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Originally Posted by darryl
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.
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.
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Competition isn't just about price. There are free smartphones, yet many people prefer the much more expensive iPhone. Apple has always been about premium experience. They were never going to join the race to the bottom.
As far the rest, well, the facts are the facts. What Amazon did was not the normal way such complaints are handled.