From the dearauthor article:
Quote:
- After each round of negotiations with Apple over the terms of their agency agreements, Publisher Defendants’ CEOs immediately contacted each other to discuss strategy and verify where each stood with Apple. They also used Apple to verify their position vis-a-vis other Publisher Defendants. Penguin, for example, sought Apple’s assurance that it was “1 of 4 before signing”—an assurance that Apple provided. Two days later, Penguin and two other Publisher Defendants signed Apple Agency Agreements.
- Initially, Amazon attempted to resist Macmillan’s efforts to force it to accept either the agency model or windowing of its e-books by refusing to sell Macmillan’s titles. Other Publisher Defendants, continuing their practice of communicating with each other, offered Macmillan’s CEO messages of encouragement and assurances of solidarity. For example, one Settling Defendant’s CEO e-mailed Macmillan’s CEO to tell him, “I can ensure you that you are not going to find your company alone in the battle.”
- Mr. Shanks, the CEO of Penguin, twice chastised Random House for continuing to sell ebooks under the wholesale model and criticized RH for “not helping the group.” “Mr Shanks also encouraged a large print and e-book retailer to punish the other publisher for not joining Defendants’ conspiracy. In March 2010, Mr. Shanks sent an email message to an executive of the retailer complaining that the publisher “has chosen to stay on their current model and allow retailers to sell at whatever price they wish.” Mr. Shanks argued that “[s]ince Penguin is looking out for [your] welfare at what appears to be great costs to us, I would hope that [you] would be equally brutal to Publishers who have thrown in with your competition with obvious disdain for your welfare…I hope you make [the publisher] hurt like Amazon is doing to [the Publisher Defendants]. Likely this is referring to Barnes and Noble
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Sounds to me as though the DOJ has a pretty complete evidence file. Apple et. al may fight, but I can't see them winning.