http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/10/la...price-changes/
Quote:
Kohn, a prominent entertainment industry lawyer, now says that the process should be halted until it goes before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. If Cote doesn’t grant a stay, he says, “consumer welfare” will be harmed immediately as the new ebook prices will take effect and shift pricing power to Amazon.
In an interesting tactical shift, Kohn appears to acknowledge that the publishers did in fact collude to fix prices but that the price-fixing was not illegal. Until recently, publishers have denied that they conspired.
This suggests that the publishers who did not settle are now putting all their hopes on a Supreme Court decision that held that price collusion is not illegal in the case of market failure. The argument is based that on the idea that Amazon, with a 90 percent ebook market share, was a monopsony (a single buyer with all the power) and that publishers had to take a one-time step to fix that.
Kohn first made the argument in a remarkable comic-strip he submitted to the court last week:
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Can anyone shed a light on that Supreme Court decision that price collusion is not illegal in the case of market failure? This is first I heard that price fixing among publishers is okay in the USA (I know it is legal for publishers to fix price in Germany, France and Spain).