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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."
Blasted DRM makers.... oh, wait a minute.....
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.
Always good to see lawyers making more money off class actions suits, and the rest of us getting a rebate.
They price fixed for 5 years ... starting in the 1990s...
I wonder if the summary author knows that it's 2006.
Why why why why why when these companies do crap like this don't we just abolish thier corporate charter, sell their assets to their competitors and realse their patents and copyrights into the public domain and abolish their trademarks? I'm getting very tired of hearing about large corporation X acting against the public intrest by breaking the law. Make it so that shareholders will punish them for breaking the law and a corporation will not break the law.
So they fixed prices, so what, memory prices in the mid/late nineties plummited. Early 90s buying a 4 meg chip costed hundreds, mid 90s a 32 meg chip cost under a hundred, by the end of the 90s we were paying under a buck a meg, heck now it's what, under a buck for 10 megs?
In the end, the consumers will see none of it (who's really going to go through to paper work for a $3 rebate?), the lawyers will see millions, and the government will get the unclaimed payouts.
IOW, a complete waste of time.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If the DRAM market is corrupt, I'll just switch to something else: Rambus! Oh wait...
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
730.000.000$ / 200$ = 3.650.000Gb = Free RAM to everyone.
Yahooooo !!!
PROSECUTOR: Did your company engage in price fixing?
DRAM MEMORY: Maybe, maybe not... I just woke up, so I can't remember anything before that.
FLASH RAM: He did! He did! I'm sure of it.
BUBBLE MEMORY: We never had this nonsense in my day, I tellya what. *cough cough*
PUNCH CARD: You're tellin' me. *wheeze*
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
1993 - 4 MB SIMM $160
2003 - 256 MB DIMM $160
Spitzer should go after real criminals, and stop using threats and publicity to extort big settlements.
I misread the subject as "DRM Makers Accused of Price Fixing" and got all excited!
This way you are actually helping them by creating a gold rush which will clear their stock inventory in the next 90 days and they can even write it off as a loss as well.
A penalty is supposed to hurt the penalised, not the improve its financial and inventory positions.
Huh! If this is going to be good for them, then why don't they do it themselves?
Is anybody going to stop them?
Here is one area that is very difficult to win the anarcho-capitalist debate on -- the cartelization of this particular market in this particular industry sounds very insidious and hard to compete with without the government intervening and bringing the hammer down.
Most people believe that memory manufacturing is a VERY expensive business. This is true in terms of overall numbers (billions), but it is false in terms of actual products required on the market. Memory is used in much more than just computers (cars, microwaves, cell phones, digital cameras, DVD players, etc), and it is a huge market, possibly a trillion dollar one coming soon. When you have a big market, a big demand and a low supply of manufacturers, it doesn't take much to raise the billions needed to enter a market where there is obvious collusion. 1 million Americans risking US$3000 in a market that you can prove is selling at a overwhelming profit is not a big risk -- and many people were aware of the over-priced memory market back in the 90s.
Yet I think the debate is won by the free marketeers when you realize that one of the biggest reasons for the cartelization in this case is patent and copyright law. Memory chips are heavily burdened by patents, and many of those patents are cross licensed by those in the cartel. This smacks of government-paternalism and is one reason why patents generally help the cartels and the State rather than the inventor. The cartel:inventor ratio in terms of who is helped by patents is very very high (more cartels are helped than individual inventors).
I believe the government is wrong for starting class-action lawsuits. We all know that few companies are hurt by class-action lawsuits, and even fewer "victims" are helped. The lawyers (who are the biggest supporters of the expanding State) win the most! Why don't we roll back before the cartel-State collusion and see what the real cause of this problem is? The biggest barrier to the market is NOT money -- stop thinking that! No matter what the financial cost is, if there is a profit to be made, people will invest. I don't care if it is quadrillions that are needed, as long as it is profitable (and cartels can always be beaten in price), people will risk money. The real barrier is the State -- no one can raise enough "force" to overcome the force of government patents and copyrights.
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?
Maybe because American laws against price fixing wouldn't apply to an internation organization of which the US isn't even a member?
What do you think that we can do? We're a large consumer of oil, so we can apply economic pressue. That already happens though, and we already get very good deals. Believe me, gas is much less expensive in the US than in just about any other country.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Havent we seen this a few times in the past? " Oh, bad industry.. you are fixing prices.. *slap on wrist* .. now be good.. " then we go thru it again in a few years as nothing ever changes. Governmental 'fines' are considered a cost of doing business anymore, and have long since stopped being a deterrent.
---- Booth was a patriot ----