15 States Join DoJ's Lawsuit Against Apple, Publishers

[exfileme]

A lawsuit submitted by the Department of Justice paints the picture of a conspiracy to fix ebook prices and hide any evidence of collaboration. Sounds like a John Grisham novel.

15 States Join DoJ's Lawsuit Against Apple, Publishers : Read more

 

[clindman]

die, apple, die!

 

[atmos929]

we could have a good movie out of this... a comedy one -_-

 

[rayvaughansucks]

Jobs was a horrible human being.

 

[captaincharisma]

Samsung will be their superpack

 

[hoofhearted]

I am sure these practices don't just apply to ebooks. Take wireless, dataplans and smartphones for instance.

 

[pale paladin]

open market 101. If you give people the opportunity to make bad decisions based on greed they will. Fair regulation with swift punishment should be the basis for this country. Not uber liberal bleeding heart ideologies. This should apply to all business and economy, including the labor force , including immigration.

and yes. die, apple, die!

 

[willard]

[citation][nom]pale paladin[/nom]open market 101. If you give people the opportunity to make bad decisions based on greed they will. Fair regulation with swift punishment should be the basis for this country. Not uber liberal bleeding heart ideologies. This should apply to all business and economy, including the labor force , including immigration. and yes. die, apple, die![/citation]
You've got it backwards. It's the conservatives, not the liberals, who want deregulation. They've consistently pushed for greater freedoms and bigger tax breaks for corporations, claiming that the past record of 100% failure of these policies is not because the policies just line the pockets of corporate giants, but because they haven't deregulated enough and if only we'd deregulate even more everything would suddenly be all flowers and sunshine.

The banking industry is another story. The housing bubble collapse that resulted in the state of the current US economy was the result of policies championed largely by liberals, and opposed by conservatives. The root of it all was minorities being denied loans they couldn't afford, which was labeled racism because in America, minorities have no faults and anything that doesn't go their way is instantly racism. Regulations were relaxed and we got the subprime lending trend that destroyed the economy.

 

[vertigo_2000]

I just don't understand how they can justify selling an e-book for $14.99 when the paperback version is cheaper. It makes no sense to my logical mind. Does not compute.

What's worse, is that people were buying them. Mental BSOD.

 

[Marcus52]

I've been saying for quite awhile that the prices of eBooks was too high; it's no surprise to me that the publishers colluded to fix them. We all know how cheap it is to store a book's worth of material on a server.

The only excuse I see is the possibility that the companies wanted to allow for some time for those who will lose their business - any part of the hard-copy printing and warehousing end - to downsize through attrition. Not everything a company does is because of a desire to line the pockets of the executives; for most of us, firing one person would be very hard to do, laying off hundreds or thousands is no picnic.

Hopefully, they will be able to re-train and transfer over some of the work force no longer needed, but there won't be enough of the new jobs, and it will require an entirely different skill set.

Apple - has absolutely no excuse, because none of their work force is threatened. Pure greed, which is an anti-capitalist desire because it removes one of the most important parts of capitalism, competition. (I suspect more of Job's underhanded deals will come to light as the years go by.)

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some shenanigans going on that's causing Apple stock to soar to the ridiculous heights it has, I hope someone that should be is keeping tabs on that situation.

 

[Marcus52]

bleh that should have been "prices of eBooks ARE too high, or were, but not "was". No excuse for my bad English there since it is my primary language - my apologies for contributing to the dumbing down of America.

 

[slabbo]

[citation][nom]willard[/nom]You've got it backwards. It's the conservatives, not the liberals, who want deregulation. They've consistently pushed for greater freedoms and bigger tax breaks for corporations, claiming that the past record of 100% failure of these policies is not because the policies just line the pockets of corporate giants, but because they haven't deregulated enough and if only we'd deregulate even more everything would suddenly be all flowers and sunshine.The banking industry is another story. The housing bubble collapse that resulted in the state of the current US economy was the result of policies championed largely by liberals, and opposed by conservatives. The root of it all was minorities being denied loans they couldn't afford, which was labeled racism because in America, minorities have no faults and anything that doesn't go their way is instantly racism. Regulations were relaxed and we got the subprime lending trend that destroyed the economy.[/citation]

you're the one who has it backwards. why would a bank want to make bad loans? they don't, where were forced to do so by the regulations.

 

[markheber]

From what I have been reading around the net, it seems that Amazon receives 50% where Apple only receives 30% from the sale of an e-book, so Amazon is the greedy one. That e-books cost 85% as much to produce and sale as a hard copy and is worth more because it can be transported easier, so they should cost at least as much, if not more. That Apple never talked to anyone about the actual price of the books so cannot be part of "price fixing". Most lawyers that have made comments say that the settlements are worse for business than was the collusion of the publishing companies.

Collusion is a criminal offense and should be prosecuted, but poisoning the publishing world seems to be an excessive penalty.

 

[eddieroolz]

Looks like Apple is getting bitten in the home market while it concentrates its lawyers abroad. This is turning into a game of risk.

 

[fudoka711]

[citation][nom]markheber[/nom]From what I have been reading around the net, it seems that Amazon receives 50% where Apple only receives 30% from the sale of an e-book, so Amazon is the greedy one. That e-books cost 85% as much to produce and sale as a hard copy and is worth more because it can be transported easier, so they should cost at least as much, if not more. That Apple never talked to anyone about the actual price of the books so cannot be part of "price fixing". Most lawyers that have made comments say that the settlements are worse for business than was the collusion of the publishing companies.Collusion is a criminal offense and should be prosecuted, but poisoning the publishing world seems to be an excessive penalty.[/citation]

Apple might take 50% of the sale of an eBook (btw, what is/are your souce(s)? I've never heard this anywhere. Apple has been known for the longest time to take fat percentages out of anything sold using their products.

Besides, even if Apple takes 50% of $9.99, the book publishing companies and authors were STILL able to make money off the sales. Now why in the world would a $14.99 price be justified then? Doesn't matter if Apple makes 50 cents less per sale than Amazon does. That's not the point. The overall price is artificially set too high.

 

[gregor]

[citation][nom]markheber[/nom]From what I have been reading around the net, it seems that Amazon receives 50% where Apple only receives 30% from the sale of an e-book, so Amazon is the greedy one. That e-books cost 85% as much to produce and sale as a hard copy and is worth more because it can be transported easier, so they should cost at least as much, if not more. That Apple never talked to anyone about the actual price of the books so cannot be part of "price fixing". Most lawyers that have made comments say that the settlements are worse for business than was the collusion of the publishing companies.Collusion is a criminal offense and should be prosecuted, but poisoning the publishing world seems to be an excessive penalty.[/citation]
So you're arguing that because the ebooks cost less to produce, store, transport etc they should charge more for them? Where does the 85% figure come from?

 

[Guest]

I'm guessing that "production" here means original editing, advertising, etc. Obviously individual copies of the book cost way less to produce because there are no raw materials (besides a few milliwatts of electricity, I suppose.) So companies can make far more per-copy profit on each ebook sale, while still charging less total price. Which is why I agree that ebooks should cost much less than physical books.

 

[f-14]

can't wait until authors realize they only need to pay for an editor, and illustrator, web designer and they can sell their product themselves now and contract out physical printing to any printer with a bindery.

 

[beayn]

[citation][nom]markheber[/nom]That Apple never talked to anyone about the actual price of the books so cannot be part of "price fixing". [/citation]
Didn't you read the whole article?
"Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99," Jobs wrote to one of the publishers.

That looks like talking about the price of the books to me.

 

[zhangifan2017]

Nice article!