How would people feel if 5 of the 6 Major Hollywood Studio got together and fix the price of Blu-Ray?
No matter where you go (best buy, Walmart, Target, Amazon etc...) the PRICE WILL BE THE SAME. No retail competition whatsoever.
That's exactly what 5 of the 6 Major Publishers did. Even Steve Jobs admitted that the Publishers fixed the price. And a publishing CEO said that Steve Jobs was STUPID to admit that. The DOJ used the video as evidence.
Mossberg: why should she buy a book for $14.99 on your device [iPad] when she can buy one for $9.99 at Amazon [inaudible]?”
Steve Jobs: “Well, that won’t be the case.”
Mossberg: “You mean you [iBooks] won’t be $14.99 or they [Amazon] won’t be $9.99?”
Steve Jobs: “The prices will be the same.” '
Steve Jobs had just wrapped up his Jan. 27 introduction of the iPad and iBookstore when the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg got his ear in the post-keynote press scrum.
Why, Mossberg asked Jobs, would anyone buy an e-book from Apple for $14.99 when they could buy the same book from Amazon (AMZN) for $9.99?
"That won't be the case," Jobs replied after a pause. "The prices will be the same."
Jobs went on to predict that the publishers would "actually withhold their books from Amazon ... because they're not happy with the price."
That, according to the Department of Justice, is direct evidence that Apple conspired with the publishers to raise the price of e-books, in violation of the Sherman antitrust act. It entered an edited version of the video into evidence in U.S.A. v. Apple as Plaintiffs Exhibit 607, along with an e-mail exchange between Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, and Elisa Rivlin, then the company's general counsel.
"I can't believe that Jobs made the statement," Rivlin wrote. "Incredibly stupid."