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RAM Manufacturers Fined for Price Fixing
TufelKinder writes "From Law.com: 'In the largest fine ever obtained by San Francisco antitrust prosecutors, a Korean company has agreed to plead guilty and pay $185 million for its role in a conspiracy to drive up the price of computer chips.' Micron and Infineon have also been fined for their role in the scheme." From the article: "It's the third-largest fine of its kind in the United States, and it could be just a preview of even bigger penalties. The far-reaching computer chip investigation, which alleges wrongdoing from 1999 through 2002, affects thousands of consumers."
Honest
I don't care about the price fixing of RAM, when are they goign to kick the asses of the gas companies for price fixing?
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Support Indy Music. Buy
So the money goes to who, instead of the customers?
i know i'm being idealistic, but: ;)
shouldn't that 185 mil go back to the consumers who paid much more than they could have if they didn't price fix?
Ram is pretty cheap as it is, it's gonna be awesome if somehow prices drop even more because of this.
Le français vous intéresse?
And why have you got "manufactureS" in that headline.
Hie thie to the coffeemaker.
Will they pass the cost onto the consumer?
This has got to be a wake-up call to major corporations. This goes to show that price-fixing will not be tolerated in the tech industry. Now perhaps we could get this to extend to other industries such as DVD's/CD's, and maybe even OIL!
Okay, okay, I admit it, I'm drunk.
What does this mean for RAM prices in the near and far future?
Will OEMs keep prices where they are now and pocket the difference? Or will they lower prices?
Yay so I can use the money I will save on RAM and put it towards high gas prices.
crap
I can break even on all that old EDO memory I've got!
Meet new people, and kill them.
It was like RAM was a commodity. I was buying RAM on huge price drops on Pricewatch and selling a few sticks a couple months later when the price ran back up on Ebay. It was great. I wasn't aware that it was just a Korean issue though, I thought some Hong Kong and Taiwan companies were involved.
Following links have more info:
http://tinyurl.com/8umy3
http://tinyurl.com/b4k7m
*looks at $2.00 per meg PC-133 chips* ... ... ...
*waits for class action lawsuit notification*
I did hear a small blurb in the media about price fixing this last week, but that was it. But well...that was it. I would THINK the media would be jumping on this with more force then with happend with Enron. So that leaves me thinking one of two things.
1. It was all made up and thus gained no support.
2. The government stepped in and "unofficially" told the media to keep shut on this subject. If word got out on price fixing, we could end up with a panic and people rushing to the gas pumps like in the 70s. Such an event would really be a problem out of interests of national security and destabilization of our ecconomy.
I'm not saying those in the oil industry shouldn't be punished. But would it really be wise to get all in a frenzy over it at this point in time?
Life is not for the lazy.
This is good. While Japanese anti-trust "watchdogs" taking a look at an American company is bad.
How much did they make during that time?
I'm often dissappointed in fines like this when I find out that the execs did a little jail time, paid a fine, but still have 6 Lamborghinis in the garage. It's important to implement fines that are severely punishing...like the people involved would have been WAY better off not pulling this kind of crap. The should be destitute. I can't stomach the wealth accumulated on the backs of the bruised.
I'm not saying that's what is going on here, I don't know. It just makes me sick when most people involved still come out ahead, and there is maybe one or two sacrificial lambs.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
I agree, regulate the oil industry, not MEMORY. Not as many buy memory as buy gas. Come on.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
$185 bucks says that $185 million will go towards funding DMCA litigation in San Francisco.
After joining/initiating price fixing with its competitors and making good profits, you rat out on your competitors without paying the fines.
Actually, the price of RAM will probably go up after this so said companies can afford to pay off their fines without reaching into their own pockets.
When a telephone company gets fined, where does the money come from? Increased prices/fees.
When an energy company gets fined, where does the money come from? Increased prices/fees.
When a car maker gets fined, where does the money come from? Increased prices/fees.
Why do you think this will be any different? They're just going to do it again, and not get caught.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
185 million for 'thousands of consumers.' Isn't that a bit steep? I assume that meant millions of consumers. Anyway, I thought that memory makers hardly made any money. Perhaps price-fixing was the only way to keep the market survivable?
I'm waiting for fines for low-priced RAM.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This was the government. It's a fine. Fines go to the government.
There have been additional claass action suits filed, which will make the ambulance chasers, err, plaintiff's lawyers, wealthy while producing almost nothing for the customers.
hawk
I am sure there is gonna be an individual hired to do precisely this. These companies NEVER lose...after all where else will we get RAM from?
this stuff happens all the time. its just usually there isnt enough hard evidence to do anything about it. as scary as it sounds, though, in big business nothing is a mistake. i bet you 186 million that that money is going to end up back in the hands of the people that started this price fix to begin with. anyway, maybe im over paranoid when it comes to money. perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the federal reserve isnt owned by the usa, and every president that attempted to change that died under odd circumstances or was assassinated. anyway, nothing to see here, go back to earning your ink'd papers. god help us all.
...will receive a 32MB stick of PC 66 memory.
I wonder how much they profited. The fine for the top music industry companies was about $143 million but due to price fixing consumers were overcharged $480 million. That's a profit of about $337 million.
Was the joke flying right over your head. *WOOSH!*
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
about your sig: would this work?
And is there a way to send a private message instead of posting off-topic in the future?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
..RAM was so expensive, and the prices only got higher over time. For really good, reliable RAM from a trusted manufacturer you really have to pay out the nose.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
"This case shows that high-tech price-fixing cartels will not be tolerated" But oil cartels? Bring it on...I'm paying $2.30/gallon out here in the midwest...
Something Witty Goes Here
Existing refineries would be adequate were it not for the 1001 recipes that various state and local govts. have required, by law. To bad that getting together and agreeing on a few recipes is not politically profitable.
How about we do a open refinery project just across the border in Mexico. What with NAFTA and all we shoulf make out like non-profit banditos.
Fines Pay YOU!
Where did the author get thousands of users? Maybe thousands of thousands? From 99 to 2002 my guess is these companies sold in the neighborhood of a few hundred million DIMMS or DRAMS.
--- Old Time NeXThead
so we can each get a $2 off coupon for RAM from the offending companies.
They are currently charging as much as they feel they can without losing market share.
Your logic implies every one of your examples should have been selling their products at a higher rate, because all you need to do is raise prices to make more money.
On the other hand, if all memory manufactures agree that they need to raise prices to make up for the fines....
Not to sound like flamebait or anything, but... Wouldn't it be interesting if they let it be a little laissez-faire? Even if they KNEW exactly what was going on, if it were absolutely evident that two RAM companies were in a price-fixing collusion. A third and fourth company might come along and sell much closer to cost, tearing Infineon et al to shreds and causing them to learn their lesson.
Or will it just be foreign corporations, because I don't think there is going to be a problem with American corporations price fixing because they are simply helping the American economy... that's okay. But it's not okay for other countries to make lots of money in unethical ways.
Ram...korean company...it has been a long week but I could have sworn that Dodge is an American company. Just kidding. However...why do we never learn where these huge fines go? I mean, $160 million is a fair amount of money and I'm certain someone will enjoy collecting it. sadly, i will still be working away without receiving a cent.
Prices are too high. Must be fixed. I love that stuff.
de Beers has been doing that for years without getting sued.
So now they have a REAL reason to charge more for the memory. Sounds like a solution to benifit the consumers for sure! How much of the $185 million went to lawyers and lawfirms and how much of that is going back to the consumers? $0.18 checks aren't worth crap to the consumer that bought the memory at the 'fixed rate'. Cause in the end, the consumers get nothing back from a suit like this except paying more for the memory in the future because of the impact of the lawsuit. The lawyers make out like a bandit! Why else do imagine these lawsuits exist?
a) OPEC actually is having less and less control over the pricing of crude with other sources coming on line.
b) This is true (and most likely the principle cause). While there are signifigant discoveries still being made, the are in areas that are VERY difficult to produce in. And by difficult, I mean expensive. The financial analysis just does not make sence until the price of oil goes up.
c) Until the needs of China / India / East Timor / Boogymanoftheday out strips that of the US, we will have a hard time pointing our fingers at other's consupmtion. Odd that you do not hear any timeframes for when China's demand will outstrip ours. You hear even the shakiest estimates on Social Security or Medicare running out quoted as gospel, but nothing on when China's demand will be the 800 pound gorilla.
d) This denys the fact that more refineries have closed in the past 30 years than permits filed to build new ones. The number of refineries in California alone has decreased by an order of magnitude. Even world-wide, grass roots refinery projects are the exception rather than the rule. It is much easier from a technical, financial, and regulatory stand point to ramp up the production at an existing refinery that to build a brand new one.
(how the hell did we get so far off topic?)
According to Hoovers, Hynix's NET income for 2000-2002 was $7.5 Billion with a "B".
Better look at those numbers again. Hynix's net LOSS was $7.5 billion over that time period.
you would be in Radio shack, and that old guy would be talking about how he remember when you had to wait for everything to warm up because of tubes and you would roll your eyes?
Your being that old guy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I do work with music synthesis and man, can that shit eat RAM. I have a sample DVD of a drumkit, just a normal trap set with 5 toms, a selection of cymbals and so on. It's 2.4GB, oh and it's the small one. Their full one, with all different styles of kits (like using brushes instead of sticks) is 35GB (comes on 4 DVDs). The same company makes an orchestral sample set with basically all instruments from an orchestra in 3 different mic positons. 68GB.
Now the sampler technology is advanced enough that it can load just the start of the samples in RAM and then stream off the disk as needed, but there's limits to that (only so fast the disk can go) and you still need part in RAM. Eating up the 2GB I have is cake, and I don't even have the really big sample sets.
Now pro apps like those aside, normal apps will grow to use the memory, if it's available. Games can almost always use more memory, if for no other reason than to eliminate any kind of load times (by loading more data further ahead). I'm sure most game makers would like to use more RAM than they do. However, you won't sell many games if you require something most people don't have. If RAM prices go down and amounts go up, they'll start using more.
Some games already do. World of Warcraft just isn't happy unless you have a GB of RAM. It'll run on less, but you'll find it lagging and stuttering as it scrambles to get the graphics off the disk. You give it a GB, it gets pretty happy and smooth.
Your problem is that during this time they were losing their shirts! Look it up, Hynix, Infineon, Micron were all losing billions of $$$ during this time period. So maybe they got together and said, look guys, we are all gonna be bankrupt if we don't cut production to try and slow this bleeding... And then dell complains cause the memory cost more per box and sicks the government at them. Their profits were in jeopardy. Anyhow, my point is that there would have been no third or fourth company as you postulated selling closer to cost - cause that would have meant their prices were higher! Everyone seems to be lynching the memory companies for wanting to at least break even on things... Ridiculous. Infineon lost billions and got fined for not losing trillions. I think they learned their lesson.
That 185 million dollar fine Hynix got doesn't come close to the multi billion dollar bailouts the Korean banks gave them right after the banks were bailed out my the IMF w/ your tax dollars.
Some of the reason you listed for gas prices are wrong.
(a) Crude oil costs only accounts for about 1/3 of the total price. If oil prices double, then you'll pay about 1/3 more at the pump. If they halve, you'll pay about 1/6 less at the pump. The price of crude is rising due to China and the rest of the world recovering from stagnation in the early 2000's. OPEC has been producing more to try and lower the price, but their supply cannot keep up.
(b) Federal and state taxes contribute about 1/3 of the cost as well. While these are fairly static, they are still gradually rising. Consider that many gas taxes are implemented over time (ie, a few cents more each year is taxed.)
(c) The remaining third go to the costs of distribution and profits for the companies involved. The reason this is so high is because of environmental regulations are very strict, requiring several different types of blends be used in different parts of the country at different times of the year. Combined with the bottleneck that you can't store gasoline and use it the next year, and it's really hard to build more refineries, we run into a bottle neck every summer where we just can't refine the oil fast enough.
As far as the oil supply being finite, that may or may not be true. But noone has suggested that supply is actually decreasing today, nor will it for the next several decades. More and more oil is discovered every year, and exciting new ways of extracting oil from previously useless sources are being explored. If crude prices remain above about $30, we can begin extracting it from shale and it will be profitable.
If we begin drilling in ANWR and restart the pumps throughout Texas, California, and other states, we can do a lot to lower the price of crude. But this won't solve the problem of refining. We need to lighten the regulation and we need to allow more and bigger refineries to be built. We should also allow people to stockpile refined gasoline to help smooth out the peaks and valleys of demand and supply. It would help a lot if we could build more supply lines and upgrade the ones we have now as well.
You'll notice a common thread: It is environmental activism that is really causing the most significant increase in your gas prices. Get rid of that and you can enjoy your sweet nectar for a more reasonable price. And remember: The purpose of the environmentalists wackos is not to fix the environment, but to shut down our economy and destroy our capitalism.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Something tells me these folks didn't buy the right judges...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Memory is so slow these days, that the cost of an L2 miss for can be as high as 400 cycles. Basically, a load that hits in the L1 can be as fast as 2-3 cycles of latency. If it misses all the way to the main memory, it's ~400cycles. Two orders of magnitude.
Small is fast; large is slow.
The Raven
The summary shows the name of two RAM manufacturers, but not company fined. Come on, it's not like Hynix is an unknown company.
Boot longhorn?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Like $21.65 each.
CD prices haven't gone down at all, and the music industry is back to claiming piracy & lost sales and suing customers.
The price fixing lawsuit that they were slapped around with didn't phase them one bit.
i can't believe so many clueless users are saying ram prices are so low etc etc. apparently they don't remember that ram prices were even lower 2+ years ago... and if you can extrapolate, that would mean that today it should even be lower. instead its been going up quite a bit to level off where it is now. i cannot believe the lack of outrage among the people here. 512megs of ram used to be around 50 bucks in 2002... now you'd be lucky to find pc2700 (low end) ram at that price. they must be trying to lower prices recently in order to fool the short-term memory of the public. i'd price fix their asses if it were possible. those f*****s need to give back all the money they legally stole from the public that had no alternative. i'm dreaming but still, its good to dream.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
You didn't think this huge judgement was to protect consumers did you? It's to punish people who sell products to consumers at unfairly low prices. So that does mean that any RAM you buy from them in the next year will be more expensive than it would have been without this fine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If I want to sell it at the same price as somebody else, that's my prerogative.
Those who try to force me to do otherwise need to be killed.
When I bought a gig PC-133 back in 2000 it cost me nearly $1024
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I like Samsung. I think they make excellent products, for the price. I'm thankful that my...uh....shit....I'm hesitant to say this, but....faith in Samsung is still intact. I have no doubt they've done some underhanded shit and just haven't been caught, yet.
But Hynix and Rambus are a load of complete fucksticks. Even I know that. To see Hynix caught in their ass is good for morale, but I want to see people (read: the managers and CEO) beat with canepoles on live television. I want humiliation and personal well-being at stake, to get some deterrence on this issue in the future.
Does this explain why 128MB ram shot up from $14 CAD to $40 CAD within a year during 1999-2002? The DRAM manufacturers *flooded* the market with DRAM chips and then artificially cut production to raise prices when everyone was hooked to the low price. Higher DRAM prices just made everyone go in a panic and started to buy all the DRAM chips at the lowest price while the price was rising.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/topofthehour.aspx?Story Id=3274
he National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Thursday said it has arrested two British nationals with $3 trillion fake US federal bank notes in their possession, DZMM reported.
NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco identified the suspects as Paul Edward John Flavell and Sam Beany. The two listed their address as Unit 305 CEO Apartments in Jupiter Street, Makati City.
The suspects were not physically present during the press conference called by Wycoco at the NBI office in Taft Avenue, Manila. Only the suspects' photographs were shown to reporters.
Wycoco said NBI agents have also launched a manhunt for two other British nationals involved in the syndicate.
The two other suspects are Seki Mehmet Bayram and Peter Whittkamp.
Flavell and Beany's arrest came following a tip from international cargo forwarder DHL Philippines Inc. on April 14, Wycoco said.
The tip was about a shipment consigned to two foreigners, which was pending at the company warehouse.
The forwarder said the cargo was bound for Zurich, Switzerland.
The NBI dispatched a team to the DHL office. The agents were able to chance upon the suspects as they were paying the airway bill amounting to P53,967.
Company records show the suspects paid using a credit card.
Wycoco said Flavell and Beany did not resist arrest after they were made to open the cast-iron boxes containing bogus federal bank reserve certificates.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Wasn't George bush part of this?
i remember reading a while ago about him putting a tax on imported ram cause some korean company was selling ram at a price lower than what micron was producing it at. conveniently, micron had donated 180 million dollars(ballpark, not 100% sure about the figure. this was a while ago.) to the bush campaign for 2000.
This announcement is for Hynix only. The writer of the summary adds the following misinformation, "Micron and Infineon have also been fined for their role in the scheme." Infineon did plead guilty and settle for a fine, but Micron and Samsung are the two manufacturers that haven't settled yet.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds