For those of you who have spent the last few days in an isolation chamber, the DOJ is proposing an
injunction prohibiting Apple from making pricing deals for five years and allowing e-book app vendors to link to their own stores for two years. Meanwhile, the five publishers who had previously settled in the e-book pricing case, ganged up once again, this time with a legal brief
opposing the proposed penalties against Apple. Though this might have backfired a little. The Verge
reports:
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One thing's clear: the DoJ isn't pleased to see the publishing industry again uniting so soon after the major case. "There is reason to believe the publisher defendants may be positioning themselves to pick things back up where they left off as soon as their two-year clocks run," the letter says. This in and of itself justifies Apple's five-year penalty, which Buterman says will "ensure that Apple (and hopefully other retailers) can discount ebooks and compete on retail price for as long as possible."
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Kobo shows that it could have been done differently. As Publishers Weekly
notes today:
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Meanwhile, the DoJ got some support for its proposed final order, in the form of Amicus briefs from Kobo, and from The Consumer Federation of America.
Notably, Kobo’s brief in support of the DoJ puts it odds with its retail partner—the American Booksellers Association, through which Kobo facilitates e-book sales. [...]
In its brief, however, Kobo says the DoJ injunction would help Kobo and the indies—especially through the requirement that Apple allow e-book retailers to link to their own e-bookstores for two years without paying a commission to Apple on sales.
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Which is not really a surprise given that Kobo has invested quite some time and money lately in
renovating their online book store. The PW article cites some convincing numbers showing how Kobo suffered from plummeted sales after Apple introduced its in-app store rules.