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$860 Million In Fines Handed Out For LCD Price-Fixing
eldavojohn writes "Six companies have pleaded guilty to worldwide price fixing of Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Displays from Sept. 14, 2001, to Dec. 1, 2006. For violating the Sherman Act, the companies have agreed to pay criminal fines of over $860 Million. In addition, nine executives have been charged in the scandal. The pricing scam affected some of the largest companies at the time, including Apple, HP and Dell. (If you bought a TFT-LCD from them in that time frame, you may be one of the victimized consumers.) From the DOJ release, 'According to the charge, Chi Mei carried out the conspiracy by agreeing during meetings, conversations and communications to charge prices of TFT-LCD panels at certain pre-determined levels and issuing price quotations in accordance with the agreements reached. As a part of the conspiracy, Chi Mei exchanged information on sales of TFT-LCD panels for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices.'"
so what exactly happened? the article is long on confusion and short on explanations.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
We are just going to sell displays at a higher price than everyone else.
Mod parent up.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
and sell me a $50 24" wide screen monitor with a 5ms response time, and then we'll talk.
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Corporations doing shyster deals to gain profits for share holders while braking laws and shafting the consumers? Good god whats next, corporation changing laws to punish consumers for using products in ways there were not designed to be used?
Hey hey there kid. That baseball is designed to be hit with our authorized bats. Using any unauthorized bat is prohibited and will be enforced by our "Good Consumer Police"
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
...if they wish to receive a tiny American flag pin*
*shipping and handling charges may apply.
Which other products might have their prices controlled the same way right now?
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Is this at all related to Apple selling the same model Cinema Displays since April, 2007? 982 days without a refresh, following an average of 230. What's going on there?
As someone who bought a Dell flat panel (for well over $100 IIRC) during that time period, all I need to do is submit my name and address, email address, two phone numbers, and other identifying information, to be entered in a database administered by only-God-knows so I'll eventually receive a check for my share of the proceeds which works out to $13.62 USD. Meanwhile plaintiff attorneys Dewey Cheatem and Howe LLP will receive 40 percent of the settlement, or $90 million. Apple, HP, Dell, and the others neither admit nor deny guilt or responsibility in the matter.
No thanks.
Summary worthless as usual. A conspiracy usually requires more than one conspirator. The company mentioned in the linked press release doesn't even seem to produce LCD screens. What are the real companies involved that I might actually care about?
In fact, that's an interesting topic of criminal law. "Conspiracy" by itself is a "group" crime (price-fixing especially). Multiple people must work together for a crime to have even occurred. One party cannot conspire by itself. We would call that "thought crime". I know the press release says otherwise, but if only one company pleads guilty to conspiracy, is it really a conspiracy? Wouldn't a judge have to reject the plea unless or until more companies were found guilty as well?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Guess who is going to pay the $860 million. Don't look forward to cheaper LCD prices anytime soon.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This is what real conspiracies look like. Note the distinct lack of "CIA", "Masons", "NSA" or other such favorites.
The better way to handle this is to drop the stupid ineffective fines and threaten that their products wont be allowed to sell in the USA.
Then they wouldn't even dare try to fix prices.
5 year ban.
1) Subsidiaries
If you're smart enough to close that loophole,
2) Indirect sales (A sells to B who sells into the US)
Your only choices are to prevent the company from doing anything (impossible due to jurisdiction issues) and to block all imports (the economy can survive that for about a week).
So how much should LCDs really cost? I want some savings on my next purchase.
my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
Can you imagine what would happen to prices if they did that?
First of all, in a conspiracy like this... the TFT part might no longer be available.. that would mean nobody could manufacture new monitors.
How do you feel about paying $10000 to get a 12" LCD display, due to all the main manufacturers' TFT screen material being banned?
It's interesting who Chi-Mei conspired WITH. Chi-Mei is not the best LCD manufacturer and they agreed to cooperate with DOJ. There must be other companies who Chi-Mei will bust and who will pay more. Certain Koreans, perhaps?
Yes, price fixing is bad, but seriously "victimized" consumers? Yeah, they overpaid for an LCD, but they -chose- to pay that amount for an LCD. No one made them choose an LCD monitor/TV, its possible to watch TV/use a computer without an LCD display (CRT, Plasma, etc) and such. Once patents expired (or if hopefully patents are either abolished or weakened) theres nothing stopping a full-on price war where the people price fixing will lose big time.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
pfft.
There's a sucker born every minute, and a lawyer willing to take a fee for anything.
Seriously, how can you fix the price of something nobody has to buy? Sooner or later the price will come down to where it is a fair deal for the buyer.
I remember the first laptop I "wanted" was $4K USD. I didn't buy it, I didn't "need" it. The last laptop I bought was 10X better and only $400 USD, not even counting inflation. It was cheap enough to buy as a "toy".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
LCDs are already dirt cheap. Displays now are cheaper than I've ever seen them with any technology. I remember getting a 17" CRT monitor in 1999, and not even a high grade one, for about $200. Now that gets you a 24" LCD. That's not inflation adjusted either, tack on another $50 if you want to look at it in terms of buying power.
I fail to see what you are complaining about here. They got nailed for doing something against the law, but it isn't as though we are all sitting here desperately needing lower display prices. You can get a cheap screen, no problem.
is 860M more or less than the excess profits taken by collusion on a worldwide sales scale, for 6 years.
I have a feeling they think it was worth it. This is why business will always risk it. We don't take whats really due. All of it.
that wouldn't happen. Too many other players.
the penalty would be immense that they wouldn't do it again.
Manufacturing a flat-screen, be it Plasma or LCD is so cheap - you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you.
But picture this:
Rewind a few years, remember when you paid 1000-3000 dollars for your 28 inch Sony Vega television set?
Today, you can grab a tv - 50 inches, way better than any projection screen or projector ever could be, for less than 800 dollars!
Back in the days, I couldn't even get a decent 26" incher for that price, why is even that possible today? Simple...look at the materials.
Your tv - is essentially not much more than 2 glass plates with small cells with either gases or liquid crystals in them, and 2 plastic plates to cover it all,
and then one graphics chip cpu-fpu-memory and all in one, plus a chip for digital tv-decoding and a tuner. These SMD components cost so little
that you could buy a burger for what it actually cost to manufacture.
The temptation to earn HEAPS of money comes from your old "hard-dying-habits" of paying a fortune for a technology that was relatively
expensive to manufacture, they where weighty, big glass screen using a lot of glass (Crt), old-school DIP/DIL discretes that takes up a lot of space.
Look at the inside of your latest flatscreen, there's a small mainboard that fills up 10 percent of the tv's size, and perhaps a PSU that fills up the next 10 percent, and the
rest is a glass surface, that's it - really. These TVs could cost 100 bucks, but they won't - as long as YOU the consumer - are used to paying 1000's of dollars, it's a no-brainer that - THAT kind of money could just land in someones pocket anyway, because - you will pay anyway.
But lets not kid ourselves - we're buying screens cheaper than ever. I'm enjoying my 800 dollar 50" incher, and 200 dollar 24" inch 1920x1200 computer screen, wow...I remember paying 1000 bucks for a screen back in the days...22 inches and "only" 1280x1024 crt...and THAT was considered discount.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Anyone else notice this started just 3 days after 9/11? Makes me wonder if evil (read: morally challenged) people tend to think "Hey, here's a great idea for a scam... now... if only there were a perfect time for a diversion to cover my tracks..."
How many files should they download to get the same fine?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
that they claim it as an operating expense, so then its LEGAL to keep the prices high, to pay it off.
Like CDs. They are _so_ much more expensive to produce than vinyl.
Which is to say, bad luck for the LCD manufacturers. The music industry did and does continue to get away with that scam.
Good old free market, always making things better for the consumer!
These are the same people who decided to completely cease the production of 4:3 lcd panels so that they could instead make 16:9 panels with the same diagonal size but LESS PIXELS so they could drop their production costs and make consumers think they're still getting the same thing. It's too bad I can't sue them for that; widescreen laptops are a plague.
This is becoming a yearly tradition for LCD companies. Perhaps the fines are low enough that it's still financially viable even if you get caught.
Send them all to Jail
The unused horizontal space isn't wasted. It's obviously there to show you parts of your pretty scenic background (otherwise what would be the point of a background if it were covered with windows all the time?).
For example, as I compose this message on the middle third of my wide screen, I have a pretty ocean scene on the margins. Windows 7 makes it even better by changing it periodically. Ahhhh, so peaceful...
The better way to handle this is to drop the stupid ineffective fines and threaten that their products wont be allowed to sell in the USA.
Or maybe another company should have started up and underpriced them.
I have personally seen threats of anti-competitive lawsuits used to limit competition.
Several companies come together to try to set a file standard for interoperation. A vendor to some of these companies threatens an anti-competitive lawsuit, after all they are meeting in a room discussing how to work together. The vendor was trying to maintain lock-in to its proprietary file format for its customers. The standard is stuck in limbo for years until the companies working on the standard can form a corporation with enough legal support to fend off a potential lawsuit.
If you think patents reduce innovation by creating IP mine fields, anti-competitive laws are just like that.
Bad idea. Fonts and antialiasing systems are designed for RGB subpixel orientation. Vertical RGB plays hell with text rendering.
Screw the what and whyfor -- where do we who bought monitors during that period get our refunds...I assume the DOJ will be distributing the fines to those in in the affected class, I mean they are our government and they were representing us, right?
-;