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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.
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.
You're misreading the summary. They weren't involved in the price fixing, they were affected by it. Apple has to pay component manufacturers just like everyone else.
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> By being involved with the price fixing...
Apple was one of the _victims_. The conspirators were some (all?) of the manufacurers who supply displays to Apple, Dell, and HP.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Which other products might have their prices controlled the same way right now?
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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.
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.
Maybe, only because Apple is only able to sell displays based on demand but were paying prices on the supply side that were artificially higher than demand. If the price-fixing stops (and this is a good sign that it has or will), presumably there will be more profits for Apple, Dell, HP, etc in LCD displays and we may therefore look forward to refreshed product lines. Price fixing can have far-reaching consequences in a global market.
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If they were 'victims' as you claim then why do they have to pay? I call bullshit, they were involved and 25 million a year? That's pennies for any of those companies, and that sort of 'fine' is just a slap on the wrist and they will just continue to do their part to fuck over their customers anyway they can. When they can get a fine that's in the billions for each company, they we'll talk about them learning a lesson, until then, no dice.
Onto what ksemlerK said below me, that sounds fair as well, they should have to pay a 'fine' to their customers as well, fair is fair, right?
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
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?
> If they were 'victims' as you claim then why do they have to pay?
Where does the article say anything about them having to pay?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Need a cartel to make this work. So the computer firms had to know or accept this. From a wink, nudge limited good quality supply, dont rock the boat to something more direct and personal.
Are docs floating around the computer firms stating to just sign, we need the parts now, as the tech matures we can escape this BS, or was in more an inner clique that kept it going as they where the only ones who saw the docs?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
it makes sense for the LCD market to stagnate a bit now. first there was the inrush as people did a lateral move from CRTs to LCD's that actually didn't look as good as the CRT, then LCD's got bigger and sharper, then after that their speed got high enough for gaming and other fast paced things to be unaffected. After that there hasn't been much to do to them so what's the need to turn out new models as often as before?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
$13.62? You've never actually been on the consumer end of one of these things, have you?
No, the lawyers will get 100% of the actual cash that changes hands. The "victimized consumer class" will get some bullshit "settlement" like a voucher for $50 off the list price of the next monitor they buy from the companies that did this in the first place. Of course that will work out to a much higher price than you could buy it for without said voucher... so, in effect, you get dick.
Again.
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.
How about turning out some new models that are a bleeding 4:3 aspect ratio, instead of 16:9? Nowadays it seems every LCD panel in the world is a repurposed HDTV unit. Those of us who lots of coding and document work tend to prefer monitors without a squished vertical aspect and a bunch of wasted horizontal space (especially considering 100% of the universe uses 8.5x11 or A4 paper that's taller than it is wide, and document design reflects this format).
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.
The Dell LCDs at my work can rotate to a long vertical orientation.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Buy a nice monitor and flip it 90 degrees. I agree, widescreen monitors are not any better for coding. However, a good sized widesceen monitor flipped 90 degree IS very nice for that purpose.. Most decent monitors come with a VESA compliant mount, so if they don't come with a rotatable stand, you can at least get an after-market stand.... or buy one that's height adjustable/rotatable.
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.
I've gotten cash before, though usually small amounts. Back in 2004 I got a check for $9 out of some sort of music-CD price-fixing settlement.
This particular case appears not to be a class-action suit at all, though; it's a criminal investigation that imposed a fine. So there is no settlement to distribute, since it's not a civil suit with plaintiffs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
Um, do they have to pay? I don't see that anywhere. Just that Apple was affected by the scam. And I would be surprised if Apple was in on it, since it seems like Apple would have a vested interest in keeping LCD prices low, not high, what with it not being an LCD manufacturer.
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.
I still don't know what it is with this fixation of super wide ratios such as 16:9.
Supposedly, our field of view fits it better. But in reality, a square display would far better suit our visual system, where details can be discerned equally according to the distance from the direct line of view. For example, try reading a word while looking not directly at the word, but 2 or 5cm away. The text is just as hard to read whether you look 5cm below/above the word, or 5cm to the *left/right* of the word.
When I look at a wide screen, I see gaping missing blocks at the top and bottom.
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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...
This is a criminal case, not a class action settlement.
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.
Dell 2007FP. Decent (not great, but decent) monitor. 4x3 -- 1600x1200. Pivots to 1200x1600. Nice stand. Refurbished for $200 on Amazon.
/ Pivoted to portrait mode they also fit nicely at the of a 2560x1600 display
The problem with that is that the TN panels (which almost every single one of the 16:9 panels are) have a terrible vertical viewing angle. When you rotate the screen then you end up with a very noticeable poor horizontal viewing angle.
Wide screen is so you get a nice square of content in the middle with lots of ads running down both sides.
my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
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?
-;
I guess I read it wrong, my bad.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
Lol, that's classic :)
I now see their evil plan ;)
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The cartel was among LCD manufacturers. Chi Mei is the sixth company to plead guilty; the other five were LG, Sharp, Chunghwa, Seiko Epson, and Hitachi.
If you're a manufacturer who sends out a bid for LCD panels, and they all come back at something close to $X, you pay up. You need the parts, they have them, you pay what they're asking.
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