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Originally Posted by Rob Lister
What if the collusion was quiet? Jobs openly broadcasts the concept and the individual players independently decide to take that road. Is that illegal?
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Jobs didn't broadcast the concept; he said the prices *would* be the same, and higher at the iBookstore than they were at Amazon at the time of the announcement.
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What if the collusion did not refer to price? They collude, but only in terms of business strategy, not price. Is that illegal?
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That'll no doubt be one of the details the case investigates--how many books of what kind switched to what prices?
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Is Jobs culpable? From the grave? He isn't a publisher. He has only an opinion, not a vote.
Is Apple?
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CEO of Apple, or possible their board of directors, is liable. The only way for them to maybe *not* be liable is to claim they had no idea this happened, that Jobs pushed it on everyone, and now that they've been made aware of it, they'll dismantle that structure as fast as they can: allow non-agency priced books in the Apple bookstore and get rid of the price-matching demand that's attached to their current contracts.
Since they won't be doing that, they'll have to cope with being part of whatever ruling results from the case.