4 ms·

For completeness, here's a non-cartoon summary of the other side of the story: http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/2012/07/24/your-unspecial-antitrust-snowfl

by fpgeek 14y ago

For completeness, here's a non-cartoon summary of the other side of the story: http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/2012/07/24/your-unspecial-antitrust-snowflake/ http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/2012/07/24/your-unspe...

aaplsux 14y ago
Inexpensive books? This must be stopped! The last thing the country needs is educated citizens. Think of the job creators! They are special snowflakes.
- TimGebhardt 14y ago
  Did you actually read the story? It's not that the books were low priced. It's that they were priced predatorily. Preditory pricing is bad for consumers in the long run, and in every industry outside of software is seen as a bad thing. In the software business that seems to be the standard VC-backed-company model.
  - anamax 14y ago
    > Preditory pricing is bad for consumers in the long run, and in every industry outside of software is seen as a bad thing. Not so fast. "Agency model", which is what the publishers want to mandate, is "retailers have to sell at MSRP". There may be nothing stopping them from refusing to sell through Amazon unless Amazon agrees to MSRP. That said, lots of industries do work on "retailers pick the pricing", which is the deal that Amazon likes. (Either way, the publishers get to decide how much they charge distributors.) The "predation" here is that Amazon is willing to take a smaller cut than Apple. That's not predatory. If anything, that's a competitive response to Apple's favored status on a dominant hardware platform.
    - eridius 14y ago
      A competitive response? Amazon was selling books below marginal cost before Apple even entered the ebook market. Unless Amazon is equipped with a time machine, I'm pretty sure this wasn't a response to Apple, just a strategy intended to produce a monopsony.
  - dmbaggett 14y ago
    I've actually wondered about this for a long time: why is it legal for software companies to offer products and services at below marginal cost? Clearly zero is below whatever the actual marginal cost is, and Eric Schmidt summed up the industry's view of charging zero: "Consumers like the price of free." I would love to learn from a knowledgeable lawyer why the practice of giving software away for free -- even when it potentially harms new entrants by eliminating entirely their potential for revenue generation -- is legal.
    - pedrocr 14y ago
      I'm not a layer but cases have been won against this very practice: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3334934/google-fined-for-abusing-market-position-with-free-google-maps-service/ http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3334934/goog... I suppose you could argue the services aren't really free, it's just that advertisers pay for them and not the users directly. So Google isn't really providing a service below marginal cost as long as the marginal revenue of advertising is enough to cover it.
      - btilly 14y ago
        Note, that was in France, where different legal rules apply.
    - btilly 14y ago
      I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that you're suggesting that you think that it should be illegal to contribute to open source software that is naturally available for free. As someone who has contributed to open source software, I had plenty of legitimate reasons for doing so other than anti-competitive behavior. One of them is advertising - if I'm in an interview and am asked for a code sample I can just point to CPAN. Similar considerations happen in a proprietary context. For instance this website is funded and built by programmers whose time is incredibly valuable, yet it is available for free. My belief is that pg sees this discussion forum as an advertising cost for ycombinator. Why shouldn't it be legal for pg to spend his advertising budget giving away a discussion forum when there are competitors that are trying to do similar things as a paid product?
grabeh 14y ago
I think in the case of professionals, supply to the market is regulated by professional standards boards which limit entry into the profession. Due to this pre-existing restriction, I am not surprised the courts would hold that people within that sphere should be free to compete on price, as each doctor will (you would hope) have the same basic set of skills to an extent. The above restriction is not in place with regards to e-book providers so I think this weakens the argument somewhat.

by fpgeek 14y ago

aaplsux 14y ago

Inexpensive books? This must be stopped! The last thing the country needs is educated citizens. Think of the job creators! They are special snowflakes.

TimGebhardt 14y ago
Did you actually read the story? It's not that the books were low priced. It's that they were priced predatorily. Preditory pricing is bad for consumers in the long run, and in every industry outside of software is seen as a bad thing. In the software business that seems to be the standard VC-backed-company model.
- anamax 14y ago
  > Preditory pricing is bad for consumers in the long run, and in every industry outside of software is seen as a bad thing. Not so fast. "Agency model", which is what the publishers want to mandate, is "retailers have to sell at MSRP". There may be nothing stopping them from refusing to sell through Amazon unless Amazon agrees to MSRP. That said, lots of industries do work on "retailers pick the pricing", which is the deal that Amazon likes. (Either way, the publishers get to decide how much they charge distributors.) The "predation" here is that Amazon is willing to take a smaller cut than Apple. That's not predatory. If anything, that's a competitive response to Apple's favored status on a dominant hardware platform.
  - eridius 14y ago
    A competitive response? Amazon was selling books below marginal cost before Apple even entered the ebook market. Unless Amazon is equipped with a time machine, I'm pretty sure this wasn't a response to Apple, just a strategy intended to produce a monopsony.
- dmbaggett 14y ago
  I've actually wondered about this for a long time: why is it legal for software companies to offer products and services at below marginal cost? Clearly zero is below whatever the actual marginal cost is, and Eric Schmidt summed up the industry's view of charging zero: "Consumers like the price of free." I would love to learn from a knowledgeable lawyer why the practice of giving software away for free -- even when it potentially harms new entrants by eliminating entirely their potential for revenue generation -- is legal.
  - pedrocr 14y ago
    I'm not a layer but cases have been won against this very practice: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3334934/google-fined-for-abusing-market-position-with-free-google-maps-service/ http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3334934/goog... I suppose you could argue the services aren't really free, it's just that advertisers pay for them and not the users directly. So Google isn't really providing a service below marginal cost as long as the marginal revenue of advertising is enough to cover it.
    - btilly 14y ago
      Note, that was in France, where different legal rules apply.
  - btilly 14y ago
    I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that you're suggesting that you think that it should be illegal to contribute to open source software that is naturally available for free. As someone who has contributed to open source software, I had plenty of legitimate reasons for doing so other than anti-competitive behavior. One of them is advertising - if I'm in an interview and am asked for a code sample I can just point to CPAN. Similar considerations happen in a proprietary context. For instance this website is funded and built by programmers whose time is incredibly valuable, yet it is available for free. My belief is that pg sees this discussion forum as an advertising cost for ycombinator. Why shouldn't it be legal for pg to spend his advertising budget giving away a discussion forum when there are competitors that are trying to do similar things as a paid product?

grabeh 14y ago

I think in the case of professionals, supply to the market is regulated by professional standards boards which limit entry into the profession. Due to this pre-existing restriction, I am not surprised the courts would hold that people within that sphere should be free to compete on price, as each doctor will (you would hope) have the same basic set of skills to an extent. The above restriction is not in place with regards to e-book providers so I think this weakens the argument somewhat.