Quote:
Originally Posted by osnova
Read my post a little bit above yours. What is relevant is price fixing, which, yes, led to higher prices. They violated the law.
Wrong. Apple was a competitor of Amazon. Entering into discussions with other competitors to fix prices was illegal for Apple as well as for the publishers. They conspired to fix prices (Apple being the forum, facilitator and a participant of a criminal conspiracy) and they did fix prices.
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1.Apple is not a competitor of the publishers. It is perfectly legal for Apple to discuss with their suppliers the terms under which they will be supplied.
2. Under the agency model, the supplier sets the price. That's 100 per cent legal. In the Ios App Store, which operates under the agency model each developer ( supplier) sets the price. Thats not illegal price fixing: thats legal price setting.
If the developer sets a price of 2.99 for Ios, Google and Microsoft, thats not illegal price fixing: thats legal price setting.
In the same way, if the publisher sets a price of 14.99 for a particular novel, and offers it to Amazon, BN Kobo, etc, thats not illegal price fixing: thats legal price setting.
Where its illegal price fixing is where Random House and McMillan get together to say all mystery novels shall be 14.99 or where they decide that novel X will be 14.99 or novel Y will be 13.99.There is no evidence that the publishers did anything like that .
I think the problem here is precisely that the publishers adopted a model that gave them, rather than Amazon, control over prices and then used it to not RAISE prices, but to prevent retailer discounts from the prices that they suggested to retailers. People here really don't care about whether publishers are meeting to set pries on particular books or not: what they are mad about is that
1. publishers can set firm, non-discountable prices.
2. That those prices are higher than the discounts offered by Amazon.