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So funny that when Apple is accused of doing wrong, or actually does wrong, so many of you jump to defend them like they are perfect and get all upset like its YOU being accused.

Seriously? Apple is probably guilty, same with Amazon and all the other retailers. Businesses WORSHIP money.
 
So what we have is Apple and it's gifted talented lawyers against the Appointee and his over price billable rates?

What's the problem? Did he think for one moment that he was going to be given the golden spoon and welcomed into the halls of Apple?

Its new years eve and this is all that's out there for Apple ?

Let's skip iPhone 6 and goto iPhoneiPad7 all in one
 
before: ebook prices from the 5 Major Publishers were fixed. No competition between ebook retailers

now: price competition is restored. Lot of competition.

Result: Prices went down.
 
I just bought Doctor Sleep by Stephen King for $7.99 on Amazon. The Apple model would have been at $12.99 or more, forcing me to buy the physical book.
 
Wonder if the external compliance monitor is secretly being paid by Samsung to ferret out secret Apple plans for 2014 and beyond? Or just get dirt on Apple that Samsung can use to sue? Or maybe Samsung is just paying him to annoy Apple?

:D:D:D:D:D:D

because it is a joke, isn't?
 
So funny that when Apple is accused of doing wrong, or actually does wrong, so many of you jump to defend them like they are perfect and get all upset like its YOU being accused.

Seriously? Apple is probably guilty, same with Amazon and all the other retailers. Businesses WORSHIP money.

I agree and the funny thing is Amazon was not found guilty of anything when they were being investigated.

Apple fanboys to the max LOL
 
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."
 
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So he admits that the investigation is coming after the judgment. Should prove to be a good piece of evidence to get a successful appeal.

I think he means investigation that they're complying to the judgement.
 
Apple is such a crooked company. Everything is all smiles and warm and fuzzy on the outside, on the inside, the devil is operating.

It's not that they're crooked, it's that they are becoming less and less the innovator that they were when Steve Jobs was alive, and more simply seeking to maximize profits based on his groundwork. There is nothing illegal about that necessarily, but if they participated in price-fixing, that would be illegal, and not cooperating with the monitor certainly (rightly or wrongly) makes it seem like they have something to hide. Not something you want to see from ANY company, but particularly disappointing from a (formerly) visionary company like Apple.

But times change, I guess.
 
Apple can be profitable selling ebooks. It's just won't be at 30% margin but at low margin instead.

The DOJ found that:

"When Amazon launched its Kindle device, it offered newly released and bestselling e-books to consumers for $9.99. At that time, Publisher Defendants routinely wholesaled those e-books for about that same price, which typically was less than the wholesale price of the hardcover versions of the same titles, reflecting publisher cost savings associated with the electronic format. From the time of its launch, Amazon's e-book distribution business has been consistently profitable, even when substantially discounting some newly released and bestselling titles."




This pretty much sum up Apple motive:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/2013/the-e-book-conspiracy-comes-to-a-close/

PG was interested in the professor’s quote:

Otherwise, Picker said, it’s not clear how Apple could have behaved differently, since it “needed to get a bunch of books for the bookstore and it needed to make sure it wasn’t going to face a price disadvantage” against Amazon.

How about competing with Amazon on price? Did that ever occur to Apple?

But that’s not Apple’s style. As the court’s opinion stated, Apple wanted to get into a new business – selling ebooks – but it didn’t want to lose any money in the process. That’s a great way of starting a business if you can get it – all profit and no loss.

Apple seems to have a sense of entitlement about profits, even to the point of violating the law to protect them. Amazon doesn’t.

Which one do you think provides better deals for consumers?




Apple want to gain market share against Amazon in ebook. It has two options

1) compete with Amazon on price = very low margin
2) eliminate pricing competition with Amazon = same price everywhere = high margin

Apple chose option 2 and in order to get there, it broke the law to do it.
 
Like Apple did with the Samsung case or Google did with the Oracle case? Or we accuse of bribery just when we don't like the outcome

LOL tell him

All I know is I was a huge ebook buyer. When Apple began its dealings with publishers, ebook prices skyrocketed, many ABOVE paperbacks! After the trial prices came down to more competitive levels.
 
Previous article!

The previous article about this guy complaining about Apple management doesn't make sense. Because he wants to interview Jony Ive as part of his investigation. It doesn't make sense because Jony has nothing to do with the case in my opinion. During that period Jony is just a hardware guy as we all know that secretly colaborating with his team building prototypes for future Apple products. If anything more than this guy know about Jony's involvement for this matter is beyond my understanding. What is the point why he needs to go after Jony and maybe made so much attempts trying make an appointment with him. Maybe that's where all his waiting time charging Apple ridiculous amount of money for his service. There are more relevant higher management people he could have spent his time and know more about the situation. Not Jony! IMHO!
 
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-e-book-price-conspiracy-in-the-judges-words/

Amazon Kindle Content VP Russell Grandinetti testified at trial that “f it had been only Macmillan demanding agency, we would not have negotiated an agency contract with them. But having heard the same demand for agency terms coming from all the publishers in such close proximity... we really had no choice but to negotiate the best agency contracts we could with these five publishers.”

In Cote's view, this was nothing less than a concerted effort to raise prices—a conspiracy. She summarized Apple's responsibility for the whole situation this way:


The judge view:

A chief stumbling block to raising e-book prices was the Publishers’ fear that Amazon would retaliate against any Publisher who pressured it to raise prices. Each of them could also expect to lose substantial sales if they unilaterally raised the prices of their own e-books and none of their competitors followed suit. This is where Apple’s participation in the conspiracy proved essential. It assured each Publisher Defendant that it would only move forward if a critical mass of the major publishing houses agreed to its agency terms. It promised each Publisher Defendant that it was getting identical terms in its Agreement in every material way. It kept each Publisher Defendant apprised of how many others had agreed to execute Apple’s Agreements. As Cue acknowledged at trial, “I just wanted to assure them that they weren’t going to be alone, so that I would take the fear awa[y] of the Amazon retribution that they were all afraid of.” As a result, the Publisher Defendants understood that each of them shared the same set of risks and rewards.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...d6258e-e966-11e2-818e-aa29e855f3ab_story.html

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said Apple knew that no publisher could risk acting alone to try to eliminate Amazon.com’s $9.99 price for the most popular e-books so it “created a mechanism and environment that enabled them to act together in a matter of weeks to eliminate all retail price competition for their e-books.”

The Manhattan jurist added: “The evidence is overwhelming that Apple knew of the unlawful aims of the conspiracy and joined the conspiracy with the specific intent to help it succeed.”

The publishers knew that they need at least 4 of them working together in order to force Amazon off wholesale.


DOJ also got this as evidence.
double-delete-doj-640x473.png
 
Classic collusion. I'm surprised that there are so much evidence left behind

http://www.scribd.com/doc/145486131/U-S-v-Apple-Et-Al-Opening-Slides

"You are absolutely correct: we've always known that unless other publishers follow us, there's no chance of success in getting Amazon to change its pricing practices."

--------------

Penguin CEO David Shanks: "My orders from London. You must have the fourth major or we can't be in the announcement."

Apple Eddy Cue: "Hopefully this is not an issue but if it is I will call you at 4pm. It would be a huge mistake to miss this if we have 3."

"No change here, he is waiting for the others to sign. We have executables ready to sign but he wants an assurance that he is 1 of 4 before signing."

"Once previous two are signed, I will head to their offices to get this one signed."


----------------

Penguin CEO David Shanks: "We would never meet with Barnes and all our competitors. The Government would be all over that. We would meet separately with Indigo being the facilitator and go between. That is how we worked with Apple and the government is still looking into that."
 
Neither is Bromwich. He had a specific remit to monitor compliance, and not to conduct a witch hunt at $1025-$1100/hr. He sounds like someone who is used to getting his way and sees Apple as a gravy train.

He's a former DOJ attorney who is now raking it in as a "contractor," using his connections with the judge (who seemingly was biased and has a great chance of being slapped down by the appellate court).

$1025-$1100/hr is very cheap rate. I would change 10 x of that to Apple.:cool:

Apple pays top dollar to "top brass" lawyers. Why not to pay top dollar to "top brass" monitor as well?

And yes, spending some time in jail should set bitter Apple execs who broke the law a bit more cooperative.
 
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The judgement is clear. But I see nothing that justifies Broomwich's methods. Monitoring and reviewing of Apple' internal antitrust policies, and ensuring that each member of Apple board of Directors, CEO and Senior VP receives antitrust training doesn't mean he has the right to interview every single person on his list.
 
Apple star witness Cue was not found credible by the judge

From the ruling, page 44

In this and several other aspects of Cue’s testimony, regrettably, he was not credible. The documentary record and the commercial context of the negotiations leave room for no other conclusion. Apple’s pitch to the Publishers was -- from beginning to end -- a vision for a new industry-wide price schedule. Any other course would have left the Publishers vulnerable to Amazon’s pricing strategies and would have forced Apple to compete on price. Accordingly, Cue’s repeated assertion at trial that his sole “focus” was on thinking about the agency deals and their effects “from an Apple point of view,” cannot be taken at face value. As a savvy negotiator he knew how to place himself in the Publishers’ shoes, understand their interests, and appeal to their concerns, as he eventually admitted toward the end of his testimony.

Page 84
Cue admitted at trial that Apple “expected” each of the Publisher Defendants to demand that Amazon move to an agency model, but denied actually “knowing” that they would. This testimony was not credible, for many reasons. Cue’s denial of prior knowledge of Sargent’s trip to Amazon was particularly brazen given the January 24 email in which Sargent explained his inability to attend the Launch because he would be traveling to Seattle, Jobs’s comment to his biographer on January 28 -- the day of Sargent’s meeting with Amazon -- that the Publisher Defendants “went to Amazon and said, ‘You’re going to sign an agency contract or we’re not going to give you the books,’” a January 30 email exchange between Saul and Cue monitoring news about Amazon’s decision to remove Macmillan’s buy buttons and wondering whether Cue had “talk[ed] with [J]on” Sargent and a January 31 email in which Sargent reported to Cue on the trip.
Page 147

Cue and the Publishers also exchanged many telephone calls. Some of the more dramatic of these calls have already been highlighted. For example, Cue called three Publishers in late December to confirm that they would be willing to adopt an agency model across all of their resellers of e-books if that were a pathway to higher prices. He told Hachette’s Thomas over the telephone that Apple was providing “the best chance for publishers to challenge the 9.99 price point.” Cue called Reidy on January 21 to enlist her help in convincing Macmillan’s Sargent to execute the Agreement, and called Sargent to assist Macmillan’s agency negotiations with Amazon.



so much collusion and price-fixing going on.
 
And what law is he breaking?

Just because Apple is used to overcharging their customers and now finds itself on the receiving end, it doesn't make it illegal.

If Tim Cook wants to play hardball, perhaps some jail time for contempt will set him straight.

No, this lawyer is using his K street connections to attach himself to what he hopes is a gravy train for his firm. His job is to monitor compliance with a court order. It's not supposed to be a blank check. He is overstepping his authority, which means that yes, if Apple is right, he's breaking the law, too.

I detect a lot of jealousy in these forums.
 
I agree and the funny thing is Amazon was not found guilty of anything when they were being investigated.

Apple fanboys to the max LOL

Yup... its ridiculous. Then they claim "Apple execs/employees have better things to do". Better things to do then comply with the law? lol... yea ok.


EVERYONE worships money, even the Lawyers here... they all want a piece of the pie.
 
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