[darryl]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

In the US, Appellate Courts defer to the trial courts on points of fact, they very rarely will correct facts on appeal. Appeals typically are on specific points of law. It is not uncommon for an Appellate Judge to suggest if an appeal had been made on a different point of law, it might have been successful. The narrow focus of appeals seems to be one of the major differences in US law and the rest of the world.

You do understand that a large part of the reason that the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case was because Scalia had died and they were in a 4-4 ideological dead lock. They declined a lot of cases during that time period for reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of the case.

You are comparing apples and oranges. Of course, no one actually has the figures, but a more valid comparison would be percentage of sales for a given book. Book sales are much like movie sales in that the overall sales figures tend to be driven by block busters. We haven't had a true block buster novel in a few years. Arguably the last big block buster was Fifty Shades of Grey which had a somewhat skews sales figures in favor of digital sales (29 M in print and 15 M digital in 2012 according to some estimates).

I think you are now going to ridiculous extremes to defend your opinion. In particular, I find that your pronouncements on the law are often ill-informed and bizarre, this being no exception.

The Appeal Court decision contained the following under the heading "Standard of Review".

Following a bench trial, this Court reviews the “district court’s findings of fact for clear error” and its “conclusions of law and mixed questions de novo.”** Connors v. Conn. Gen. Life Ins. Co., 272 F.3d 127, 135 (2d Cir. 2001); see Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a).**The district court’s evidentiary rulings and its fashioning of equitable relief are reviewed for abuse of discretion.**See Zerega Ave. Realty Corp. v. Hornbeck Offshore Transp., LLC, 571 F.3d 206, 212‐13 (2d Cir. 2009) (evidentiary rulings); Abrahamson v. Bd. of Educ. Of the Wappingers Falls Cent. Sch. Dist., 374 F.3d 66, 76 (2d Cir. 2004) (equitable relief).

You may also find this excerpt from the Appeal Courts decision interesting.

In the short term, these members of the Big Six thought that Amazon’s lower‐priced ebooks would make it more difficult for them to sell hardcover copies of new releases, “which were often priced,” as the district court noted, “at thirty dollars or more,” Apple, 952 F. Supp. 2d at 649, as well as New York Times bestsellers.**Further down the road, the publishers feared that consumers would become accustomed to the uniform $9.99 price point for these ebooks, permanently driving down the price they could charge for print versions of the books.**Moreover, if Amazon became powerful enough, it could demand lower wholesale prices from the Big Six or allow authors to publish directly with Amazon, cutting out the publishers entirely.**As Hachette’s Young put it, the idea of the “wretched $9.99 price point becoming a de facto standard” for ebooks “sickened” him.

SCOTUS declined to grant certiorari (ie; to hear the case). As is customary, they did not give reasons. Though you were apparently privy to what took place in chambers, since you equivocally state such reasons. Also, if the judges were, as you say, "in a 4-4 ideological dead lock", cert would have been granted by 4 of your hypothetical pro-Apple justices. It only takes 4 justices to have the Court grant Cert and hear the case. Though a 4-4 deadlock would be interesting, since there are only 7 justices on the panel deciding Cert Applications. Since the Court declined, we must conclude that there were not 4 judges on the Cert panel in favour. In case you are interested, a good summary of SCOTUS procedure can be found here.

I find your "Apples and Oranges" paragraph irrelevant. It seems to simply avoid the point, that is, that the Big 5 are steadily losing ebook market share.