You forgot to add that "apology" Apple wrote on its web site that basically said a judge was an idiot and samsung phones are not cool. LOL.
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Court Denies Apple's Request to Remove Compliance Monitor in E-Book Antitrust Case
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You forgot to add that "apology" Apple wrote on its web site that basically said a judge was an idiot and samsung phones are not cool. LOL.
I agree that the guy appointed by court is as greedy as hell. He wants Apple´s pile of cash all for himself... God...He is just a lawyer and wants to make more than the President itself ( Or more than the Rolling Stones
)I think Apple is against totally of slave labour and pointed out many times. I think some people simply becomes annoyed when the companies do as the first rule of business , they took their factories where its cheaper ( always following local rules and regulations, tax policies, and minimum wages)
We could say slave labour if Apple or any other company would underpay or wouldnt comply with the countries rules & regulations and would try to abuse those to gain more profit.
For all those: blame the country China and its regulations... Apple just comply within the countries regulation.
Thats my point of view
Regards
WoW, what an absolutely biased piece of garbage. That article is so inaccurate it's ridiculous. I'm an Apple user (MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iPhone, iPad), but I also read e-books and I assure you that the price of books from the big 5 did go up drastically with the introduction of the agency model (check out the comments on the Salon article).
I ended up going back to books printed on paper as they we're cheaper (which makes no sense, but since traditional B&M deals the distributor sells the books to the retailer at a fixed price, and the retailer can sell them for whatever amount they want, they ended up being cheaper). So if Amazon wanted to only make a few pennies on each sale (or lose money for that matter, and don't say just Amazon does it, check out every Black Friday sale) they we're allowed to. This allows for true competition versus every single retailer having the exact same price.
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Let's flip that second paragraph around - as a lawyer, if any, ANY, of his statements in that brief are untrue, if that document was provided to the court as evidence, wouldn't that be perjury or similar, and cause for disbarment?
Source? Everything I've read shows the prices of best sellers going up, but the average price of eBooks as a whole going down.
Retail competition is not the only acceptable form of market competition. With agency pricing, publishers were still engaged in "true" competition with each other.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...book-prices-this-chart-shows-how-they-did-it/
The way the SALON article came up with an overall lowering was by including self-published e-books prices (which typically sell for extremely low, and self publishing has increased dramatically over the past few years).
Apple's agency model (for the scope of this article/lawsuit) had NOTHING to do with the increase in self-publishing and is not accurate to include.
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Your data is for prices at Amazon!As I (and SALON) said, the overall average price of eBooks came down.
Funny how when we discuss Amazon's predatory pricing, the counter argument is that we have to look at eBooks as a whole. But when we discuss these price fixing claims, we only look at a certain subset of books.
Only because it doesn't fit your point. The increased competition that resulted from agency pricing could very well have impacted the rise in self publishing.
The Agency pricing specific to this lawsuit dictates that the prices are the same at all retailers (or higher, if I have read the contracts properly, so the fact that these are for Amazon is mute, it would reflect the pricing of the entire industry for the 5 publishing houses involved in the lawsuit).
1. To show an increase, you need a before and after. That explanation doesn't apply to prices before Apple entered the market.
2. That assumes that the rest of the industry sells the exact same mix of products as Amazon.
I do find it rather amusing that both Salon and the Wall Street Journal are on the same side of this argument. Talk about opposite ends of the viewpoint on business spectrum.
Though really (and this is getting back to the original case, not the monitor that this article is about), taking into account Amazon's piece of the ebook pie (then and now) and that what they were doing prior to the agency model thing was, explicitly, selling ebooks at a flat-cost loss, it would be pretty much impossible to see their position prior to Apple entering the market as anything but that of a predator attempting to establish a monopoly.
When you are a big reseller selling products at a loss (and going so far as to pull ALL of a publisher's books, including physical ones, from the largest bookstore on earth when they refuse to play the game--don't forget Amazon did that) subsidized by income from your existing profitable business, it doesn't take a lot of business acumen to figure out what the endgame is.
Though really (and this is getting back to the original case, not the monitor that this article is about), taking into account Amazon's piece of the ebook pie (then and now) and that what they were doing prior to the agency model thing was, explicitly, selling ebooks at a flat-cost loss, it would be pretty much impossible to see their position prior to Apple entering the market as anything but that of a predator attempting to establish a monopoly.
When you are a big reseller selling products at a loss (and going so far as to pull ALL of a publisher's books, including physical ones, from the largest bookstore on earth when they refuse to play the game--don't forget Amazon did that) subsidized by income from your existing profitable business, it doesn't take a lot of business acumen to figure out what the endgame is.
Prior to the introduciton of the Agency Model, Amazon was only selling Best Sellers at 9.99 (as a Loss Leader to promote the sale of their Kindle). They weren't selling ALL books at a loss.
Correct, however the discussion we're having is whether or not the prices increased during the time they we're in place. Everyone wants to point out that the overall average price of an e-book decreased (which it did, thanks to the massive increase in self-publishing), however the average price of a book from the 5 publishing houses involved didn't decrease, they went up (the point of reference is using Amazon to show pre and post agency model pricing which people argue is also invalid, but I'm not sure there we're any other e-book retailers prior to the switch to the Agency model that had enough of a market share to have affected this chart however).
Either way, it all comes down to which side of the fence you're on. I was a Kindle user prior to the switch, to me the prices went up (to the point that I switched back to purchasing books in print, because they we're in most cases cheaper then the e-book version (as I tend to read best sellers when they first come out)). It never made any sense to me that a Hard Cover book should cost less than an e-book, but that's exactly what happened.
Maybe judges should do more on the HDD and x86 CPU duopolies and less on wasting taxpayer money on things that have no impact on the economy at all.
It's always a good sign for a rational discussion when someone preemptively dismisses anyone that disagrees with them as a fanboy.
I think the issue is that the guy is an AUDITOR for compliance, not an investigator. His job should be to review contracts with publishers and make sure those follow the court's rules. That's pretty straight forward. You certainly don't get to blow off Apple's lawyers and just wander around interviewing people without the company's notice... That alone is some pretty serious overstepping.
No, of course they weren't. But they're called "best sellers" for a reason. The point was that they were trying to undercut the entire book pricing scheme by pricing the most popular books under cost, and setting a flat cost for everything else so people would just start assuming "ebooks cost $10".
You could technically buy an older book from another ebook store for less than $10 at that point, but since most of what people buy is bestsellers (again, they're called that for a reason), and most people are probably going to lock themselves into one system (particularly if they go with a hardware device like a Kindle), it's a no-brainer to go with the store that offers the expensive new stuff for the least money.
And if you keep that up long enough, eventually you have no competition and you've devalued bestsellers down to the price point you were aiming for.
Which is the whole point of establishing a monopoly; you don't want to charge less forever for everything, you just need to do it long enough with enough products to drive your competitors out of the market, at which point you can do whatever you want because you've got a monopoly.
Let's not forget that Amazon did this back in 2010 during the period the antitrust suit deals with. When Amazon got huffy about Macmillan wanting to charge more for bestseller ebooks, they pulled everything of Macmillan's from their store, hardcopy included. If you are Amazon, the biggest bookstore on earth, that is not a small thing to do to a publisher to use as a club to get them to do what you want.
Or in 2012, when Amazon pulled every ebook from a smaller publisher because they didn't want to lower their prices after Amazon had been forced into the agency model.
On one hand, Amazon is indeed trying to lower the prices of at least some ebooks in the short term. On the other, they've demonstrated a willingness to resort to brute-force tactics to achieve that, and I'll believe their altruistic motives when I see them with less than 80% of the market.
This situation is what boggles my mind about the DOJ's logic. Even if you stipulate to the DOJ's collusion claims, somehow, one company controlling pricing for 90% of the market is preferable to 5 companies with less than 40% of the market working together to make a one time change to the system. A change that was immediately followed by more competition within the market.
And yet while in the middle of prosecuting Apple for their involvement in the collusion among these 5 companies with 40% of the market, the DOJ approves the mergers of the top 2 publishers giving the new company control of 30+% of the market. Baffling.
I haven't bought many ebooks. Mainly because I tend to look at not-current-bestseller books, and they were always overpriced, IMO. It was always cheaper to pick up a paperback, every single time I shopped. (and sometimes hardcover) Before, after, during this saga.
Maybe some people with different buying habits don't like being ignored by your ballistic comments. Are you sure you believe the sentence I highlighted?
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Right hand, meet left hand.
Sorry, but I am far from being naive. It is Apple legal that leaks majority of miss information "here and there" and hoping masses will buy their lies and help with forming public opinion. This is by far not even close to government activity you referring to in your argument - contracting offices. Those type of corruption exists on all government levels in any country. Judges are not in routine business of giving contracts.
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But that's not what they asked for, they asked for the removal of the monitor with no one to replace them....essentially they want to not have a monitor.
As for if Apple manipulated the market to raise the prices, they absolutely did and the DOJ is right to nail them for it. The bottom line is that prior to Apple coming along, the eBook retailers set the prices, much like they do for physical books. There was always a MSRP and dollar per book that the retailer had to pay for the book (again, just like physical books), but ultimately it was up to the retailer to determine how much profit or loss they wanted on each book, same as physical books.
Apple comes along and says to the publishers, if you sign an agreement with us saying you won't allow your eBooks to be sold for anything less than what you charge on our site, we will let you set the price and take a cut. By doing so, you can charge more for each book and make more money, plus reduce the number of people buying new releases on eBook format just because they are cheaper.
So, yes, Apple and the other companies did violate Antitrust laws and no, contrary to popular belief Amazon wasn't the only major player in eBooks before Apple decided to join in.
Absolutely? And yet, according to the judge, none of what you described is illegal.
Source? Everything I've seen puts Amazon's eBook share at 90% before Apple entered the market.
I have a question for you Americans. If America was supposed to be all about checks and balances, why is it not possible for citizens to petition another court to have a corrupt judge put on trial and possibly fired from their job? Are they above the law?
If you can impeach the president, it should be possible to impeach a judge.
If you can impeach the president, it should be possible to impeach a judge.