Slashdot Mirror
Apple E-book Price-Fixing Trial Begins
An anonymous reader writes "Technology giant Apple is to begin its defence against charges by the US government that it tried to fix the prices of e-books. The iPad-maker is accused of working with publishers in 2009 to set prices in an effort to compete in the e-book market dominated by Amazon. Quotes from Steve Jobs' official biography have been cited as evidence in the case."
Yes please.
They'll be fine, with maybe a small fine of much less than the money made from the deals. At least they won't likely get their 'pet' judge this time.
Ah In Jobs we trust :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
If Apple doesn't set the prices, how can they fix the prices?
"He is so stupid. And now back to the wall!" Moe Szyslak
In other words Apple tried to do what they did with music , open up a market and allow everyone to make money and be of benefit to the users.
what I can't understand is the problem of stopping amazon from bankrupting all the publishers. Of course they couldall just decide to tell amazon to go stuff themselves and not allow their books to be sold their and set up their own site, see how amazon likes that.
Fascinating comment at the end of one of the stories linked to here. The writer claims that Amazon's model is unsustainable and equivalent to the Standard Oil play of selling at a loss to drive competitors out of business. In his opinion, Apple should be commended for raising prices by a few dollars per book? What say you Slashdot? What I have trouble determining in this shift from physical media to digital is how the artists are making out in this brave new world.
After they pay their taxes and return the money to people who bought overpriced eBooks.
"Technology giant Apple is to begin its defence against charges ..."
Doesn't the prosecution present their case before the defence begins?
"We decided Amazon had an illegal monopoly, so we illegally conspired to set prices instead of talking to the DoJ. The increase in our 30% cut didn't hurt either."
I can never understand laws like this. In every voluntary trade each side benefits otherwise there would be no trade. If Apple wants to set up deals with publishers to set prices nod the customers agree to pay those prices who is actually the victim? If you don't want to pay the price the seller is asking there is no sale. The only argument I might understand is that since they get a monopoly via copyright they are subject to regulation. But that is just another reason to get rid of IP laws entirely.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
You. Unless you get more money from the publishers than you spend on books.
Because the contract is that the publishers cannot sell to a distributor without telling the distributor that they cannot reduce their prices.
So unless Apple are having a sale on some book, nobody else can have a sale on that book.
Which means that you pay more, because there's no point to shopping around looking for a better deal.
"Technology giant Apple is to begin its defence against charges ..."
Doesn't the prosecution present their case before the defence begins?
Normally yes, but the DOJ has already presented its case to the public, and the judge has already decided. Might as well go right for the appeal.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
And overpriced devices.
Books I understand, the people who bought iDevices paid a premium fully knowing cheaper "viable" alternatives existed. I don't follow why they should get anything back, those were fully informed decisions.
P.S. I prefer android personally.
I think the word you're looking for is "condone". Condoming an island country could prove to be extraordinarily difficult.
This just reinforces my belief that ownership of any Apple device is an indicator of low intelligence.
Name any Apple product over 20 seconds old and you can go buy three of the competitor's product and use two of those for target practice and still come out cheaper with a better product that you don't have to load media through their stupid iStore (is that what it's called?)
Apple products are NOT immune to virus infections, either.
Can you say "Pirate Bay"? I knew you could!
Glad to see they have enough evidence to go after Apple.
It seems fairly obvious that they are guilty.
Now how about some banks?
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Condoming an island country could prove to be extraordinarily difficult.
How hard could it be? It's a reasonably small island, and latex grows on trees!
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
It would be easier if it was hard!
I know it's trendy to hate apple, but the fault lies at the feet of the extremely greedy publishers.
An e-book should be MAX 50% the price of the paper book.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What island country are you talking about?
If you mean Vietnam, let me be the first to tell you that Vietnam is not an island. Vietnam lies on mainland asia, just south of China.
Apple approached the publishers not vice-versa, look it up on your ipad fanboi.
They are a greedy self-serving company more than most, there charitable donations until recently were an extremely low percentage for a company of their size.
The Department of Justice is not seeking financial damages from Apple if the government wins the case.
http://www.tuaw.com/2013/06/03/apple-doj-ebook-price-fixing-trial-begins-today/
Not really a shakedown for bribes. Your forgetting government power also include contract law. Apple was seeking to control prices with contracts. If the courts enforced those contracts then they would be shutting down competition.
The *vast* majority of costs associated with creating a physical book are *identical* to the costs associated with creating an e-book. Additionally, you need to deal with doing (and checking) the layout for each of the *multiple* e-book formats you're going to produce, while you only need to do it once for most books (twice if it has both hardback and paperback editions). Printing and shipping costs amount to about 10% of a publisher's costs to produce a physical book and get it out to stores.
Claiming that a 10% reduction in costs should amount to a 50%+ reduction in 'shelf' price is absurd, and simply shows that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
Wow, I guess it does pay to keep a low profile, especially when, after you died, your biography can be used against the company you built! :) Cautionary Tale for those who like to showoff? :)
I know it's trendy to hate apple, but the fault lies at the feet of the extremely greedy publishers.
An e-book should be MAX 50% the price of the paper book.
A lot of the troubles of the modern-day world can be credited to "should be". A lot of things "should be", but actual fact makes them impossible.
Before saying an e-book "should be" max 50% of a paper book, I'd want to see an honest breakdown of the true costs of producing the book in the abstract - paper, electronic - or whatever, totalling up the costs of creating the book, making it fit for human consumption, typesetting, marketing and so forth, all while paying all those involved a decent living wage and supplying them with the capital equipment they require. Plus enough profit to make them want to go through it all over again for the next book. If that can be done for half than the approximately $7USD/copy that seems to be about average for USA paperbacks, well and good. but leave the "should be"s out of it. A fair price for a fair product is all that I ask. There are books I haven't bought because I considered them overpriced, and no few of them are ebooks at hardback prices, and there are books that I bought because they were so cheap I didn't care if they were immortal literature or not. Very little of my purchase decision was based on what "should be" the cost of producing them.
Books are not commodities. A work by Terry Pratchett probably costs no more to produce than a bodice-ripper from Harvey Snorkwacker. Less, once purchase volumes start kicking in. However, Pratchett's work has more intrinsic value, and that's something worth paying a premium for. At least as long as it's not too high a premium. The old-fashioned "sell it hardback for a year at a high price first" model doesn't work for me. Even when it was the only game in town, I waited for the lower-cost paperback edition.
To be fair and clear, publishers are scum and this seems to be consistent regardless of the material being published -- research/scholarly journals, books, music, movies/TV and video games.
They are in the business of selling someone else's work and occasionally giving some of that money back to the people who created the content. For the publishers, it's "Money forever" but for the creators, it's "work for hire" and so they don't get money forever unless they somehow managed to cheat the publishers out of it. This type of capitalist vampirism should be outlawed as they don't "represent" the content creators as they so often claim. What we need are agency type arrangements where the publishing agencies can only get like 10 to 15%.
Condoming an island country could prove to be extraordinarily difficult.
It might be easier if it were a penisula.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
They made a contract that stated that a publisher could not use a distributor who sold books less than Apple did.
So, for example, no sales. No special offers. No "Buy these two books, get one free". Unless it's a book that Apple are doing the same thing on.
If the publisher agreed a contract with Apple and Amazon to sell their books, and the publisher DID NOT require Amazon to sell ONLY for the sale price the PUBLISHER has set, and that set price was no lower than Apple, then Apple could sue them for breech of contract and stop paying on sales whilst the dispute was ongoing.
Printing Geek here: Paperback book would be roughly $0.01 or LESS per text page (depending on the run length of total copies) and $0.04 per cover. All of this includes binding and shipping. So, let's look at a 300 page paperback: about $3.10 per printed copy. Now, think of a large run book with text page cost at $0.005 or $0.0025 per page: ~$1.54 or ~$0.79 per copy. I think the lower range of prices is even more likely considering the junk paper stock and black ink only for paperbacks.
Keep in mind these cost are assuming domestic US production of books! I don't think I can pick up one of my kids books and not see "PRINTED IN CHINA" on the back.
Nature had a breakout of costs of publishing science papers on line compared to print versions. Its not an exact comparison, but overlaps. This included editor salaries, office overhead, printing, mailing, computer servers, etc. If you paid for the time PhD/professors spent peer-reviewing each others work for free, then the online cost would be more like 2/3rds.
Plus enough profit to make them want to go through it all over again for the next book
There's the rub. In other words, the price *should be* what it is now.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Hahahahaha, you mean scanning the paper version and stuffing it into a .mobi file after some dodgy OCR?
A lot of the legitimate ebooks I've seen should be returned as unfit for purpose.
And shipping those books are free? sweet!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No it is not. I know a LOT of writers, and they all make more money self publishing Ebooks than printed. One friend has been on the NY times best seller list and made $0.25 a book sold. All the rest went to the publisher.
Plus enough profit to make them want to go through it all over again for the next book
There's the rub. In other words, the price *should be* what it is now.
I tell my employers what my salary "should be". They laugh.
Problem with e-publishing is that Apple and friends get most of the say-so in the "should be" .
Since you keep going back to work there, it seems your employers have a better handle on the situation.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
It would be easier on an island country than a landlocked one.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
What is the source of your information? Or is this a work of fiction too? {grin}
Hahahahaha, you mean scanning the paper version and stuffing it into a .mobi file after some dodgy OCR?
A lot of the legitimate ebooks I've seen should be returned as unfit for purpose.
Then you shouldn't complain about price, because free would be too expensive.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Plus enough profit to make them want to go through it all over again for the next book
There's the rub. In other words, the price *should be* what it is now.
I tell my employers what my salary "should be". They laugh.
Problem with e-publishing is that Apple and friends get most of the say-so in the "should be" .
You are at least as delusional about Apple's role in ebook pricing as you are about what you should get for your work.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
My per page prices figure bulk shipping. With enough lead time, shipping is cheap! With overseas production, shipping is MORE than the printing!!
so let's try "defense"
Given most books are likely to be printed on continuous feed machines rather than cut sheet - the cost per page is likely to be even lower, as each impression is likely to be more than one page - which is then folded into folios and guillotined.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Spot on. My prices were on the generous side!!