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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
You're on a pretty long limb here. Only the judge knows how she is going to rule. And maybe not even her, as she has weeks more time to make up her mind. Perhaps a law clerk will sway her. Just hope that clerk isn't on this board 
By the way, what I would call proof isn't needed for a finding against a company in a civil antitrust case like this. Even with criminal antitrust, all conviction requires is for the government's claims to be more likely true than not true. |
And in legal terms "conspiracy" isn't the cloak-and-dagger thing it is in movies.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedicti...com/conspiracy
Quote:
An agreement between two or more persons to engage jointly in an unlawful or criminal act, or an act that is innocent in itself but becomes unlawful when done by the combination of actors.
Conspiracy is governed by statute in federal courts and most state courts. Before its Codification in state and federal statutes, the crime of conspiracy was simply an agreement to engage in an unlawful act with the intent to carry out the act. Federal statutes, and many state statutes, now require not only agreement and intent but also the commission of an Overt Act in furtherance of the agreement.
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Bold-faced mine.
Apple spinmeisters aside, it is pretty clear that while switching to Agency by one player (Random House, for example) is innocent of wrong-doing, 5 of them coordinating with Apple to do it at the same time *is* illegal.
And they didn't just think about it or talk about it; they *did* something overt.
Note that nowhere does it say all the players have to meet together. They just have to jointly agree. As in: Apple telling Penguin that all the others are onboard.
Anybody looking for a smoking gun just needs to look there.
(And since Apple was the go-beween they are as guilty as the rest.)