Supposedly this wasn't designed to help or validate Amazon at all, so what does Apple's guilt have to do with Amazon?
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Apple Found Guilty of Conspiring to Fix Prices in E-Book Trial [Updated]
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Supposedly this wasn't designed to help or validate Amazon at all, so what does Apple's guilt have to do with Amazon?
I never said anything remotely like that - or implied it. Do you understand the simplicity here. Apple colluded. They did something illegal and got caught. When or if Amazon is brought up on a charge and found guilty, then I will be just as pleased if justice is served. That day is not today. Again - you'll have to get over that point.
Nope - I love the law - but not an attorney. I mentioned before (in one of my posts) though that I spent several years in the publishing industry...
I shudder to think that you were probably angry that the government prevented AT&T and T-mobile from merging
She saw submitted evidence before she made that remark.
All the fan boys and girls must have a massive short fall in reading comprehension, Amazon buys the books they sell at wholesale from publishers (publishers have been paid) if the publishers dont like what amazon charges, they can quit selling books to amazon. Amazon is spending millions of dollars on inventory, because they are a major book retailer, apple buys zero books and lets publishers sell them directly to consumers through there iBookstore market place at a 30% fee to apple for using the said marketplace, if Apple bought the books with there own money from publishers they could sell them for what ever price they wanted to. Apple won't do this because they're not in the book selling market, they sell Apple devices. Sadly Apple wanted all of Amazon's effort, money and market without assuming any of the risk of being a book retailer and decided to collude with the publishers to choke Amazon out of the eBook market.
At the end of the day that might be bad for innovation. Amazon's strategy debased the value of eBooks. A race to the bottom leads to commoditization, which isn't ideal when it comes to intellectual property.
None. My point. This isn't about Amazon. Why you and others keep mentioning amazon is silly to me.
This case was about Apple and the publishers. They colluded. Apple was found guilty. That's where we are today.
This is nonsensical. I'm accusing them of doing something wrong. Hard for someone to be found having done something wrong before they are accused. Oh that's right, our benevolent overlords at the DoJ will just watch everything and let us know if there are issues we should care about. Otherwise don't question it, the government will decide right and wrong.
Wrong, she did looked at some evidence and after looking at it she said that
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/23/us-usa-apple-ebooks-idUSBRE94M19A20130523
Amazon actually is not a particularly profitable company. I'm not sure what their ultimate end-game is. They have a very high market capitalization supported by almost no record of profitability. Something's gotta give. The market seems to be betting that once Amazon has secured markets they'll eventually raise prices.
No. Amazon's strategy (as I mentioned several pages back) did not debase the value of eBooks. It debased the value of PRINT books. Which is why publishers were likely excited about Apple's model even though they would be losing money (most likely) on eBooks in comparison to Amazon's model.
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There will always be competition.
But the reason the DOJ took the case in the first place was that the publishers and Apple were supposedly "victimizing" Amazon by forcing them away from the wholesale model.
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Well, there wasn't much competition in the eBook market before Apple got involved. Amazon had 90%.
You're accusing them without a ****ing proof and you don't want to accept that DoJ found nothing. You have decided that Amazon is guilty, period, so, have a good day and believe what you want, reality won't change
The main line of this discussion is about Apple's guilt. Several of us have posited that, DESPITE the letter of the law, it was applied improperly here to the detriment of Apple and the benefit of Amazon. Connected now?
Your new reasonable position on Amazon had not appeared in earlier comments. What had appeared was the belief that Amazon should not be subject to anti-trust regulation because the market would correct any negative impacts. That is not a very tenable position, which may be why you've switched it up a bit.
What about Apple and the music industry? Do you fault Apple for being wildy successful?
Because that statement is incorrect. MFN means you have to sell your app with the lowest price to apple.
Is example would basically be if I sold a mystery novel cheaper on amazon I would have to lower my price of all mystery novels everywhere.
Maybe try it without swearing? I missed your point in all the stars.
Dissenting opinions really are upsetting, aren't they? God forbid someone not have faith that the government always makes the right decisions and uses the law in the right way.
Government-sanctioned oligopolies aren't any better. The FCC is the main reason we had a telephone monopoly in the first place.
As it stands, we still have Verizon, AT&T, and everyone else fighting over scraps. Sprint/Softbank is a much more credible threat than T-Mobile ever will be.
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Exactly. It's not like there isn't enough recent evidence of government agencies misbehaving.
Sorry, but one does not just simply enter the book selling business. There are barriers to entry. If you believe that the free enterprise exists in every industry then I have a bridge to sell you. If you believe that a monopoly cannot present a barrier to entry then you are a fool.
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The reason why we have an oligopoly in the wireless industry isn't because of the government, in fact, it's been the government who has decreased it's power (see: the phone porting law and disallowing the AT&T/T-mobile merger).
The wireless industry has high fixed capital costs and the barrier to entry is extremely high. Also, they do underhanded things like making sure phones aren't interoperable between carriers.
I didn't switch anything.
When someone theorized that Amazon would kill competition and then jack up prices I stated clearly that wasn't likely to happen because another entity would enter the market and keep prices low.
My opinion hasn't changed.
I might be more of an anomaly here at MR. I can't say I am 100% unbiased. But compared to many - I just love tech and the right tool for the right job. No "alliance" and I believe all companies are in business to make money - and that they only care about customers as a means to make that money. Call me cynical
Point is - whatever company you want to fill in the blank with - if they acted illegally and were caught - to me - that's justice. And I also believe that it's extremely likely - and dare I say "fact" - that every company has engaged in questionable/potentially illegal activity at one point or another.
But again - irrelevant. This is about Apple colluding. Whatever the "good" cause it might have been for (I don't believe Apple was really doing it for altruistic reasons anyway) it was illegal. I have not made any comments on whether I believe they should or should not have done it. I have posted alternative options they could have taken instead.
I don't fault anyone for being successful. I don't think it serves our interests to have the DOJ taking sides.
Just so we know, your response is based entirely in ideology, and not at all in the law as it has existed for over 120 years. Not only is it based in ideology, it's based in pre-19th century ideology. Just so we know from where we are speaking.
"Monopoly" (actually, abuse of market power) is just one of the behaviors that are prohibited by the Sherman Act. Collusion to restrain trade is another abuse specifically covered by the act. Not only are these abuses prohibited by law "in this country," they are prohibited in every other advanced nation, and in fact antitrust laws in the U.S. are not only substantially weaker, they are also substantially less vigorously enforced in the U.S. than they are elsewhere.
Finally, it clearly did make sense for the government to pursue this case, if only because they won on the facts and the law. Anyone who knew about both could have predicted the outcome, and some of us did.
You're clearly right. Why would any business enter a market then?
Ignoring the sarcasm, do you have an answer?
There's a lot of assumptions in that explanation that have nothing to do with the quote that I questioned. And actually the quote contradicts your point in that Apple was willing to move forward with only three publishers.
LOL. OK, I've taken Business 101. And Economics 101, 102, 103... If the markets worked as well as you say, well, we really wouldn't need Anti-Trust, would we.
But seriously, there are a lot of reasons markets become uncompetitive, one of the main being customer switching barriers. Once the customer buys in, it's hard to switch. You know that happened with Windows, right?
Currently Amazon doesn't have switching barriers anything like Windows, but it's large market share gives it the opportunity to create some. Let's try, for example, Kindle. How the heck do they manage to sell that great little devices at such an extremely low cost, huh? I have four of them, for my family, as well as my iPad. Now I want to buy an eBook. Boy, the iBook version looks good, but... it only runs on my iPad. But if I buy my eBook from azaon, it runs on both the Kindle and the iPad. So which would I buy? It will never run on my Kindle, which is a closed device-- and never will, as the whole point of the Kindle is to lock you in to Amazon's eBooks.
I see examples all over the place. Amazon Prime is a whole bundle of services-- the "pull" is cheap, fast shipping, but now you get their streaming services, which make the competitive streaming services an extra cost for the consumer-- I'm already getting one "free", why pay for another? Small business? You want an online retail presence-- Amazon, even if you have your own hosted site. These are just single examples, and none by itself overwhelmingly scary, but it adds up.
Maybe I see things different because I'm in the IT industry, and I'm seeing how Amazon is gobbling up share in IT services and logistics... they seem to be everywhere, andtheir presence is growing. I do not like to see so much concentrated economic power; this is where markets break down.
That's called economics, too; it's in the second half of the book, past the part you read, Sam.