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Originally Posted by pwalker8
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.
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I'm afraid that the additional quotation adds absolutely nothing. Even Author's United put their arguments, albeit truly appalling ones, to the DOJ when they sought to have action taken against Amazon. Complainant's don't just fill in a complaint form, they put their submissions as to why they believe action should be taken. One does not own a legal argument. Someone puts it, someone considers it and it either has merit or it does not.
The legal arguments were the obvious ones in this case, and any competent lawyer in the field would have made them. The DOJ obviously found merit in Amazon's submissions, and took the matter further. They found none in AU's submissions and did not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
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.
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Your argument here is essentially that a player like Apple brings more competition to the market just by entering it. Your loss leader example is quite ironic, since the whole purpose of the conspiracy from Apple's point of view was to avoid competing on price. Under agency, Amazon of course could not offer loss leaders even if it wanted to, at least on Big 5 books. This is a powerful indictment of Apple's motives. Because if Apple had really wanted to compete against Amazon in this market it did (and still does) have the deep pockets to do so. And it would have needed them. Though I suggest to you that they would not have received any support from the Publishers, who were of course already upset at $9.99.
And yes, Apple do indeed have many of the same advantages as Amazon which you mention. But these count for nothing when Apple had absolutely no intention of competing. What Apple's entry to the market in fact did overnight was reduce competition by raising ebook prices substantially. Apple had the potential to increase competition by competing with Amazon, but made it very clear they would not do so. In fact, their condition on entering the market was there would be no price competition. And, during agency, there was none.