DOJ Complaint Cites Steve Jobs Role in Scheme
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Acting Assistant Attorney General Sharis Pozen, who heads the Antitrust Division, elaborated on the Justice Department action: We allege that CEOs of the publishers bemoaned the wretched $9.99 price point. One executive said that, the goal is less to compete with Amazon as to force it to accept a price level higher than 9.99.
Another executive said, weve always known that unless other publishers follow us, theres no chance of success in getting Amazon to change its pricing practices. Our complaint also quotes Apples then-CEO Steve Jobs as saying, the customer pays a little more, but thats what you [hes referring to the publishers here] want anyway. Pozen explained. As you can see, we allege that these executives knew full well what they were doing. That is, taking steps to make sure the prices consumers paid for e-books were higher.
Pozen noted that the Justice Department action is the result of a combined investigation conducted by DOJ, the European Union and several states. She added that three of the book publishers Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schusterhave already agreed to settle with the DOJ and abandon the practice. However Apple, Macmillan and Penguin have vowed to fight the lawsuit.
At least one group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is taking Apples side in the antitrust suit. The group brought out its own policy experts, who attempted to refute the Justice Departments position. A statement from the CEIs Ryan Young seems to be unaware of Apples practices in the market place.
Given Amazons much larger share of the e-book market, Apple is hardly in a position to price its products uncompetitively [sic], Young said in a prepared statement released to the press. If consumers feel overcharged, they can easily give their business to Amazon or Barnes & Noble insteadpossibly by using Apples own products!
What Young missed in the suit is that Amazon and Barnes & Noble cant sell their ebooks at a lower price than Apple because the contracts between Apple and the book publishers prohibit that.
In reality, the agreement between Apple and the book publishers, which involved quarterly meetings to make sure that prices were staying up, very closely resembles the activities of defense contractors in the 1960s and 1970s that ultimately ended up with a series of criminal convictions for price fixing. While the products were weapons and services in those cases, the practices were essentially the same.
In other words, what Apple has done is eliminate the competition in ebook pricing. With the agreements in place, the price is what the publisher and Apple want it to be, not what the retailers try to sell books for when they compete with each other.
While some could argue that selling books below cost, as Amazon is alleged to have done, is also anti-competitive, thats pretty hard to prove. Retailers selling items below their cost is very common and is the essence of the weekly sales that appear in the grocery ads in your Sunday paper. Indeed some items are sold below cost. The idea is to get you to shop at the store and while youre there, buy other items that generate profits. Price competition is part of a free market, but price fixing, regardless of whether its books or bazookas, is not.
Wayne Rash is a Senior Analyst for eWEEK Labs and runs the magazine's Washington Bureau. Prior to joining eWEEK as a Senior Writer on wireless technology, he was a Senior Contributing Editor and previously a Senior Analyst in the InfoWorld Test Center. He was also a reviewer for Federal Computer Week and Information Security Magazine. Previously, he ran the reviews and events departments at CMP's InternetWeek.He is a retired naval officer, a former principal at American Management Systems and a long-time columnist for Byte Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Plane & Pilot Magazine and The Washington Post.
