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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
How silly. Agency pricing never would have happened at all if one single publisher had had to stick their neck out all by themselves for an entire quarter. Which do you suppose would have been selected as the sacrificial lamb? The only reason it was successful at all was because they joined forces. Period. And besides... we'd likely still be in the same place (DOJ involvement) if all the publishers got together and organized this three-month staggered approach to agency pricing you've mentioned. They're simply not allowed to work together in any kind of concerted effort to affect pricing industry-wide. Individual Publishing Houses are competitors... not business partners.
We never could "have ended up in the exact same place" without some form of illegal collusion. Never.
Think about it sensibly for just one second. If it would have been as simple as you make it sound, to LEGALLY bring the entire ebook industry under the agency pricing model... don't you think they would have done it that way? Or are you saying that BPHs were simply too stupid to know they were risking DOJ involvement?—that their lawyers/advisers were simply THAT incompetent? Please.  They took a chance. Knowing full well that it might bite them in the ass with the DOJ—because win or lose... it was the only way for agency pricing to become the norm. It was their Hail-Mary. |
I agree. Taken from page 25 of the DoJ's lawsuit:
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On the evening of Saturday, January 23, 2010, Apple's Cue e-mailed his boss,
Steve Jobs, and noted that Penguin USA CEO David Shanks "want[ed] an
assurance that he is 1 of 4 before signing." The following Monday morning, at
9:46 a.m., Mr. Shanks called another Publisher Defendant's CEO and the two
talked for approximately four minutes. Both Penguin and the other Publisher
Defendant signed their Apple Agency Agreements later that day.
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