Connecticut AG To Grill Amazon, Apple Over E-Book Price Fixing

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 3, 2010 @03:41AM from the jig-is-up dept.

suraj.sun tips news that Connecticut's Attorney General has demanded a meeting with Apple and Amazon to discuss anti-competitive pricing methods in the e-book market. From Ars: "Richard Blumenthal says that he wants representatives from both on-line giants in his office ASAP to discuss what Blumenthal calls their 'most favored nation' arrangements with big book companies like Macmillan and Simon & Schuster. The crux of the MFN concept is that a given product maker must offer a given distributor the lowest price it's offering anyone. If a competing distributor gets a price break, they get it too. 'The net effect is fairly obvious,' Blumenthal warned in his letter to Amazon (PDF), 'in that MFNs will reduce the publisher's incentive to offer a discount to Amazon if it would have to offer the same discount to Apple, leading to the establishment of a price floor for e-books offered by the publisher.'"

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Re:Zero cost copying by AHuxley · 2010-08-03 03:55 · Score: 5, Informative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysine_price-fixing_conspiracy should give some insight into the cartel issue and why it needs to be fixed.

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Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Folks it is election season! by ScaredOfTheMan · 2010-08-03 04:40 · Score: 5, Informative

"Richard Blumenthal (born February 13, 1946) is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he has been Attorney General of Connecticut since 1991. He is a candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate election for the seat currently held by Christopher Dodd.[5]"

Nuff said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Blumenthal