Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Yup.
The reality so far is that with some 90-plus percent of the US ebook market (which is all DOJ can be concerned with, unlike the Brusselcrats who readily police the entire world  ) tied up into walled gardens, Agency pricing or price competition will do nothing meaningful competition. If anything, the price fix favors the big entrenched players over the small, independents.
Which is why the DOJ shrugs off any claims of increased competition in the face of verified and significant harm to consumers. They see real harm any merely theoretical benefit.
Most importantly, US antitrust law is *consumer* protection law, not corporate protection law as in europe.
So it doesn't matter if the price fix hurts Amazon or not; if the collusion hurts consumers it is illegal. And if the price-fixers think Amazon's market share is illegally obtained, let *them* sue under antitrust. (But don't expect that to happen; they'd be laughed out of court.) |
Well, the Current Administration likes to appear even handed, so you might see a settlement, combined with the DOJ starting an antitrust investigation on Amazon. That's not a stretch, either: under current antitrust law, a major company that uses profits from one part of its business to bankroll a price war to drive out competitors in another part of its business is engaging in illegal antitrust activity- which kind of sounds like what Amazon is doing.
If this were to happen, Amazon would most likely have to scale back on the discounting- which would achieve the same purpose as agency pricing.