Apple ebook price-fix settlement: Readers get $400m, lawyers $50m Details have emerged of Apple's out-of-court settlement with 33 US states that had accused the company of hiking up ebook prices. US attorneys general revealed today that the iPad maker is on the hook to pay out $400m to readers. Lawyers will walk away with as much as $50m on top of that. The conditional settlement will only …
Apple did not get sued over arranging to have e-books exclusively available on iBooks. This both didn't happen and wouldn't be illegal. What it DID do was coordinate discussions between publishers to fix pricing and contract terms (and not offer different terms to anybody else.) Since the different publishers are supposed to be competitors, this is highly illegal behavior.
"What it DID do was coordinate" It is not coordination SirWired, it's a conspiracy to price fix among publishers. And YES, this is highly illegal. The punishment should have included decreasing the cost of all books on iTunes to zero for one year AND $450 Million dollars
What would "decreasing all books on iTunes to zero for a year" accomplish? Nothing, insofar as Apple was concerned. Poverty for writers and bankruptcy for publishers, most likely.
No. Far better instead to pierce the corporate veil and send the negotiating parties to jail. The only way to really hurt the guilty in these situations is to go after those who made it happen, not corporations. Apple wouldn't notice a few billion in fines and the decision makers at the publishers would be insulated even if the result was those publishers going out of business.
If corporations are people in the USA, deserving of human rights such as religion and freedom of speech, then they should also have the same responsibilities as people. Such as serving jail time for crimes.
Amazon can now agressively shaft the publishers and their authors.
These days I am only buying ebooks through publishers websites (TOR etc) or through collections such as Humble Bundle - I'm not supporting Amazon, Apple or Google on this. I'm buying more physical books (from an actual bookshop) than I am ebooks.
Handing a monopoly to any one reseller is a bad idea so I am doing my part to support the smaller parties.
The problem with what Apple was doing is that they in fact colluded with publishers to increase ebook prices across the board. Two wrongs do not make a right, and if publishers are worried about monopolistic lock-ins they should go to the DoJ instead of doing corporate vigilantism.
Your comment is so true. In addition, what most people do not know is that Amazon has also shafted those who self publish. Aside from taking 70% (sound familiar?), the company has some rather creative ways to do what it wants with the work and, if Amazon decides, it can farm out the characters to writers of its own choosing - it does this if it does not like the way the original writer is sending the story line/characters and these new writers will write how Amazon wants it. The original writer does not receive anything from these derivative works. So who is the real monopoly?
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