[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

Article 101 which addresses cartels and price fixing I find amusing in that the EU itself is a cartel, a cartel of nations which fix economic and other matters between them (such as manufacturing standards, taxes, movement of the workforce across borders, etc.) such that collectively they are both the world's biggest economy and biggest economic cartel.

I suppose this is one way to look at the EU. You could also say that about the United States of America, the United Mexican States, the Swiss Confederation, the Federation of Malaysia, etc.

While there's a possibility of EU member states individually investigating the competition implications of Amazon-publisher eBook contracts, it's likely they won't, because of Brussels already taking care of it. So this cartel thing may be a plus for Amazon in limiting their legal bills.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

First, the EU has in the past used anti-trust against American companies to protect EU companies. I would be very surprised if this isn't just another one of those attempts.

I don't think there's much risk you'll be surprised. Three of the big five publishers are part of European companies, and, even though they agreed to any MFN clauses, they'd probably be glad to see them invalidated.

However, it's one thing to note that anti-trust is being used in this way, and another thing to show that there's something unfair here. Consider:

http://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-...s-antitrust_en

. . .between 2010 and 2014 we adopted 30 cartel decisions involving 231 companies and imposed fines totalling €8.9 billion.

Of these, 190 European companies received fines totaling €4.8 billion – just over half of the total – while 17 US-based companies received fines of €652 million – about 7% of the total.

US trustbusters not only go after foreign companies, they also sometimes -- unlike the EU -- send their executives to prison. I like the EU approach better.

The way I read the Sherman Act, in the US, and Article 101, in the EU, is that they both leave a lot of room for interpretation and case law. So unfairness is certainly possible. But it's also possible that's Amazon's tremendous eBook market share is being defended in ways that make it impractical for smart competitors to succeed. If the EU competition authorities can using evolving civil antitrust standards to do something about that, it sounds good to me.

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* According to an estimate in a 2014 report on the e-book market, Amazon has a 79 percent market share in the United Kingdom, with the largest local e-book seller, Waterstone's, at 3.3 percent. Of course, if Britain leaves the EU, this won't be a good example.