And now, news from the *third* front--the Class action lawsuit:
Apple and the Publishers had asked the suit be tossed out.
The judge refused and... Well...
http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/15/ju...=Google+Reader
Quote:
Citing ongoing state, federal and international antitrust investigations, Cote turned down arguments that Apple and the publishers had acted independently when they changed the pricing model for e-books.
Cote’s opinion is at times remarkable for the emphatic language in which she decries the alleged conspiracy. It is also noteworthy for citing the late Steve Jobs on several occasions to suggest that Apple was at the center of it:
In short, Apple did not try to earn money off of eBooks by competing with other retailers in an open market; rather, Apple ‘accomplished this goal by [helping] the suppliers to collude, rather than to compete independently.’
|
More from the judge:
Quote:
|
Finally, Jobs’ prescient prediction at the iPad launch that the prices consumers would be paying for eBooks would all ‘be the same’ and the other quotations from Jobs, Murdoch and Sargent, combine to provide ample evidence that the Publisher Defendants had agreed with each other to undertake collective action to raise eBooks’ prices and that Apple intentionally and knowingly joined that conspiracy.
|
And:
Quote:
|
Finally, the fact that Apple might have had different motivations for joining the conspiracy, and was involved in only a portion of it, does not undermine the existence of the conspiracy itself or Apple’s role as a participant.
|
Let's see the "Authors" Guild and the other apologists spin *that*.
A little extra incentive to settle, perhaps?
(Sounds like the judge has already settled the question of whether there was a conspiracy.)