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Yes, let's bail out the Big 6 publishers, 5 of which settled an anti-trust price fixing suit with the FTC and 49 states within the last 12 months. Isn't that a bit like rewarding bad behaviour, or at least telling everyone you're going to punish them and then letting them off with a slap on the wrist?
4 of the 6 are owned by 2 private German companies, one French company, and a British company, and one of the two American firms is owned by Murdoch's News Corporation, which only recently moved its incorporation from Australia to the US.
The demise of the bookstores isn't going to be fixed by bailing out the publishers anyway. It's a demand-side problem, the bookstore chains are losing customers to ebooks and other forms of entertainment and high discount small selection stores like Costco, Wal-Mart and Target. Bailing out the other end of the supply chain isn't going to help the bookstore chains at all, nor is it going to help the indie bookstores, many of which carry a lot of non-big 6 publishers.
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