Print 10 comment(s) - last by sigmatau.. on May 27 at 10:33 PM

This judge will oversee the trial starting June 3

A federal judge's preliminary statement in the Apple e-books price fixing case seemed to fall in favor of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). 


Cote, who will oversee Apple's e-book trial starting June 3, said that this statement made Thursday morning was by no means final and based on only part of the evidence presented.

"We strongly disagree with the court's preliminary statements about the case today," said Orin Snyder, a lawyer for Apple. 

The hearing on Thursday discussed pretrial topics like which witnesses could testify in the trial. 

Apple is the target of the e-books investigation along with book publishers Hachette Livre (Lagardère Publishing France), Harper Collins (News Corp., U.S.A.), Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp., U.S.A.), Penguin (Pearson Group, United Kingdom) and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck (owner of inter alia Macmillan, Germany).

However, all the book publishers have already settled with the DOJ. Apple is the only one who hasn't settled yet, and is looking to go to trial June 3. 




Earlier this month, DOJ used an old email from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs as evidence in the e-books case. The email (dated in 2010) from Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corporation said, "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.”

Source: Reuters

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By Solandri on 5/24/2013 10:44:19 PM , Rating: 2
amazon is the real scum here. they control upwards of 90% of the ebook market, yet once a worthy competitor enters the fray they work with the gov't to bring a case against them?

If someone controls 90% of the market and they prevent you from selling stuff at a lower price than them, they get an anti-trust investigation.

If someone controls 90% of the market, and you implement a change which forces them to raise their prices, you get an anti-trust investigation.

See how that works? Actions by sellers which benefit sellers (prevent prices from dropping, or force competitors to raise prices) are worthy of anti-trust investigation. Actions by sellers which benefit buyers do not warrant anti-trust investigation. (The only tricky case is dumping, which benefits buyers in the short term, but hurts them in the long-term.)

amazon is destroying the publishing industry on a daily basis. big brother incarnate

If Amazon's terms were so onerous it would've destroyed the publishing industry, then Apple wouldn't have had to do anything. The publishers would've naturally and individually demanded higher prices, enough so that Amazon would've had to comply in order to continue selling ebooks. That's how the market works. Nobody held a gun to the publishers' heads and forced them to sell to Amazon. They agreed to do so of their own free will.

The publishing industry initially tried to foist upon the public ebook prices which matched (or in some cases were higher than) physical book prices. If the current publishing industry is so precariously constructed that correcting those ridiculous ebook prices, as Amazon has fought to do, will result in "destroying" them, then they deserve to be destroyed. Get them out of the picture ASAP so that a better, more fit publishing industry can grow up to replace them.

It's business. Compete, or die.

