Justice Department Threatens Apple And Others With Lawsuit

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The Justice Department doesn't seem like it is thrilled with the whole e-book price fixing thing and has threatened to sue everyone involved. :eek:

"We told the publishers, 'We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway,'" Mr. Jobs was quoted as saying by his biographer, Walter Isaacson.
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Hadn't heard that quote before. Awesome. Never liked this crap when it went down (Apple being involved or not) and still don't like it today. It is pure market control by the publishers, Apple's "most favoured" status just helps but the cap on competition. Apple was the enabler of the deal because they knew they couldn't (and wouldn't) compete with Amazon on price.
 
Considering how many prey at the alter of Apple and Job's everytime Apple's true business practices see the light of day I think of the like " the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist."
 
Here we go LOL Time to break out the Maxi-Pads :)
 
Thread title: Justice Department Threatens Apple And Others With Lawsuit

What [H] readers see: Apple Threatens Others

:D

In this case, I hope the government sues and wins, and kills off the 'agency model'. I don't see anyone in the publishing industry worrying about the consumers, except to make us pay more (for a lesser product than a physical copy, which tends to be edited more thoroughly).
 
Baen still sells them cheap and makes money hand over fist. Of course they are smart and offer the books for twice the price if you want them 6 to 8 months before they are published.
 
Article said:
The publishers have denied acting jointly to raise prices. They have told investigators that the shift to agency pricing enhanced competition in the industry by allowing more electronic booksellers to thrive.
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Thank you for telling us you are NOT going to give a shit at all about having different firms competing with one another to render a service, with the winner determined by price since they're all the same book. What kind of stupid fucking reasoning is this!?!? No kidding it's allowing more companies to thrive, they're all using the same pricing model which makes them all charge the same price.
 
darkstarcow said:
The Government doing something to actually help consumers? wow.
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Even after Reagan eviscerated antitrust law in the 80s, there is no reason to be surprised when the government acts to prevent price gouging. Having firms compete and avoiding price gouging is the cornerstone of antitrust law, it practically wouldn't exist without it.
 
This shit is exactly why I hate Steve Jobs and refuse to purchase any Apple products. If and when they ever decide to start to actually caring about their customers more than making money hand-over-fist, then I might start buying from them.
 
I usually get my books from second hand stores so i'm not familiar with e-books novels. But from what i'm reading, it's like they're describing a cartel?
 
Wraith44 said:
This shit is exactly why I hate Steve Jobs and refuse to purchase any Apple products. If and when they ever decide to start to actually caring about their customers more than making money hand-over-fist, then I might start buying from them.
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psst, did you see the "and others"? Enjoy your Amazon and B&N markups though, lol.
 
Azhar said:
psst, did you see the "and others"? Enjoy your Amazon and B&N markups though, lol.
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I did see that it was Apple that proposed this and then they demanded the same deal from Amazon. Prior to it, Amazon was retailing best seller ebooks for ten bucks.
 
Sly said:
I did see that it was Apple that proposed this and then they demanded the same deal from Amazon. Prior to it, Amazon was retailing best seller ebooks for ten bucks.
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So people went from cheap books from Amazon to expensive ones from Apple? I don't see that happening unless Amazon raised their prices too. It's like other markets - nobody's going to sell for cheap when they can take advantage of other markets selling for more to bring their prices up to match it or nearly do so.

Amazon's in the business of keeping your wallet empty and theirs full. Just like Apple and everyone else.
 
Azhar said:
So people went from cheap books from Amazon to expensive ones from Apple? I don't see that happening unless Amazon raised their prices too.
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That's what this whole thing was about. Amazon was selling the best books for ten dollars and the publishers didn't like it. When they told amazon they wanted their ebooks sold for $15.00 instead of $9.99, Amazon dropped them and switched to a different publisher. But switching is no longer an option if all the publishers agree on a set price.

Steve jobs made a deal with them that allowed them to raise their ebook prices to more than hardcopys and demanded the same from Amazon. The issue here are the publishers collectively raising their prices so negotiating with publishers for better deals is no longer an option.
 
BTW, wasn't there an article here about Amazon removing several thousand ebooks from their online stores because negotiations broke down? That's probably what attracted the governments attention.
 
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