4 ms·

These articles can really go either way, but NYT seems to continuously go the publisher side. Theres not a single Amazon statement in this article. Remember th

These articles can really go either way, but NYT seems to continuously go the publisher side. Theres not a single Amazon statement in this article. Remember that the majority of publishers just recently colluded with Apple to essentially fuck over Amazon. Why would we afford them the presumption of goodwill here?

tzs 12y ago
> Theres not a single Amazon statement in this article From the article: "An Amazon spokesman declined to comment"
- jack-r-abbit 12y ago
  And... A Hachette spokeswoman did not return a message for comment. A Bonnier spokesman could not be reached. Looks like no one wanted to talk to these reporters/bloggers. :)
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    Of course not. This is everyday contract crap and adding journalists hungry for ad impressions and encouraging hysterics would only hurt the process. I'm sure there's just some boring negotiation going on and this "story" will be forgotten. What exactly is the huge controversy here? That Amazon temporarily has a Rowling book that can't be pre-ordered right now? Oh ok. I don't know the NYTimes's plan to succeed in the digital age, but acting like a 24/7 TV news outlet probably isn't that way to go. I also worry that newspaper publishers see themselves as the publishing industry does and have a bias against digital distribution and will do anything to damage it. This piece feels anti-Amazon in an unfair way. The publishers aren't these poor underdogs, they're all well-heeled corporations with lawyers and experts. Let them hash it out.
sxcurry 12y ago
I agree. I think part of it is that the NYT reporters see their own industry slipping away, and really identify with others who are struggling to maintain ink on paper publishing. BTW, the recent internal NYT report stated that the future for the "paper" is a thriving digital publishing environment, with a secondary emphasis on the traditional newspaper.
eridius 12y ago
> Remember that the majority of publishers just recently colluded with Apple to essentially fuck over Amazon. Well, that's certainly how the Justice Department chose to see it. That doesn't make that statement the objective truth. I still don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that the new entrant in a market is "fuck[ing] over" the dominant player. Especially when countless economists have weighed in saying that the kind of corrective measures employed by Apple and the publishers are not (and should not be) illegal and that the Justice Department basically got everything wrong. (Google is failing me here for finding these economist opinions that I've seen in the past, but amusingly, my search is chock full of articles from before the ruling saying that economists think the DOJ is going to lose the case)
- chrismcb 12y ago
  "corrective measures employed by Apple" what were the measures and what were they correcting? And how did the Justice Department get it wrong. Apple colluded with the publishers to set the price, and forced Amazon to sell for the same price. With mainly the people being screwed (well in some cases the publishers actually lost money too) Unfortunately the corrective measures taken SINCE the ruling having really made much of a change.
  - eridius 12y ago
    > Apple colluded with the publishers to set the price, and forced Amazon to sell for the same price Apple gave the publishers leverage to use with Amazon, which is a wee bit different. But I'll give you "colluded", because it doesn't really matter. I wish Google would actually find the various articles I've read in the past about this, but my recollection is that various economists have explained that this sort of "corrective measure" is actually legal and the right course of action under certain circumstances, and the ebook market (with Amazon's near-total dominance) qualifies. You say "mainly the people being screwed", but that's not true. Amazon tried to claim that prices were lower before Apple came along, but that's actually only true for some (admittedly popular) books. Prices on other books were higher before Apple. Not only that, but the low prices that Amazon was talking about was not actually a sustainable market, but instead was Amazon engaging in predatory pricing. And predatory pricing is not something that the DOJ is supposed to be in the business of defending. Basically, many people have looked at the overall book market both before and Apple entered it, and found that, when looking at the entire market instead of just e.g. the NYT bestsellers list, prices were not higher after Apple showed up. It's also worth pointing out that Apple was being accused of violating antitrust laws, which are essentially laws designed to prevent unfair monopolistic practices. It seems rather ridiculous to claim that a minority player in a market could be guilty of monopolistic practices, since that generally requires being a monopoly. It's even more absurd when one of the main goals of antitrust is to promote fair competition, and yet it was used to punish the only real competition that Amazon had in the market. Basically, the DOJ used fair competition laws to hand a government-sanctioned monopoly to a single company. --- I did a bit more digging, and what Apple was found guilty of was a "per se" violation of a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy using a series of vertical agreements. I've found a MacObserver article[1] that talks about a 30-page amici curiae brief filed by two economists explaining why Judge Cote's ruling was wrong. [1]: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/economists-on-apple-ebook-antitrust-case-judge-cote-got-it-wrong http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/economists-on-apple-e... There's a 3-paragraph summary at that article, which should give you a good idea of what was wrong with the ruling. I've seen a number of other articles since the ruling where other economists weigh in and say essentially the same thing, but Google is still being difficult. --- Edit: One comment about this brief says that the DOJ didn't make these considerations because it found Apple to be per se liable, which is to say, the DOJ considered the actions to be illegal regardless of any possible motivation. Some of the other economists I've referred to argued specifically against this point, saying that these kinds of vertical agreements are not a violation of the per se rule and that Judge Cote royally screwed up in applying it. Of course, Judge Cote's ruling also said she would consider Apple to have been guilty under a rule of reason as well, but I find it hard to believe given how much evidence there is that Apple's actions were indeed in its own independent business interest, and that these kinds of vertical agreements and the provisions they contained are not in fact illegal under these circumstances (my understanding is basically that they can be illegal when used by a dominant player in a market, because it's anti-competitive, but when used by a new entrant in a market with an existing dominant player, they are ok, but IANAL).

tzs 12y ago

> Theres not a single Amazon statement in this article From the article: "An Amazon spokesman declined to comment"

jack-r-abbit 12y ago
And... A Hachette spokeswoman did not return a message for comment. A Bonnier spokesman could not be reached. Looks like no one wanted to talk to these reporters/bloggers. :)
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  Of course not. This is everyday contract crap and adding journalists hungry for ad impressions and encouraging hysterics would only hurt the process. I'm sure there's just some boring negotiation going on and this "story" will be forgotten. What exactly is the huge controversy here? That Amazon temporarily has a Rowling book that can't be pre-ordered right now? Oh ok. I don't know the NYTimes's plan to succeed in the digital age, but acting like a 24/7 TV news outlet probably isn't that way to go. I also worry that newspaper publishers see themselves as the publishing industry does and have a bias against digital distribution and will do anything to damage it. This piece feels anti-Amazon in an unfair way. The publishers aren't these poor underdogs, they're all well-heeled corporations with lawyers and experts. Let them hash it out.

sxcurry 12y ago

I agree. I think part of it is that the NYT reporters see their own industry slipping away, and really identify with others who are struggling to maintain ink on paper publishing. BTW, the recent internal NYT report stated that the future for the "paper" is a thriving digital publishing environment, with a secondary emphasis on the traditional newspaper.

eridius 12y ago

> Remember that the majority of publishers just recently colluded with Apple to essentially fuck over Amazon. Well, that's certainly how the Justice Department chose to see it. That doesn't make that statement the objective truth. I still don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that the new entrant in a market is "fuck[ing] over" the dominant player. Especially when countless economists have weighed in saying that the kind of corrective measures employed by Apple and the publishers are not (and should not be) illegal and that the Justice Department basically got everything wrong. (Google is failing me here for finding these economist opinions that I've seen in the past, but amusingly, my search is chock full of articles from before the ruling saying that economists think the DOJ is going to lose the case)

chrismcb 12y ago
"corrective measures employed by Apple" what were the measures and what were they correcting? And how did the Justice Department get it wrong. Apple colluded with the publishers to set the price, and forced Amazon to sell for the same price. With mainly the people being screwed (well in some cases the publishers actually lost money too) Unfortunately the corrective measures taken SINCE the ruling having really made much of a change.
- eridius 12y ago
  > Apple colluded with the publishers to set the price, and forced Amazon to sell for the same price Apple gave the publishers leverage to use with Amazon, which is a wee bit different. But I'll give you "colluded", because it doesn't really matter. I wish Google would actually find the various articles I've read in the past about this, but my recollection is that various economists have explained that this sort of "corrective measure" is actually legal and the right course of action under certain circumstances, and the ebook market (with Amazon's near-total dominance) qualifies. You say "mainly the people being screwed", but that's not true. Amazon tried to claim that prices were lower before Apple came along, but that's actually only true for some (admittedly popular) books. Prices on other books were higher before Apple. Not only that, but the low prices that Amazon was talking about was not actually a sustainable market, but instead was Amazon engaging in predatory pricing. And predatory pricing is not something that the DOJ is supposed to be in the business of defending. Basically, many people have looked at the overall book market both before and Apple entered it, and found that, when looking at the entire market instead of just e.g. the NYT bestsellers list, prices were not higher after Apple showed up. It's also worth pointing out that Apple was being accused of violating antitrust laws, which are essentially laws designed to prevent unfair monopolistic practices. It seems rather ridiculous to claim that a minority player in a market could be guilty of monopolistic practices, since that generally requires being a monopoly. It's even more absurd when one of the main goals of antitrust is to promote fair competition, and yet it was used to punish the only real competition that Amazon had in the market. Basically, the DOJ used fair competition laws to hand a government-sanctioned monopoly to a single company. --- I did a bit more digging, and what Apple was found guilty of was a "per se" violation of a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy using a series of vertical agreements. I've found a MacObserver article[1] that talks about a 30-page amici curiae brief filed by two economists explaining why Judge Cote's ruling was wrong. [1]: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/economists-on-apple-ebook-antitrust-case-judge-cote-got-it-wrong http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/economists-on-apple-e... There's a 3-paragraph summary at that article, which should give you a good idea of what was wrong with the ruling. I've seen a number of other articles since the ruling where other economists weigh in and say essentially the same thing, but Google is still being difficult. --- Edit: One comment about this brief says that the DOJ didn't make these considerations because it found Apple to be per se liable, which is to say, the DOJ considered the actions to be illegal regardless of any possible motivation. Some of the other economists I've referred to argued specifically against this point, saying that these kinds of vertical agreements are not a violation of the per se rule and that Judge Cote royally screwed up in applying it. Of course, Judge Cote's ruling also said she would consider Apple to have been guilty under a rule of reason as well, but I find it hard to believe given how much evidence there is that Apple's actions were indeed in its own independent business interest, and that these kinds of vertical agreements and the provisions they contained are not in fact illegal under these circumstances (my understanding is basically that they can be illegal when used by a dominant player in a market, because it's anti-competitive, but when used by a new entrant in a market with an existing dominant player, they are ok, but IANAL).