the publisher set the price that the consumer paid. Not really anything wrong with that (yet). However, the publishers were still using the retailers to 'sell' the books, but the retailers were no longer able to set the price they asked. Now we have a problem. Why should an agreement that Apple has with a publisher to collect 30% on every sale force Amazon to also take a 30% cut? Why should Amazon not be able to lower the price it's customers pay by taking less than a 30% cut? THAT is where the price fixing comes into play. Amazon used to be able to set the price it's customers pay, and no longer can. That is why the prices are said to be 'artificially' set. There no longer is any competition, as the collusion between Apple and the publishers has eliminated it.
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If all sellers are FREE to determine the price, and they all set the same price, that is not collusion, and is not a problem. The problem arises when the sellers are no longer free to set their own price, which is exactly what this case is about.
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You are not allowed to negotiate with all the other publishers to keep the price artificially high. If you do that, the free market can't do it's job.
So individuals are not allowed to be free, otherwise they will violate eachothers freedoms - by freely and voluntarily agreeing to specific trading requirements?
There is no such thing as an "artificial price", as there is no such thing as a "correct price" for any given product.
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shouldn't Amazon be free to set whatever price they choose for what they sell?
So long as they are not violating any of the voluntary agreements they made with the companies that provide them with their inventory, of course. If Amazon does not like their prices, they do not need to stock their products in its inventory.
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Your idea of a free market is "we make the decisions, but you're free to leave"? What is this, the USSR?
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If you're all following exactly the same plan, for the same objective, you're no longer individuals. You're a single entity. (As far as the market goes.) When that single entity is effectively the entire ebook market, then you have a market controlled by fiat.
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If you're all following exactly the same plan, for the same objective, you're no longer individuals. You're a single entity. (As far as the market goes.)
That is irrelevant to the primary consideration of respecting individual rights. If individuals voluntarily agree with eachother and follow the same free trading plan, they do not forfeit their individual rights to be free to make such agreements.
When that single entity is effectively the entire ebook market, then you have a market controlled by fiat.
"Fiat" - that word does not mean what you think it means. There is no government-enforced decree that forces anyone to buy ebooks. You will not go to jail for buying a competing product - such as a real book, or starting your own publishing firm, or going to the li
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In case you didn't notice, this isn't about the rights of an individual, it's about the rights of an extraordinarily large group.
I don't think you know what fiat means.
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"One persons freedom ends where another persons freedom begins" Apple freedom to negotiate prices with the publishers ends when they limit the freedom of others (Amazon) to do the same
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You're trying to diffuse the point: he consumer got screwed. If practically all providers of a resource (all major book publishers) collude to fix the price the consumer has now choice.
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What competing publishing firm? The heart of the issue is that all of the US's (and the world's) biggest publishers were part of the group. If even a few of them had defected there not only wouldn't have been anything illegal, the collusion would have failed because of competition.
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That's like arguing that if you don't like US law, you can just start up your own country. There's no ground to plant it on, not enough people to start it with, and you have no power with which to defend yourself. As you can see for yourself, the small publishers charging less didn't experience any significant growth when the collusion was in place, and sales did not suffer as one would expect from price elasticity. That strongly implies that normal market forces were overridden by the collusion.
Re:Why shouldn't they be free to decide their pric (Score:5, Insightful)
Books are not a fungible commodity. People don't decide what book to read based on price, they decide based on the book. Yes, if they set the price too high people won't buy it, but that is not the issue here. The issue here is that if you are using other businesses (retailers) to sell your product, then those other businesses should have a say in how much they will sell the product for. That competition has been completely eliminated by this collusion. And the purpose of the collusion was not simply to set the price of the product, but to ensure that a single retailer no longer had to compete on price.
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I am only concerned with whether individual rights are being upheld or violated.
Except we're talking about the "rights" of corporations here, which are government fictions. If Apple wants to give up its corporate form, I'm right there with you. But I rather suspect what they want are the rights of a natural person without the liabilities that come with it. The (theoretical) trade for the corporate protection is the subjugation to regulation that natural persons (should) avoid.
And yes, I realize that man
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Actually, your usage of the terms 'ad hominem', 'appeal to authority' and 'straw man' are more of an appeal to authority (the logical tradition) than whatever you found in the AC's comment. You shouldn't use difficult words when you clearly have no idea what they mean.
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No, he's advocating that government should fix the price of everything because we don't have a free market. It's sort of like saying once you add a drop of lemon juice to 2,000 gallons of water, you can't call it water (with or without flavoring) anymore type mentality.
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Apple's goal is not to sell as many books as possible. Their goal is to make as much money as possible selling books. Selling higher quantities does not mean more profit if you can sell smaller quantities with significantly higher margins. That's Business 101 and there's nothing wrong with that. Their problem was that they drank too much of their own Kool-Aid and thought they could get away with colluding with the publishers to
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You understand that this isn't Apple vs the "publishing biz", right? The publishers were in on it from beginning to end and were set to profit handsomely from the arrangement.
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margin free RDF (Score:2)
Who said they didn't? Apple also knows that you can't peddle a reality distortion field on Korean margins. If their RDF springs a leak in one line of business, the hole could enlarge by the forces of erosion to engulf the entire company. Rest assured Google and the Koreans are dumping abrasive powders into the Apple watershed. I think it was a foregone conclusion that Apple's RDF business model would eventually strike this iceb
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Alternative to Apple's ebooks? They're called "books"
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if this stuff was a problem for you, then you would have jumped ship long time ago.
this doesn't have that much to do with cook anyways, does it?
Re:shortchanged again (Score:4, Informative)
This is 100% true. I don't think I've ever seen a Judge say something like this one did. Seem 100% guarantee of a new trial upon apeal.
Not true. His statement was at a hearing to decide if the case would be thrown out because of lack of evidence. The Judge simply stated the feds had evidence. The Judge made his statement because Apple asked for his opinion at that point. He was required by law to say something.