Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
The Agency Model is not price fixing no matter how you cut it. There is no agreement on price between the publishers; at best there is agreement on a distribution model, which is no different than what existed before the agency model.
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+1
Both the intent and letter of laws relating to price fixing, as far as I can tell, relates to anti-competitive behavior.
The publishers are not collaborating in secret to set their prices. The retailers are not collaborating to set prices, or to develop strategies with the specific intent of elevating prices. Everything is out in the open, nothing is secret, everyone is competing against one another. The FTC, the AG, the EU regulators, no one has announced any investigations or anti-trust concerns yet.
Moreover, no one squealed about "price fixing" when Apple and other services like Amazon or eMusic set flat rates for digital audio downloads. Also, there are numerous instances of, for example, a government agency specifically setting prices for regulated products, e.g. the CPUC regulates just about every single price PSEG can charge, at every step of the power generation and transmission process.
This type of pricing arrangement is not common, but it isn't anti-competitive and therefore highly unlikely to be illegal.