Slashdot Mirror
Court Bars Apple From Making Industry-Wide E-book Deals
itwbennett writes "The federal judge presiding over the U.S. electronic books case against Apple has barred the company from striking deals that would ensure that it could undercut prices of other retailers in the e-book market and also prohibited Apple from letting any one publisher know what deals the company is striking up with other publishers. For its part, Apple said it plans to appeal the ruling (PDF), denying that it conspired to fix ebook pricing. Meanwhile, Amazon is alerting customers of their potential payout, which could be as much as $3.82 for every eligible Kindle book."
There's nothing illegal about being by far the largest e-book publisher. There is something illegal about conspiring with the majority of an industry to collude in price fixing. Also, I'm amazed at the gall of being upset that an illegal conspiracy against customers is actually leading to said customers being compensated.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Really? That is what apple said? The publishers were unhappy with Amazon discounting the books for a while but were unable to do anything individually. Apple came around and said we can work on this with you. The 5 publishers all got on-board and then gave amazon an ultimatum. change your model to agency or be excluded from the market.
Apple also said this:
'We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway.'"
See the part where Jobs acknowledged the customer (thats you and me) pays more?
Is that how competition should work?