[JoHunt]

Amazon and Disney lock horns over DVD pricing

Embracing its recurring role as the hyper-capitalist antihero, Amazon.com is refusing to accept pre-orders for DVDs of a handful of Walt Disney box-office smash hits, including “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Maleficent,” as the online hypermarket presses for better payment terms.

Amazon played a similar game of hardball earlier this year with Warner Brothers and, most notoriously, the e-commerce giant is waging a long-running contract fight with book publisher Hachette that has made prisoners of war of many best-selling authors.

So while this is a familiar story likely to be sorted out in a predictable way – with a meeting in the middle over DVD pricing and Disney’s cut – there are a few important differences between Disney’s jam-up with Amazon and Hachette’s.

For one, Disney needs Amazon a lot less than Hachette or any book publisher does. Books are all the publishers sell and Amazon is by far the biggest distributor. For Disney, physical DVDs remain a nice business, but are in broad decline as streaming video takes over.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon...140940292.html