Apple Loses Ebook Price Fixing Appeal, Must Pay $450 Million

An anonymous reader writes: A federal appeals court ruled 2-1 today that Apple indeed conspired with publishers to increase ebook prices. The ruling puts Apple on the hook for the $450 million settlement reached in 2014 with lawyers and attorneys general from 33 states. The Justice Dept. contended that the price-fixing conspiracy raised the price of some e-books from the $10 standard set by Amazon to $13-$15. The one dissenting judge argued that Apple's efforts weren't anti-competitive because Amazon held 90% of the market at the time. Apple is unhappy with the ruling, but they haven't announced plans to take the case further. They said, "While we want to put this behind us, the case is about principles and values. We know we did nothing wrong back in 2010 and are assessing next steps."

Comments

E-book prices

[Firethorn]

I'm still irked by the pricing. Now, I don't expect to be able to buy an ebook for the price of a used book, but by golly, I refuse to pay more for the book than I do for a dead-tree version, and given that I'm a halfway 'smart' shopper, 30% under 'list' is the average for me, I can often reach 50% or more, for a book that's not quite a new release. As such, I'm pretty much stuck buying from Baen for now.

They need to hold more sales like Steam. But no, the publishers don't want that. Apple & Amazon don't want that.

Re:E-book prices

[AmiMoJo]

The fact that you can't resell digital content (at least, not easily) is why Steam has to have regular, massive sales. Players were used to buying games at full price and then trading them in for a good fraction of that back. They were used to picking up used copies for a fraction of retail price, especially for older games.

Steam even mimics the experience of visiting your local game shop periodically and discovering interesting stuff in the bargain bin or used. They have flash sales, very limited time only, aimed at impulse buys and people waiting for some price threshold.

Digital content has to be cheap because it's worth much, much less than physical content due to lack of resales. Publishers are trying to prevent resale of physical copies now by having one-time use codes and DLC tied to the console, but consumers are pushing back by demanding lower prices. It isn't clear which side will win out yet.