From the litigation and trial web site, fallouf from the laughable piece in THE NATION:
http://www.litigationandtrial.com/20...azon-monopoly/
"Please stop calling Amazon a monopoly":
Quote:
A “monopoly” is when one supplier of a particular product or service is able to control the market. That does not remotely describe Amazon: the vast majority of books sold by Amazon are supplied by someone else, i.e., the publisher, and those same books are available elsewhere. As Hachette’s own statement on the Amazon dispute says:
HBG’s titles are widely and immediately available on barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, booksamillion.com, walmart.com, target.com, overstock.com, and in thousands of great chain and independent bookstores across the country.
It is rather hard to have a “monopoly” over sales of something when the exactly same product is also sold online, through the largest retailers in the country, and through “thousands” of independent stores.
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Along the way, he similarly tackles the other m-word getting misused:
Quote:
A “monopsony” is when one buyer of a particular productive or service is able to control the market. (Consider, for example, if there were several commercial airplane manufacturers, but only one commercial airline.) “Monopsony” is potentially a better fit for Amazon than “monopoly,” because Amazon’s real pricing power is that it can push a hard bargain with publishers when it buys the ebooks, whereas with consumers Amazon sells the books at or below the prevailing market prices. And, indeed, publishers feel obligated to deal with Amazon given its position as the largest retailer of ebooks.
But the claim just doesn’t hold up. In a monopsony, the monopsonist refrains from buying to force the suppliers to start discounting against one another (because there are no other buyers), until they are no longer making a profit. That simply isn’t the case here. First, the publishers have total control over where they sell their ebooks, and they exercise that power: the “Big Five” chose to not participate in Amazon Unlimited. Second, the ebooks are available all over the place, like Walmart and Target. Apple, for example, has used the feud as an opportunity to discount Hachette’s books. There’s nothing wrong with Apple doing that: this is competitive capitalism working for the benefit of consumers, as it should.
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He also takes up the already disproven claims of predatory pricing in detail, at the source.
Good clear writing from a lawyer.
And concludes:
Quote:
If you don’t like how Amazon deals with ebook publishers, then stop buying ebooks from them!
A boycott is exactly the right idea — vote with your wallets!
Amazon is not Bell Telephone. Amazon is not Standard Oil. Amazon is not the Hollywood studio system.**
If you don’t want to deal with them, you don’t have to; the fact that everyone, from publishers to consumers, continues to want to deal with Amazon is proof enough that they’re not abusing a monopoly position, they’re just doing a better job.
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Go ahead.
Listen to James Patterson:
http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/1...oycott-amazon/
Let's see how far that gets him.