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Apple & book publishers may be sued for price fixing
IainB:
As threatened, the U.S. Department of Justice has just filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five major publishing house for fixing the price of ebooks.
-xtabber (April 11, 2012, 03:10 PM)
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Well, I guess I should say "Hurrah for active consumer protection from government." I thought it was dead.
Much as I detest government intervention/regulation of market economies, that was probably the only way something was likely to be done to correct matters in this case. The consumers in the market did not seem to be organised/smart/awake enough to boycott - as @Renegade pointed out.
The publishers obviously had no scruples about using their monopoly/oligopoly position to milk their market for all it was worth, whilst they could. Classic self-serving Corporate psychopathic behaviour.
The thing about this kind of government intervention is that it only addresses the symptom - monopolistic practices. So, whilst we can all probably feel cheered by this particular result, the causal problem remains - i.e., the legal status of the corporate (psychopathic) person. So this type of ripoff will be able to recur ad infinitum, under different guises, and each time it recurs the consumers who have been ripped off (victimised) will probably never be given their money back. Suckers.
Now that's a failure of government.
Renegade:
The thing about this kind of government intervention is that it only addresses the symptom - monopolistic practices. So, whilst we can all probably feel cheered by this particular result, the causal problem remains - i.e., the legal status of the corporate (psychopathic) person. So this type of ripoff will be able to recur ad infinitum, under different guises, and each time it recurs the consumers who have been ripped off (victimised) will probably never be given their money back. Suckers.
Now that's a failure of government.
-IainB (April 11, 2012, 06:12 PM)
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+1
Sadly, but yes... +1 :(
IainB:
Wasn't that +2?
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