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DRAM Makers Accused of Price Fixing
AdamWeeden writes "According to the EETimes, many of the states in the U.S. have entered into a class-action lawsuit against a group of eight DRAM manufacturers. The companies are accused of price-fixing computer memory for over five years, beginning in the late 1990s." From the article: "Four companies and 12 executives have so far pleaded guilty to participating in the conspiracy and have been assessed more than $730 million in fines. In May, three of the four companies, Samsung Electronics, Hynix Semiconductor Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG agreed to pay a total of $160 million to settle class action suits related to price fixing. Elpida Memory Inc., the fourth company to plead guilty, is still involved in the class-action suits."
Instead of fining these companies, they should force them to provide double the amount of memory for the same price for say 90 days, e.g. 256mb chip for the same price as 128mb chip: that way the consumer benefits instead of the government.
I've seen a few places that now offer "e-rebates." So you can just fill out the rebate info at their website instead of mailing it in. Hopefully this will catch on.
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Oh I agree, my cynicism is more towards the lawyers who get the real payoff in most of these cases.
Smart people, and I'm extreamly jealous of the ability they have to cash in big on class action suits. When the claimant tends to get a modicum of the settlement/judgement.
The consumer, in the end continues to get ripped off; if not by one side, the other.
Assume the plant, the research and development has been paid for and the obvious thing must be stated...
How is this a remotely valid assumption, given that RAM chips have seen orders of magnitude increases in speed and capacity?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Ah I don't agree with more government involvement. The market does a fine job regulating price when it is allowed to (if there is health competition, no monopolies and no collusion). If you make it so that it is very inadvisable to price fix the shareholders will make sure no one does it. Massive fines and invest that in public research in the field if you don't like the corporate death penalty. Just don't let them get away with it with a tiny fine.
Punitive damages should be paid to the government, with no lawyers' cut. Then we'd see how concerned the plaintiffs and lawyers really are about serving humanity through lawsuits.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Why when any two or more companies in the world get together and settle on a price for their product do we come down on them like a ton of bricks for price-fixing, yet when OPEC gets together and "FIXES" a price for oil we just bend over and take it up the tailpipe? Anyone besides me ever think about how hypocritical that is? Price fixing is bad, but why do we allow it for oil?