Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenMonkey
I believe it is anti-competitive and anti-free-market. I feel the same way about MAP policies from Apple and others. I believe for a free market, the retailer should be able to purchase a product from their supplier at whatever cost they negotiate, and should be able to sell it at whatever price they think helps them make a profit.
I think people don't know much about why prices are what they are, and why ebooks are priced at full MSRP all of the time, but I think they know when they are too high. Artificially inflating prices and price-fixing (I'm sorry, I believe that is basically what this is, a price-fixing agreement between companies) leads to trouble.
Inflicting aggravating DRM schemes on people and using cross-company price fixing will lead to increased piracy rates. Same thing that happened to the music companies in the late 90s and early part of this decade. Ebooks are even smaller and easier to pirate. They're just begging for trouble.
You can't depend on older folks who don't know how to copy/paste files to a USB device forever.
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oh, dear gawd, do NOT even get me started on that slimy underhanded practice. Once this becomes standard practice there is officially no longer a free market. Look up the laws on the books in the state of Maryland here in the US. I don't know where they are on it but basically it's illegal for any vendor, even online vendors/retailers to sell to residents of the state of Maryland under a MAP agreement. Of course it still will be tested in court and several other states are "looking into the same laws" but of course I suspect it's simply a way for the corrupt political system in the US to extort more cash from the lobbyists of the companies in question. Once done it is magically no longer an issue. The US is no longer a free market system because, well we no longer produce anything here anymore. Supply and demand on manufactured goods is a myth as well. Even more so in the face of MAP agreements.