US Justice Department formally charges Apple, big five publishers in e-book price fixing case

The Justice Department has formally decided to sue Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillian, Penguin and Simon & Schuster over alleged e-book price-rigging.

Apple and Macmillian have already denied any wrongdoing, saying that the agreements were enhancing competition in an industry previously dominated by Amazon. The case centers around a deal to switch to agency pricing, where the vendor takes a 30 percent cut of each sale rather than the wholesale model which allows stores to sell books at rock-bottom prices.

It was previously believed that the publishers had cut back-room deals with the Government agency after bowing to pressure to withdraw Cupertino's "favored nation" status. If successful, the DoJ will allow Amazon and Barnes and Noble amongst others to return to the wholesale model to sell best-sellers at a loss, something that the big five are desperate to avoid, and will look to fight the battle in court.

Update: The PDF of the DoJ's filing is now available online -- it makes for fascinating reading.

Update 2: Bloomberg is now reporting that Simon & Schuster, Lagardère SCA's Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins have settled with the DoJ over unspecified terms. Hasty!

Source

Damn that was fast, lol.

i know it was mad crazy__ those publishing companies were technically becoming bootleg men towards books but lied to the FCC and said they were charging ppl MSRP__

im glad the news reported like its something complicated__ that wouldve set off a war of copyrights throughout all of America in different ways_ like how u protect something you made up or when can you use somebody else's ideas__

bad business, fa real

so are the books gonna be cheaper now or what

Cant wait till the Library goes online and you can rent .pdf's for a week at a time

BTW people who write books need to get with some independent distribution companies and sell that !! on their own.....!! getting fisted by the 5 evil book merchants

Yep. Ebooks bout to get their prices back lower to where they were. About damn time.

Publishers "claim" that the cost of actually making a physical copy of a book is only a small part of the books price.

It's not Apple's fault. It's the publisher's.

Horizontal price fixing isn't allowed, but it has to happen on one side: either the buyers or the sellers.

If the publishers are telling other vendors (Amazon, etc) that they're not giving them books because of Apple's business model, then Apple isn't to blame. That's why the publishers settled quickly.

DOJ is stupid for even bringing Apple into the situation, because the company didn't confer with the likes of Amazon or other eBook resellers.

Apple doing something dishonest? How shocking.

Amazon has been price dumping their ebook prices. Both dishonest and illegal.