Posted on 03/07/2016 8:00:43 AM PST by Swordmaker
“The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Apple Inc. and left in place a ruling that the company conspired with publishers to raise electronic book prices when it sought to challenge Amazon.com’s dominance of the market,” The Associated Press reports.
“The justices’ order on Monday lets stand an appeals court ruling that found Cupertino, California-based Apple violated antitrust laws in 2010,” AP reports. “The 2-1 ruling by the New York-based appeals court sustained a trial judge’s finding that Apple orchestrated an illegal conspiracy to raise prices. A dissenting judge called Apple’s actions legal, ‘gloves-off competition.'”
“Apple Inc. must pay $450 million to end an antitrust suit after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to question a finding that the company orchestrated a scheme to raise the prices for electronic books,” Greg Stohr reports for Bloomberg. “The accord calls for Apple to pay $400 million to e-book consumers, $20 million to the states, and $30 million in legal fees.”
“At the Supreme Court, Apple argued that its actions enhanced competition by providing consumers with a new e-book platform. The company said overall e-book prices have fallen in the years since the introduction of iBookstore [sic],” Stohr reports. “‘Following Apple’s entry, output increased, overall prices decreased, and a major new retailer began to compete in a market formerly dominated by a single firm,’ the company said in its appeal.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Travesty. Justice was not served in this case.
Yes they can, but now you are changing the terms, AGAIN. Are you finally figuring out that words mean things? But Apple was not a participant even in the "agreement." It WAS a participant, but MY point, and the point of the US Supreme Court's ruling was that various participants are NOT to be judged with the same scrutiny, because their circumstances and motive of necessity have to be different.
Let's take an extreme example. A man walks into a bank carrying a gun. He holds the bank up and steals thousands of dollars. He's a bank robber. Right? There are people who are in a conspiracy to rob that bank who are just as guilty. Right?
Now, let's add one more twist. Under his coat is a vest filled with C-4. It's attached to a radio by wires. The guy who drove him to the bank tells him if he doesn't come back with the money, he'll blow him up.
Should the guy be judged with the same absolute standard as the conspirators who forced him into robbing the bank? Or should the system judge his actions with a different approach?
I grant you it's an extreme case.
Apple says they were NOT. That's why they chose to go to court.
Turning off the "Buy" buttons is intent to maintain the monopolistic position by nefarious means. Keeping eBooks at a predatory, anti-competitive price far below any price a new entrant can possibly meet is by definition anti-competition and there for meets the bar for being gone after. Sorry, you are just plain wrong. Past actions also concatenated to establish a business practice designed to force others out of business. Reference the pursuit of closing down brick and mortar book stores by predatory pricing. . .
Amazon's repetitive use of shutting down the "buy" button as a tool to force its anti-competitive will on suppliers is instructive about its ethics. . . or the removal of entire product lines of competitors.
” But Apple was not a participant even in the “agreement.”
LOL! emails, phone calls, conferences and SIGNED CONTRACTS!
Obviously you have your bank of talking points that really are not even relevant but you post them anyway.
I thought you said days ago you were done posting to me?
“Should the guy be judged with the same absolute standard as the conspirators who forced him into robbing the bank? “
LOL! Apple was the lead conspirator!
“Reference the pursuit of closing down brick and mortar book stores by predatory pricing. .”
Interesting that you should bring that up!
How Apple killed the music Industry.
“After manhandling the major record labels during a series of now-legendary negotiations, then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs was able to initially offer digital albums for $10 and any individual track off that album for 99 cents. “
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/25/technology/itunes-music-decline/
There were no CONFERENCES where multiple publishers and Apple attended. ZIP, NONE. Apple's VP met individually with the six major publishers attempting to line them up for participation in Apple's new venture. There was no conference where a group of publishers from even two or more publishers and Apple met together. All testimony agreed on that. Only the DOJ came up with a fictitious joint meeting for which they had ZERO evidence, no air tickets, no phone records, no emails, to show that it happened.
Not with the agreement to collude between the publishers. I may have emails, phone calls, even meetings with companies that may be in collusion, and may even sign individual contracts (which is what Apple had with each publisher) with each of them, but that does not mean I am a member of their conspiracy. I may even agree with the goal they are pursuing jointly and agree to help them. That doesn't mean I can be judged on the same basis as they do because the elements of the crime are not the same. I am not in competition joint competition with them. . . and the Sherman Act was intended to prevent such collision between competitors, and since I am not a competitor, my motives have to be examined to find out why a vertical participant is involved. . . using the rule of reason not the per se concluding automatic guilt.
You may have noticed I have never argued the guilt of the publishers even though the effect of their conduct also served to break Amazon's monopoly. That is because they did indeed collude. . . an act that was indeed per se illegal. There was no doubt they acted illegally. My complaint really is not triggered as some here state is merely because it is Apple. I would be just as incensed if it were ABC Outhouse company that were the Vertical actor being swept up into the conspiracy and being railroaded by Liberal DOJ and people in black robes ignoring the very clear established case law about antitrust.
I have been incensed about the DOJ ignoring the 8000 pound elephant in the room for years due to political donations as Amazon rides roughshod over mom-and-pop businesses everywhere and even destroying larger businesses such as B. Dalton Bookseller by its predatory pricing. Complaints have been filed and they go into the DOJ, never to be heard of again, all because Jeff Bezos is a huge Democrat donor and supporter of Obama's policies.
As a conservative, you should be too.
How could it be? The publishers were meeting jointly about this starting in 2007. Apple only made the first contact with a publisher on December 10, 2009.
“How could it be? “
Apple designed the pricing strategy and presented it to the publishers saying that all had to agree.
Steve Jobs didn't "manhandle" the major record labels. He found a way to get them to permit digital music sales which allowed them to make a reasonable profit while protecting their copyrights. Many people say he "saved" the music industry from the music pirates who were willy-nilly ripping songs and trading them on Napster for free. The music publishers were at a loss at what to do. Steve Jobs offered them a safe way to meet the honest public at a profit, although not as high a profit as they really wanted. In the long run, though, they agreed that it was the right choice. This article is from the viewpoint of one of them who REALLY REALLY wanted to sell fewer albums at a higher profit margin, not realizing how many more would have been pirated instead of bought had he gotten his way.
The music industry was going to be "killed" no matter which way it went. Digital recording was just as much a death knell for the old model as radio was for the big band era. Both were unsustainable because of a major change in technology. Steve Jobs' iTunes model is being replaced by streaming music model as people learn they can rent their music more economically with less personally effort.
And the court found nothing illegal in that.
“I have been incensed about the DOJ ignoring the 8000 pound elephant in the room for years due to political donations as Amazon rides roughshod over mom-and-pop businesses everywhere and even destroying larger businesses such as B. Dalton Bookseller by its predatory pricing. “
But you are not incensed by the Apple’s iTunes ruining mom-and-pop businesses everywhere and even destroying larger businesses.
Me: “Apple designed the pricing strategy and presented it to the publishers saying that all had to agree.”
“And the court found nothing illegal in that. “
Actually they did. That is why Apple settled.
“The music industry was going to be “killed” no matter which way it went. Digital recording was just as much a death knell for the old model as radio was for the big band era. Both were unsustainable because of a major change in technology.”
Interesting that you do not hold the same position for the book industry ...
Music goes digital - New Age, Apple good.
Books goes digital - bad for publishers, Amazon evil.
Very few people share books like they did for music. Music sharing was rife in case you don't recall. A music file averaged around 2 ½ minutes in length and were very small. Most people are not too interested in handing off a book that takes several hours or days to read.
Amazon's below market pricing of books was evil. It was meant to keep competition out of the eBook market by selling eBooks artificially BELOW their natural market price and if you cannot grasp that, you are being really economically dense.
Apple allowed music tracks to sell at a market price. The Music labels wanted to sell digital for MORE than they were selling vinyl or CD records for, on the theory it WOULD be copied and they needed more to make up for the inevitable comes that would ensue from each sold digital track. That was not a viable business model. For example, the labels wanted an artificially HIGH $2.49 per TRACK on an album they were selling for $12.99 on vinyl or CD. If there were ten tracks, that was $25 for the digital version of a $13 album which could easily be ripped. You see the problem? Apple offered the labels iTunes where the tracks would be 99¢ each with a 70% guaranteed return sales costs of only 30% when sales costs were averaging 50% before, no maintaining their own digital download system, and no handling of customer's credit cards, so no credit card fraud to worry about.
The markets are entirely different.
No, because they are not doing it by selling products below wholesale cost. Apple posts profits on everything they do. Amazon does NOT. The take losses to destroy businesses. There's a huge difference. Again, if you cannot see that difference, you are economically lost.
“Apple allowed music tracks to sell at a market price. The Music labels wanted to sell digital for MORE than they were selling vinyl or CD records for, “
Amazon allowed ebooks to sell at a market price. The book publishers wanted to sell digital for more profit than the were selling hard copies for.
” by selling eBooks artificially BELOW their natural market price “
LOL! And just how did you determine that!
“Apple posts profits on everything they do.”
hmmmm.....
“iTunes isn’t a money making venture, at least not for Apple, not directly. iTunes serves Apple best as a marketing tool, promoting their brand and maintaining their dominance in the technology and media markets.”
http://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/a-brief-history-of-apples-itunes.html/
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