[fjtorres]

The Kobo situation in Canada is hardly dire. The Goodereads site is known for... unstandard tactics, rumor-mongering, and outright troll click-bait.

The whole article is based on Kobo's woe-is-me lobbying attempt to get special treatment to let them keep on ripping off canadian customers.

Price-fixing is as illegal in Canada as in the US and EU; once the evidence from the US trial filtered through the Canadian legal system there was enough evidence of a parallel Canadian conspiracy to get the BPHs to settle. (Among other evidence, there is a documented agreement among the BPHs to approach Indigo to serve as their Canadian hub/coordinator the way Apple set things up in the US.)

Kobo is the dominant player in Canada and they like the status quo just fine so, of course, they want to keep on hobbling Kindle's operation as much as possible to avoid having to compete. And, since Canada is particularly sensitive (ahem, read: protectionist) in matters of "cultural significance" Kobo is raising the maple leaf flag to see if anybody salutes and they get further protection from the evil Amazon, by pretending their market share can evaporate overnight. And it just might work. Similar ploys by Indigoand others have worked just fine in the past.

The truth, of course, is that Kobo has as much lock-in control over its customer base as Amazon has over theirs and that with Sony bowing out and Nook stalling they are as secure in their domination in Canada as Kindle is in the US. Maybe more so because nobody in the US buys Kindle because it is run by an American country. And Nook can still end up in the hands of somebody competent enough to give Amazon and Apple a run for their money.

The claim that the Canadian government is trying to kill Kobo is as ludicrous as claims that the US DOJ is in Amazon's pockets. In both cases you simply have players on the wrong side of the law trying to spin facts to paint themselves as victims, attempting to retain their illegally obtained advantages. Advantages that come at consumer expense.

Mind you, Kobo might get what they want. But if they do, it won't be because they are woeful innocents; rather it would be because they have skillful li... er, lobbyists working for them.