Comments on: Class action trial over e-book pricing at least one year away http://paidcontent.org/2012/07/09/class-action-trial-over-e-book-pricing-at-least-one-year-away/ The economics of digital content Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:31:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Michael W. Perry http://paidcontent.org/2012/07/09/class-action-trial-over-e-book-pricing-at-least-one-year-away/#comment-110133 Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:30:05 +0000 http://paidcontent.org/?p=213381#comment-110133 If you want to understand why this is happening, ask yourself who benefits. The ebook market desperately needs a common ebook standard and a coherent distribution system to replace the current higgly piggly mess. These lawsuits create FUD–fear, uncertainty and doubt. Authors, publishers, ebook distributors, and online retailers are afraid to work together, however transparently and legally, until this dispute is settled. As the biggest player in the industry, only Amazon benefits from the resulting chaos and the de facto standard that creates for their proprietary format and Kindle devices.

That’s why I have nothing but contempt for the clueless (or worse) DOJ lawyers who blundered into this dispute. Put them in a time machine back to the late nineteenth century, and they’d be suing several chains of gas stations (book publishers) and an auto maker (i.e. Apple) rather than going after the real ‘malefactor of great wealth,’ which was John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.

Even at the height of its power, I doubt Standard Oil controlled anything like the almost 90% ebook market share that Amazon had when Apple and these publishers were engaged in their alleged conspiracy. And at that time Apple had a 0% share of the ebook market. How can anyone with a zero slice of the market engage in price fixing? Think about that for a minute.

Like I said, these DOJ lawyers are either stupid or something worse. Worse being that they’re on the take, Chicago-machine style. Both Obama and DOJ Secretary Eric Holder hail from Chicago, where political corruption is the norm.

]]> By: sinithwar http://paidcontent.org/2012/07/09/class-action-trial-over-e-book-pricing-at-least-one-year-away/#comment-110054 Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:08:51 +0000 http://paidcontent.org/?p=213381#comment-110054 Meh, Apple will survive, they always have.

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