Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Price Fixing or Not?
Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple News" @ 09:51 AM
"Apple prepares to go to trial to fight the US Department of Justice's claims that the Cupertino company conspired to fix ebook prices with publishers, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal L. Gordon Crovitz has an interesting oped in today's paper which he says that Apple's 30% profit sharing "agency model" with ebook publishers does not amount to the price fixing conspiracy that the DOJ accuses the company of."
Interesting oped from Crovitz. I especially like the quote from Apple's Eddie Cue: 'I don't think you understand. We can't treat newspapers or magazines any differently than we treat FarmVille.' And that is at the heart of this whole investigation it appears. Apple wants to, and does, treat everyone the same. If you want to operate in the Apple model and get your stuff on the iPad, you pay what everyone else does. Makes sense to me, what are your thoughts?