Slashdot Mirror
Apple Holds Firm As Publishers Settle With DoJ Over e-Book Pricing
Nerval's Lobster writes "The U.S. Department of Justice has just settled with book publisher Macmillan in an ongoing case over the price of e-books, bringing its number of settlements with big-name publishers up to five. Justice claims that those five publishers, along with Apple, agreed to 'raise retail e-book prices and eliminate price competition, substantially increasing prices paid by consumers.' Apple competes fiercely in the digital-media space against Amazon, which often discounts the prices of Kindle e-books as a competitive gambit; although all five publishers earn significant revenues from sales of Kindle e-books, Amazon's massive popularity among book-buyers — coupled with the slow decline of bricks-and-mortar bookstores — gives it significant leverage when it comes to lowering those e-book prices as it sees fit. But Justice and Apple seem determined to keep their court date later this year."
...along with a DRM scheme that causes problems (see the 1984 controversy) are why I keep reading dead-tree editions.
DVD and Blu-Ray have DRM that's somewhat nonsensical, but the media are cheap. I can excuse some of the stupidity because I'm not paying a lot for it.
E-books are too expensive for not having a physical copy.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Publishers should be able to price their product at whatever levels they want. They got into trouble when they got together to agree on set prices.
Ebooks are an interesting thing. The Apple and Kindle Ebooks seem to be licenses to view the content, unless you illegally break the DRM of the content and load it into callibre or a similar software. You can't buy an ebook and then sell it when you are done. You can't buy a used ebook :)
Physical textbooks are getting that way too, coming with 1 time licenses to study problems that your teacher may require, which eliminates the used text book market. Ultimately, they are adapting their profit model to extract the most they can out of the existing market, similar to how Dice hosts advertisements on slashdot and calls them news articles.
I would hope that these trends push people to abandon these platforms, but history tells me that most people will stick with it because its good enough (some people gradually edging out of the market, but they don't matter). Will the people sick of these moves make their own platform? Hopefully.
I rent ebooks...
FTFY.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
On the other hand, given the egregious awards for downloading just a few movies or songs - imagine the financial penalty for a collection of a thousand books.
Everyone is just lucky the book industry is not going after pirates the same way the music industry has.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was about the publishers (and Apple) trying to keep the market more open to competition
Do you really believe that? If so, I have some ocean side property to sell you in Arizona...
Apple and the publishers did this to make money (as much of it as possible) and didn't think anyone would notice their backroom dealing.
I dunno. I've bought books from Apple's store. They come as an unencrypted epub file which I can happily read on pretty much any modern eReader.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well, that's a solution... if you have no scruples whatsoever.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You are right – but you are also missing the point.
There are 3 major players: the publishers, the distributors (Apple or Amazon), and the customers.
Amazon’s Kindle used a distributor’s model. Amazon would buy the book at a fixed price from the publisher but would set the retail price. They could, and did, sell books at a loss, to promote the Kindle.
Apple uses an agency model. The publishers set price and then negotiates the percentage the retailer (Apple) keeps. It is alleged that Apple and the publishers colluded to break Amazon’s near monopoly.
The agency model shifts power away from the distributors to the publishers. As you say this model has been around for a long time – so why care?
What makes it a Federal case is that (allegedly) this raised prices for consumers. Why? Because now all bookstores sell the same book for the same price, so bookstores are no longer competing on price. It shifts power away from customers to the publishers, resulting in higher prices.
The problem was not Apple's app store model. The problem was that Apple allegedly colluded with the publishers to raise the prices of ebooks in other stores. With iPhone and iPad apps, it didn't matter so much, because the Apple store is the only officially-sanctioned source of those. I guess Apple didn't like the thought of having to compete on price with other ebook retailers...
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
Apple and the publishers did this to make money
Of course they did.
Because Amazon destroying all other publishers means they make very little money. But do you think that's better, or worse for readers?
Amazon charging less so they can lock the whole market into the Kindle platform for eBooks is not exactly an altruistic move either you know.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But Amazon is selling books at prices across the board that are unprofitable and accusing anyone charging higher prices of gouging. They are actively trying to destroy other distributors and bring publishers under their thumb. This is going to hurt consumers in the long run because destroying publishers and distributors ability to make a profit will result in fewer books getting published. Consumers will have fewer books to choose from and fewer venues in which to shop for them.
I'm absolutely amazed that folks here on Slashdot who claim to value freedom, etc, are actually cheering Amazon's attempt to build a monopoly. Has everyone's hatred for Apple really blinded them that much to what's going on here?
You don't seem to understand. You're right, Apple shouldn't have the ability to set prices for other stores, but what they did was get the publishers to agree that they wouldn't allow other stores (aka: Amazon) to sell for prices less than Apple.
That's why there is such a "to do" about this. It's not the way things normally work and that's why the DOJ has brought the lawsuit about.
I don't have time to make a sig
Apple's business model was to raise everyone's price and contract so that no one could sell cheaper than them. It was good for apple and good for the publishers, and you want to tell me its "A Good Thing" for consumers? It is outright price fixing. Amazon's behavior has legal tests you can apply to see if its monopolistic behaviour that's illegal, but you'll find that it involves other distributors (like apple) not being able to get content, which certainly wasn't the case. It isn't illegal to just sell something for less than your competition. It doesn't take a set of binoculars to see that you're missing the point entirely, and defending Apple's actions that were truly bad for the consumer. It was anticompetitive (to put Amazon and their thin margins out of business) and also illegal by fixing prices.
Agency pricing is pretty scummy period in my opinion, and is fairly rare. Here not only was it being done, but as a collusion.
Apple has so far sold 25 billion songs, all with agency pricing. Record companies set the price, and Apple sells it. The same things with books. Apple sells tens of thousands of different ebooks. They don't want to worry about what price to set for each book. So they let the publisher set the price; the publisher has more experience anyway.
Now apparently Apple told the publisher: If you sell the same book to other distributors for less, then we are not interested. Can't see anything wrong with that.
Yes, they own the US justice system, and yet it is the EU courts that produced a pretty scathing opinion of Samsung's abuse of FRAND patents.
But let's not let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy.