Apple e-Book Deals Illegal?
0
Steve Jobs may have contributed a lot to Apple’s success in the past few years. But he did leave this company in a bit of a legal mess when it comes to e-books. The Department of Justice is now targeting Apple and top e-book publishers for colluding to charge more for e-books. As William Markham, a partner with San Diego-based law firm Maldonado & Markham told Betanews, Apple’s e-book deals could be illegal.
The book publishers had an obvious motive — to preserve the profit margins on the sale of hardcover and paperback books, which were threatened by the much lower prices for ebooks that were offered by Amazon. To preserve these prices, the book publishers had to “discipline” Amazon by obliging it to raise the prices that it charged for ebooks. To enforce this threat upon Amazon, which is an enormous electronic retailer, the book publishers enlisted the aid of Apple
The damages can be immense according to Mr. Markham. Apple and its publishing partners will fight this. But it does seem there is enough of a case to go after them for fixing e-book prices. Not everyone sees Apple at complete fault here. Scott Turow, head of the Authors Guild, had this to say about Apple:
Given the chance, any rational publisher would have leapt at Apple’s offer and clung to it like a life raft. Amazon was using e-book discounting to destroy bookselling, making it uneconomic for physical bookstores to keep their doors open. Just before Amazon introduced the Kindle, it convinced major publishers to break old practices and release books in digital form at the same time they released them as hardcovers. Then … publishers learned that Amazon would be selling countless frontlist e-books at a loss.
Amazon’s practices do deserve some scrutiny as well. But Apple is the big fish for the government at this point. The company has been quite successful and is dominating the tech world. Apple has helped the e-book industry grow a lot with its iPad tablets. Now, it may be forced to pay up for being aggressive with its e-book deals.
What’s your take? Should Apple be punished for its deals with some top publishers?
