Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
The DoJ has explicitly stated that agency pricing is legal, and should be allowed to continue.
Again, agency pricing levels the playing field for retailers, and the Big Six did not collude with Apple to drive small publishers out of business. It is legal for producers to set required prices on their goods. Agency pricing is not inherently anticompetitive.
The alleged illegal behavior was ultimately only in the collusion over the timing of the switch. That's why Random House is not being charged in the antitrust action, and is not required to change its pricing policies.
To put it another way: The publishers should not be prevented from using a legal pricing method as punishment for collusion, and the DoJ should not degrade competition (and inexplicably favor Amazon) in order to fix anti-competitive behavior.
If the publishers did in fact collude illegally, they should be fined and heavily supervised to prevent future collusion, much as is done in other antitrust actions.
|
Agreed, the 6 and Apple did not drive a small publisher our of business. But let's not ascribe benevolent motives to the 6 or Apple. Apple wanted to sell ebooks without having to deal with the free market. And the 6 didn't like the direction the free market was going. So they both opted out. That is fine, there are plenty of goods that are not subject to normal competitive pressures. But those are usually goods for a single seller (Tiffany, Coach, etc). But when you collude, and collude with a distributor to the detriment of the public, you have broken the law. I don't see how the agency arrangement can survive, unless the judge is part of the Amazon histeria.