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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.
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
That would involve punishing a lot of people for crimes of a handful. Most of the sharehholders had no way of knowing that such illegal activities were going on. Why should they be punished substantially more than they gained?
If the DRAM market is corrupt, I'll just switch to something else: Rambus! Oh wait...
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
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
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.
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.