Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeD
Are you sure on that? Whilst I'm certainly not a lawyer and don't play one on TV, from what I've read, the reason behind price fixing doesn't matter. Whether prices are increased or lowered for a good reason or not.
Not the most reliable source I'll concede, but I had a quick google and turned up
this on wikipedia: |
I am not sure at all. I could understand a legal argument of "we HAD to raise prices to protect the industry." Basically, a "self-defense" argument... "we didn't really raise prices; it just looks that way. We protected The American Public by shifting funds from one area of the industry to another."
I am in no way saying this is a reasonable argument, or one likely to pass even basic fact-checking and common-sense inspection, just that I could see the *concept* of this argument being brought up.
But even if that were a valid potential argument, they'd have to explain why they had to raise prices *this* way, and why all of them had to raise prices to the same levels, and how Amazon was going to "destroy the publishing industry," despite bringing a whole lot of publishing value to authors and readers that the BPHs seems not to care about.
I really am looking forward to the doublespeak that Apple, Macm and Penguin will use in their briefs.