4 ms·
to be clear, the lawsuit was against apple and the publishers, who were accused of price fixing by refusing to participate in under-pricing books, but also refu
by justizin 12y ago
to be clear, the lawsuit was against apple and the publishers, who were accused of price fixing by refusing to participate in under-pricing books, but also refusing to price ebooks as high as ~$25.
it was a really odd application of antitrust law at the time, since Amazon is the one with monopoly power, and price fixing typically means competitors agreeing to price things higher than the market would otherwise bear.
antitrust has never been reasonably applied to tech, going as far back as DOJ going after microsoft for bundling IE, not for leveraging the Office team's relationship with the Windows team to push out competitors like Corel.
now you're seeing amazon flex that monopoly power - hey buddy, you had to pay a fine to the DOJ for refusing to participate in our monopoly, and we were able to hurt apple's book-selling business, and now we're shutting you off entirely unless you agree to our terms.
- richdougherty 12y agoI have the different view: that the Apple/publisher case is a pretty straightforward case of a price fixing conspiracy. Publishers are certainly allowed to, as you put it, "refuse to participate in under-pricing books". The problem occurs when they decide to act in concert. I agree with your points about DOJ and the tech industry, and maybe there's something that needs to be done about Amazon right now. I'm not sure. But definitely the wrong thing to do would be to allow a cartel of publishers have any influence over the price structure of the market.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago"it was a really odd application of antitrust law at the time, since Amazon is the one with monopoly power" The lawsuit was about price-fixing and collusion. It had nothing to do with "monopoly power" (which Amazon does not have now and did not have then).