Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Basically, you want a centralized system of pricing (publishing world communism economy): The price shall be $9.99 or less unless you fill in triplicate these forms and receive special permission to sell your book for $10. And here I thought you were an advocate for the free market. 
In a free market, I can set my pricing at whatever I want and either you buy or you don't buy. I don't need your permission to set my price nor do I need to give a reason/excuse.
On the one hand you oppose agency pricing imposed by the maker of the goods for sale, but on the other hand support agency pricing by the retailer of the goods. (The legal definition of agency pricing is simply that the seller of a product receives a fixed percentage of the sales price. It is not tied to a specific pricing structure, which means that price caps can be agency pricing as much as price minimums.)
After all, what is, when you get right down to it, the difference between Hachette saying I want my books sold for nothing less than $15 and Amazon saying I want your books sold for nothing more than $10 (excluding, of course, the $5 in cutoff price)?
Other than that you as a consumer would pay less with Amazon's cap, I see no difference between Hachette's agency pricing that Mobile Readers have consistently railed against and Amazon's agency pricing that the same Mobile Readers support -- that is, aside from one being proposed by the hated BPH and the other by the beloved best friend Amazon. |
I think there are very few supporters of an untramelled free market these days. Most recognise that for a market to work properly some regulation is needed. A free market is based on competition. So when an intending new entrant to that market enters into a conspiracy with the exising oligopolists which eliminates most competition the free market needs saving. Which the DOJ did.
You seem to overlook the loss in Court by Apple and the settlements by the other BPH conspiracists. What happened was simply a greedy cartel seeking to price fix. They bargained on the US DOJ doing nothing and lost.
Your legal definition of agency pricing seems to have been plucked out of the air. Such pricing is based on the fiction that a retailer is simply acting as an agent for the seller, with the further fiction that the end buyer is buying the product directly from, in this case, the Publisher. The retailer loses the ability to set a price, and the publisher sets a single price over the whole market. Classic price fixing.
And the difference between Amazon's position and Hachette's? Hachette entered into a conspiracy with some of its fellow oligopolists and Apple and the conspiracy actually imposed its plan on Amazon and other retailers. Amazon's statement is that it believes that $9.99 is the best price point, and that it is happy to accept 30%. Amazon has told Hachette and the other BPH what it wants. It has not forced its price upon them nor do I believe it has the power to do so.