Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
The usual nonsense. "When Apple was coming into the ebook market". A banal phrase hiding behind it a grubby conspiracy. Apple could have come into the ebook market legally. But it only wanted to come into the market if it could make its usual healthy margin. It did not want to enter into the market as it was, where it would have had to compete with Amazon on price. It wanted to remake the market to its liking. And so it colluded with the large publishers. Colluded to raise prices (though not to the level wanted by some of its greedy co-conspirators). Colluded to ensure the absence of price competition at the retail level.
To use a so-topical in the US gun analogy, Amazon may have provided the bullets which the DOJ fired (and if I may stretch the analogy, unfortunately only wounded and did not kill). On the other hand, in AU's approaches to the DOJ they have provided only blanks, and the DOJ does not so far appear to be too keen on going into a battle not its own loaded only with blanks.
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Yea, yea, yea. My guy does it, good for him, just smart business. The other guy does it, evil, evil, evil, illegal collusion. Amazon wasn't on the side of the angels. Amazon was leveraging their control of the market, trying to muscle the publishers, heck the appeals judge (Dennis Jacobs) even called Amazon a monopolist and referred to predatory pricing. They were playing a hard ball. Whither or not Apple engaged in illegal collusion will most likely be determined by the Supreme Court.