Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
+1
Both the intent and letter of laws relating to price fixing, as far as I can tell, relates to anti-competitive behavior.
The publishers are not collaborating in secret to set their prices. The retailers are not collaborating to set prices, or to develop strategies with the specific intent of elevating prices. Everything is out in the open, nothing is secret, everyone is competing against one another. The FTC, the AG, the EU regulators, no one has announced any investigations or anti-trust concerns yet.
Moreover, no one squealed about "price fixing" when Apple and other services like Amazon or eMusic set flat rates for digital audio downloads. Also, there are numerous instances of, for example, a government agency specifically setting prices for regulated products, e.g. the CPUC regulates just about every single price PSEG can charge, at every step of the power generation and transmission process.
This type of pricing arrangement is not common, but it isn't anti-competitive and therefore highly unlikely to be illegal.
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Government only fixes prices in cases where they have granted a monopoly because monopolies are anti-competitive by definition. Without competition there is no free market--no market pressure of any sort. Thus in the case of a monopoly government intervention is necessary to preserve the free enterprise system. Publishers do not have a monopoly but when they get together and agree on a pricing scheme act like a monopoly and have broken the market as effectively as if they were a monopoly.
My local brick-and-mortar book store sells new releases at greatly discounted prices on the day they are released. As I understand this new Agency Pricing scheme, book stores like Fictionwise and Kobo are not allowed to do this. How can that not be seen as breaking the free exercise of the market?