Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
@pwalker8. I may have seen the WSJ article at the time, though I can't recall doing so. Unfortunately it is now behind a paywall. However, I did find this one by Kirsten Reach, then an editor at Melville House. https://www.mhpbooks.com/wsj-editori...es-government/ There was a further link to the original article in this piece which was to a site down for maintenance. But even from this I see why the WSJ article would not be memorable to me even if I had read it. We both have our prejudices on this topic, and in the case of this article I think yours have lead you to unwarranted conclusions. If a company like Amazon, or Apple for that matter, want the DOJ to take action, they have their lawyers prepare a detailed brief on why they should. The article, at least the extract I was able to read, shows nothing more that that Amazon's lawyers did a good job at convincing them. There is absolutely nothing to indicate special treatment for Amazon.
The WSJ article does claim that:
This does not of course justify your assertion that the Publishers got their agency pricing model from Amazon? Is it in part of the article I could not access? Though I must confess that based on the little I was able to read it seems to be little more than a biased hit piece. The first phrase extracted in the article that I could read was Hardly a shining example of unbiased journalism.
And yes, of course I'm aware that Amazon now has agency contracts with the Big 5. The Court order prohibited this for a time. Once re-negotiation could take place without the constraints of the Court Order all publishers sought and were allowed agency contracts. And yes, this was wonderful for Amazon, and I'm sure Amazon realised it at the time, even if few of the rest of us did. Amazon has been a big winner from agency. The Slate article you linked to was quite good, unlike the WSJ one. I loved this quote, which I had not seen before. The fact that Amazon has benefited from agency shines little light on the negotiations.
I remain interested in the questions I raised about the argument that Apple's entry into the market would be good for competition. That is, what form do you think this competition would have taken? What benefits would it have had for the public? |
Here is the specific quote
" ...
So in February 2010 Amazon posed as the victim, and associate general counsel David Zapolsky submitted a confidential white paper to the Federal Trade Commission and Justice's antitrust division on "the collective nature of the publishers' action to take control of digital book pricing."
DoJ then picked up Amazon's legal argument and used it to sue Apple. DoJ claims that the iPad and the publishers' acceptance of Apple's new arrangement "forced" Amazon to flip to the agency model and thus higher (albeit temporary) consumer prices.
... "
No ambiguity or personal prejudices here. They name the specific person at Amazon who submitted the white paper to the Fed. Government and explicitly said that the Federal Government used the white paper as the basis of their case. This is not how such things normally work. Normally, a company will file a complaint, not submit a white paper. The article is, of course, an op-ed, i.e. opinion/editorial, but that doesn't change the facts they are talking about.
If the situation was as you describe, then Amazon would have been named as part the suit. Instead, all this was hidden until after the judgement was made.
Why would Apple's entry be good for competition? Well, for one thing, Amazon controlled 90% of the market at the time. Any entry into the market would have been good for competition and someone with deep pockets who could withstand Amazon using loss leaders would have been even better. In addition Apple had many of the same advantages that Amazon had with regards to ease of use, purchasing and downloading.
Would Apple have been effective competition? We have no real way of knowing. Amazon didn't turn out to be particularly effective competition for Apple's music store, so size isn't everything.