Justice Department Calls Apple the "Ringmaster" In e-book Price Fixing Case

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April 2012, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and a number of publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of e-books on the iBookstore. As part of its investigation into Apple's actions, the Justice Department collected evidence which it claims demonstrates that Apple was the 'ringmaster' in a price fixing conspiracy. Specifically, the Justice Department claims that Apple wielded its power in the mobile app market to coerce publishers to agree to Apple's terms for iBookstore pricing."

Comments

Re:Interesting

[bws111]

Amazon was operating under a normal wholesale/retail model. They bought from the publisher for some agreed-on price, and sold the books to the public for a price they set (which could be higher or lower than what they paid the publisher). Apple convinced the publishers to stop selling to Amazon and switch to an agency model. Under the agency model, the publisher set the price the public paid, and gave the retailers a cut of that. Apple also managed to write into the contracts that nobody could get less of a cut than Apple. That is price fixing.

Re:Think of the Children

[whoever57]

And you have the gall to call others posters fanbois!

That's not a fixed price.

No, but it is "price fixing".

1. Apple does not have an app monopoly (required for this to be illegal)

This is something you have made up. Price fixing can be illegal in the absence of a monopoly.

2. App "dominance", even monopoly, has no bearing on book sellers (how is Apple supposed to leverage this against them?).

Again, you failed to RTFA:

When Random House ultimately signed on the dotted line, Eddy Cue sent an email to Jobs stating that one of the reasons Random House agreed to Apple's terms was because "I prevented an app from Random House from going live in the app store."

Looks like a clear example of Apple using its app store to leverage agreements on prices.

3. Even assuming they have a monopoly (they don't, but just for argument's sake), in what way did they exploit this?
4. It's funny how supposedly "Android is winning", but somehow Apple is a monopoly.

Your frequent remarks about monopolies are pure strawman arguments. Probably invented by you because of your blind support for Apple.

5. Publishers could have easily not gone with Apple's offer. Amazon was eBook monopoly at the time (which is exactly why they went with that deal, to leverage against Amazon!), and are still the dominant eBook seller (60% market share).

That claim is refuted by the facts. Publishers were able to do exactly what you claim they could not: "gone with Apple's offer".

This was just a shrewd business deal which gave power back to the publishers and busted the Amazon monopoly (which they were actually abusing against other book sellers, and even the publishers themselves!).

Yeah, great monopoly busting: resulting in increased prices. Yeah, that's the way to go. Don't want those dirty monopolies that result in lower prices.

Honestly, do you realize how stupid your posts are?