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Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
Not exactly. While MFN price clauses can be legal, in conjunction with the horizontal conspiracy it becomes classic anti-trust behavior. There are a lot of threads on this topic. The issue here is Apple continues to refuse to see the error of its ways. If you violate anti-trust laws, this is what you get. What a cry-baby. If you can't do the time . . . .
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Yes exactly. There was quite a bit of literature about this at the time of the trial. This is the first time that a non horizontal company was treated as a horizontal company for purposes of anti-trust. that is the novel legal theory that the prosecutor used.
Yes, there are a lot of threads on the topic. The issue is that for it to be anti-trust, you have to prove a conspiracy. There was very little public evidence of that Apple did indeed conspire with the publishers to set prices. Mostly of the evidence appears to be an email that was never sent, the fact that Apple used the same contract for each of the publishers (once again a standard business practice) and Judge Cote saying that she didn't believe the Apple exec who said that they did not work with publishers to fix prices.
As far as I can tell, most of the opinions are divided between the anti stick to beat Apple with, the Apple fan boys, and a small group of postings that question the legal aspects of the trial itself. Things like Cote writing most of her opinion before the trail, saying before the trial that she thought that Apple was guilty, and Judge Cote's history of prejudicial (in the sense of favoring one party over another in trials) behavior. Then there is the question of how can a party with zero market share be guilty of anti-trust when the market leader has 80 to 90 percent of the market?
Finally there is the concern of the growing trend of government prosecutors using threats of company destroying fines to extort large amounts of cash from a wide range of companies without any admitting of guilt on the part of the company. This gives rise to the impression that it's all about raking in the bucks as opposed to justice.