Quote:
Originally Posted by JonathanH
Just an addition to my post that started the thread: this is a write-in campaign intended to change the proposed terms that some publishers had previously agreed to, in order to avoid the lawsuit. The law says that in such cases, the DOJ must allow 60 days for responses from the public, must publish all such responses, and must take them into account when considering final terms.
This law has generally been used in the past when agreed terms were widely thought to be too lenient - a public outcry and lots of responses could cause the DOJ to make the terms more stringent.
This is a rare case where opponents (i.e. the publishing industry) are trying to use the same law to make the terms more lenient. In other words, the publishers are trying to use the following strategy:
(1) Agree to proposed terms, thereby avoiding lawsuit
(2) Mobilize all of their friends in the industry to oppose the proposed terms
(3) DOJ gets flooded by responses, agrees to reduce proposed terms
(4) Back to business as usual
(5) Profit!
We're about halfway through the 60-day period right now.
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You may be overthinking this a bit.
The DOJ is well aware that their action is controversial, with most players in the book industry opposed. They are giving a wider circle of the public a chance to weigh in.
At the end of the 60 days, they may tweak the terms a little bit to reflect public sentiment, but that will be the only result.