Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
The simple solution is to just make the publishers unable to ever go back to agency pricing. That would solve the problem.
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Ever? As in centuries? Wouldn't this be punishing the children for the father's sins?
As for simplicity, I question that. For one thing, it would lead to a long period of litigation concerning to whom it applies after mergers and divestitures.
Another problem is that after a decade or two, the dividing line between a book and a video and a video game will likely blur or change, again leading to legal uncertainty and and a drawn out process of developing case law.
Yet another difficulty is determination of what sorts of retail price maintenance rise to the level of agency. Personally, I think that retail price maintenance and agency are essentially the same, but most people seem to disagree.
The beauty of making the restrictions temporary is that almost all the above problems don't have time to crop up.
To me, it's unfair to single out one industry for permanent retail price maintenance prohibition. And if the prohibition is going to apply to all products, the cost of enforcement would be substantial.
However, I have a more modest proposal that I think could achieve some of what you want while being cheaper to enforce. Pass a law stating that all commercial agreements between retailers and suppliers be put on the retailer's web site. Putting out there, on the web, written minimum price agreements would be embarrassing, so there would be fewer such agreements.