It's not too much of a surprise since the judge pretty much admitted it was a show trial. The DOJ took Amazon's side and the book publishers all folded. It's odd that the government would take the side of someone with 90% market share who was arguably "dumping" to gain control of the market. This thread really should be in the political section since the whole trial was political (as is application of anti-trust law in general). Each administration has its own priorities as to who to go after.
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Apple Found Guilty of Conspiring to Fix Prices in E-Book Trial [Updated]
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Naw. This is a minor victory for Amazon. In the end, Amazon won't triumph in global domination. Google will eventually crush them under its G-Boots. It might take a few years.
Anti-trust is to protect COMPETITION, which in turn protects the consumers. It is not the government's job to get you a cheaper book, it is their job to make sure companies are competing fairly, which will result in you getting a book at a fair market price. The DoJ's actions don't help you in the long run, they help Amazon, and THAT is not the point of anti-trust law in the US.
You mean everyone being equal under the law, including massive corporations?
Judges can't be lobbied.
I had problems with that graph when I saw it the first time.
First, how come the average price line doesn't rise in accordance with all the individual publisher price increases? Something appears to be wrong.
Then to put it in perspective, it would be helpful to show the same price curves with the apple share of that business filtered out.
I don't know what apples share of that business was, and whether that share skewed the overall market, but this would be a reasonable analysis.
Secondly, this slide is based on prices, a rather static metric, but does not seem to be correlated to actual volumes sold.
High prices are all well and good on such a slide, but with out looking at real sales data, there is no way to tell if the customers pursued any of several alternatives to Apple, or any distributed who increased prices to being it from apples high price point.
BUT THEY GOT TOGETHER HERE!!!
That is the point!!!!
Apple got together with them and the collusion occurred!
ILLEGAL
Wow. Now you're calling me 14. Unable to argue the facts without resorting to name calling.
You're missing the point. There are more publishers than the ones colluding. even as average prices went down in the industry, the prices for ones that made the deal with Apple shot up.
Price is what's at issue. Volume is totally irrelevant.
Because the publishers saw the writing on the ebook wall so to speak that they were all(including Apple) in the wrong.
they had to "persuade" them to do this? how else would apple get its 30%? the money would now be made from raising the higher prices ELSEWHERE because now it would not matter that apple gets its 30% - the prices are higher now across the board!
Imagine APPLE for the beginning just wanted to get the publishers on board with no 30% - i bet you anything that prices would MATCH amazon... but asking for 30% and matching amazon - the publishers would say NO - unless they were CONVINCED somehow or pushed to raise them everywhere so that apple can get its 30%.
this was OBVIOUS! at least to me - I respect your thoughts - its just that every corporation is out to make money and sometimes step out side the bounds - i think we all can agree any corporation is responsible to its SHAREHOLDERS not its customers... thats a byproduct of the former.
Then why is Amazon not being punished for, basically, their entire business plan?
Sorry, but that is nonsense. This is purely the result of lobbying, plain and simple. It was a sham case from the beginning and it's a sham case now.
For the most part - under Amazon's model - the publishers were making more money. They even admitted it in testimony. The reason they went with Apple on this is to diversify and regain a little control. Profit wise - they weren't going to (at least for some time) be better for it. In fact- maybe worse. On eBook sales (I am referring to). Regardless of what AMAZON charged the customer - the publisher got whatever they were asking. Amazon - not the publisher took the hit.
The publishers liked the idea of setting prices because of appearances/mentality that if an eBook cost X, the hard copy shouldn't cost Y. If they were able to set the eBook price higher - then there wouldn't be so much pushback from consumers on hard copy books. Having hard copy books priced at Y made eBooks that much more attractive being lower priced (on Amazon).
You know how much an unused (unsold) eBook costs the publisher and Amazon? Nothing. Compare that with an unused/unsold hard copy book.
This (in my opinion and experience in the publishing industry) was a lot about keeping print alive and profitable.
The whole entire point of antitrust law is to preserve a free and viable market that works in a manner so that it is able to sort things out.
Apple's actions were intended to create a situation of market failure.
Re: Sirius and XM, that's not correct at all. That merger was allowed because the competitive market was seen as something greater than just "satellite radio stations". Thus the merger was not anti-competitive because there were still plenty of ways to access radio content, freely available to pretty much everyone, that were not affected by the merger. That fact is partially demonstrated by the fact that Sirius/XM could not have survived without each other - BECAUSE there were so many other attractive alternatives consumers prefer.
So, instead of the publishers being artificially held down by Amazon, each publisher set their pricing based on the value of their product, so better books cost more than trash? Obviously the market was more competitive because is you notice the total average went down not up.
Interesting comment. It fits into a general view that media/content industries are desperate to keep the old ways in the face of sudden and massive change.