DOJ Says Publishers Are Again Colluding in Objecting to Proposed Apple Penalty in E-Book Case

[ChrisA]

It is VERY easy to see what true compitition would do to prices of ebooks. Just looks the the App Store. Prices will plummet. Every single author will try and under cut all the others until many of them are free.

The published really don't want true competition. eBooks should cost less then paper backs. When that happens you will know the pricing is fair.

 

[Plutonius]

Anyone know what the affect will be on Apple now that the request for a stay has been denied. If Apple pays a penalty now along with civil suits, what happens if the original verdict is overturned in appeals ?

Note - Please don't comment if the appeal will be successful or unsuccessful. I'm just curious what happens if the verdict is overturned and Apple is subject to the DOJ demands and civil suits in the mean time. Can they counter sue for money lost or are they SOL ?

 

[charlituna]

Ugh, what a mess. On one hand, Apple and the publishers did collude to bring up prices,

Says the judge. But that doesn't make it truly fact.

Which is kind of the point behind Apple appealing

----------

oh apple, if only you hadn't committed the act you could avoid all this.

As by 'the act' you mean ever started a book store?

----------

The problem here is that Apple did illegally collude with the publishers to usurp Amazon's lead in eBooks.

So you were there? In the room? During the conversations?

Do tell us more.

----------

The problem here is that Apple did illegally collude with the publishers to usurp Amazon's lead in eBooks.

So you were there? In the room? During the conversations?

Do tell us more.

 

[mbh]

Now you understand the Amazon e-book model. And the DOJ has a problem with ... wait for it ... Apple.

It would be fun to see what would happen if Apple took the loss and undercut Amazon's prices to consumers by 50% across the board. Would the DOJ allow this, or go after Apple for trying to monopolize the market -- first sued for causing prices to go up, then sued for causing prices to go down?

 

[Illusion986]

"Edit"

 

[linuxcooldude]

It would be fun to see what would happen if Apple took the loss and undercut Amazon's prices to consumers by 50% across the board. Would the DOJ allow this, or go after Apple for trying to monopolize the market -- first sued for causing prices to go up, then sued for causing prices to go down?

This is what hoped Apple would do. They probably could not drop the price excessively or risk being looked at as predatory pricing. Rather reducing the price just under Amazons price on best sellers and if Amazon did the same reduce the price even more. Eventually Apple would win in the end as Amazon could not keep up.

Its doubtful if the DOJ could pursue this as Amazon was the one who originally was undercutting in the first place.

 

[MacinDoc]

What, the DOJ has now declared that disagreeing with its assertions constitutes "collusion" and is illegal? I weep for freedom of speech. Just curious, does the DOJ operate for the government of the United States, or for the government of North Korea?

Can't blame the publishers for speaking out against the DOJ. The terms of its proposed remedy violate the terms it agreed to with the publishers when it dropped charges against them in exchange for their testimony against Apple.

And nuckinfutz, the reason that the DOJ won the case was that it wasn't actually required by the judge to prove anything. Its star witnesses repeatedly failed to support its case, but being a regulatory agency, the DOJ didn't face the same burden of proof as other plaintiffs do. I mean, seriously, its best evidence was an email that was never sent in the form in which it was presented in the trial, coming from a witness who couldn't be cross-examined because he is dead, and from a graph that only showed that for a brief time, the price of bestseller ebooks went up, but intentionally failed to show that if all ebooks were included (weighted based on sales), and not just best-sellers, that the average price of ebooks actually fell after Apple entered the market. I'm surprised that the judge allowed the DOJ to enter such biased, cherry-picked statistics into evidence, but then again, this is the same judge who offered an opinion on the case before even hearing all of the evidence.

I'm certainly no lawyer, but I think there is a decent chance that Apple will win its appeal of this case. If that was the case, could Apple sue the DOJ for pushing for a penalty that would seriously and irreversibly harm the company, while the case was awaiting appeal? The whole stance of the DOJ regarding this issue seems overly aggressive. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I was, I would probably think that the whole situation reeked of corruption.

 

[Oletros]

I think what he's saying is that there are two possible reasons for the "loss leader" tactic.

If the company is doing it purely to bring you in store and the sales are short lived, but the company is profitable and competitive, thats one thing.

But if the company uses a large reserve of cash, goes into the negatives and undercuts everyone with the sole purpose fo driving everyone who can't rely on reserves out of business. it is predatory.

P.S. just because I agree with the DOJ's ruling on this case, doesn't arbitrarily mean I think Amazon is innocent of predatory pricing either. I would hope (probably in vain) that if Apple is being held to a certain level of scrutiny than so should Amazon in their own manipulations of the market.

DoJ scrutinized Amazon and concluded that the ebook division was profitable since day one and they didn't found any predatory tactic

 

[the8thark]

So if they went to court and lost, in his view, the company could be forced out of business. The risk was too high and they settled, even though they did not feel they were guilty!

The DoJ's proposal for dealing with Apple now oversteps the agreements with the publishers who settled, they complain about it (as they are being punished beyond their prior settlements) and then the DoJ uses their complaints as more proof that they are conspiring??? LOL, seriously? It should have been expected.

With the knowledge that the innocent are convicted in courts today - Bradley Manning is a good example of this. And the fact that if the innocent party is convicted, it could bankrupt his business, the little guy just gives in to save his business.

And that is exactly how guilty big business wins through the courts.

 

[gnipgnop]

How about DOJ investigate
- Amazon's predatory monopoly
- high health care price in the US
- Google / Samsung using SEPs as weapons

Especially the health care industry. Prices have been rising at roughly twice the rate of inflation for decades and yet a $3 price increase on ebooks (that even the Justice Department would have to admit didn't really apply across the board) gets all the attention. Bizarre priorities at best. Nobody has ever claimed that the cost of ebooks was going to drag down the national economy.

 

[liavman]

Eric Holder, and even the head of the Anti-Trust Division, are political appointees. As such, they are not supposed to intercede in individual cases without serious justification. The political appointees are supposed to set general policies (in accordance with laws established by Congress), but it is up to civil servants to determine how they are carried out. Otherwise there would be a hue and cry about how the AG is politicizing the DOJ; and rightfully so.

Yes, in theory.

There is always discretion at play and decisions to be made on which cases to pursue. Because once started, due to the adversarial system of justice we have, things can get nasty. What general public considers as fair, moral, responsible etc. need not necessarily apply since the objective for the justice department civil servants is to win. That can be politically uncomfortable to a whole lot of people. That is when the interface between politicians and civil servants come into play. ( interface - euphemism for interference )

In the extreme case, if there is suspicion of prosecutorial abuse, which I think the substance of this article indicates, congressional committee ( with the nudge of some lobbyists ) can hassle the AG in many ways. What is a good rationale that always works: Jobs. California is an important state for a lot of politicians, big and small.

 

[gnasher729]

It would be fun to see what would happen if Apple took the loss and undercut Amazon's prices to consumers by 50% across the board. Would the DOJ allow this, or go after Apple for trying to monopolize the market -- first sued for causing prices to go up, then sued for causing prices to go down?

It depends. The main question is why Apple got convicted.

Was it because they colluded with publishers?
Was it because Amazon handed over some money to the right person?
Was it because Apple has $100bn in profits outside the USA?
Was it because Apple doesn't give the NSA access to all your data?

----------

What, the DOJ has now declared that disagreeing with its assertions constitutes "collusion" and is illegal? I weep for freedom of speech. Just curious, does the DOJ operate for the government of the United States, or for the government of North Korea?

Microsoft was basically saved ten years ago or so by the judge making comments in public that he shouldn't have made. (That is independent of whether you think Microsoft was guilty or not). And I think this is going in the same direction.

 

[Solomani]

I thought that was called "dumping" and is illegal. It's only used as a means to crush competition by making it impossible for any other business to compete, while Amazon can afford to take the loss for a while until the other guys go out of business.

Walmart has been guilty of the same in retail. Many (local) small retail businesses are annihilated whenever Walmart moves into their neighborhood. Not to say that Walmart in itself is a bad institution, because there is certainly a need/demand for "lowest common denominator Chinese cheap-labor retail pricing"... but just allowing Walmart to move into any commercial zone without some pre-planning will often spell the end for many other retail shops nearby.

 

[IGregory]

By force of government and regulatory agency "coersion". No.

Our "anti-trust" laws are being misused and are over-burdensome to begin with, and what's worse, usually completed decades after it's too late (Standard Oil, IBM, Microsoft). Now regulators have discovered they can do things proactively because they have unilateral power under the law. That is anti-constitutional and anti-American. I'm sorry.

BTW breaking up Standard oil caused the Arab (kingdom) states to have a monopoly instead so they formed OPEC. We exported OUR monopoly, which was a "benevolent dictator" (and to our advantage), to Arabia.

Sometimes right trumps some made up law. Virtually always the actual private sector outcomes trumps the government deciding things, or the government regulating the private sector, leading to wild outcomes (1979, 1999, 2008, etc.)

i hope you have legal training to opine on what's constitutional and what isn't. Otherwise, I will chime in and give my mis/unformed opinion.

 

[pubwvj]

Ah, so objecting to the government's strong handed behavior using your freedom of speech is a criminal activity. Gotcha. In Vermont the Attorney General is using this tactic against citizens too.