What does Apple say to the Department of Justice’s lawsuit? “We’ll see you in court.” Reuters reports that Apple has told a court that it wants the antitrust case to go to a full trial. "Our basic view is that we would like the case to be decided on the merits," Apple lawyer, Daniel Floyd, told U.S. District Judge Denise Cote. "We believe that this is not an appropriate case against us and we would like to validate that." The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for June 22. It’s pretty clear...

So, perhaps this isn’t really very news-related, but it’s a pet peeve that’s been bothering me for the last few days: John Sargent’s statement on the DoJ agency pricing lawsuit. I’m not bothered so much by what he’s saying in it (though I think his prefacing it with “Dear authors, illustrators, and agents,” without a word for the consumer still shows just how out of touch he is with the people who ultimately buy his company’s books), but by its appearance in another context. If you go to the blog Tor.com, the very first post you find on the...

On PaidContent, Laura Hazard Owen has written a handy little guide to the implications of the DoJ-imposed settlement terms for readers. She discusses the effects that readers can expect to see as the settlement takes effect, sometime after the comment period ends in June. Readers will see the most effects on books published by Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins, the three publishers who meekly chose to settle with the DoJ, though those effects won’t start until June, when the 60-day comment period on the settlement is up. When it takes effect, publishers will have one week...

As we see more and more articles about the DoJ vs. publishers thing, with more and more of them saying the same thing, they start to become worth mentioning more for how they differ from others. For example, CBS News has a summary that explains what’s going on, but also links to Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler’s defenestration of Authors Guild president Scott Turow’s statement condemning the suit and settlement, which I hadn’t seen before and makes for some fun reading: Barry: Look, you can build a business by forcing your choices on consumers (commonly known...

The thing about the end of Agency is that it’s not over. That is to say that the rearguard action by the legacy publishing establishment isn’t finished. And make no mistake, Agency Pricing and the rules and agreements that supported it were an attempt to stop the clock and buy the established players a breather against the tide of innovation. That the establishment chose to work with one of the greatest innovators in another sphere doesn’t make the move any less defensive, Apple certainly didn’t break too much new ground in the digital book world (though the game is a long one and they may yet). For the record,...

The Wall Street Journal has some further news on the putative e-book pricing settlement in the US Justice Department and European Commission joint anti-trust investigation of the “Agency Five” publishers plus Apple. Anonymous sources have told the Journal that three publishers are inclined to settle and two others (plus Apple) are holding out. HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster reportedly favor settling, while Penguin and Macmillan (plus Apple) do not. (Random House, who waited a year to implement agency pricing, was not part of the investigation.) "The companies involved know very well under which conditions we...

Recently, there has been a lot of focus on the “conspiracy” between 5 major publishers and Apple regarding agency pricing and whether these 6 entities have violated antitrust law. The focus is not on whether agency pricing is good or bad, but whether the parties colluded. That question I’ll leave for the US Department of Justice. I’m more interested in whether agency pricing has been good for me as a consumer. Various forums have been discussing this and Mark Coker, president of Smashwords, has written an excellent piece defending agency pricing (see Does Agency Pricing Lead to Higher Book Prices?) Mark Coker makes...

Does proving a conspiracy require hard evidence? PaidContent reports that plaintiffs who have filed suit against Apple and the major publishers who implemented agency pricing say in their latest filing that indirect evidence of price jumps and other “plus factors” are all that is necessary, according to a 1939 Supreme Court precedent pertaining to movie studios who fixed film prices. The filing points out a number of events such as several separate deals finalized over just a few days, a trade association meeting when executives from Hachette and Macmillan were seen together in a bar, and the way that...

Reuters has a report from a couple of anonymous tipsters close to the Justice Department talks with Apple and the major publishers regarding the antitrust investigation into agency pricing. According to Reuters’s sources, the negotiations may be within weeks of reaching a settlement. The settlement is expected to eliminate Apple’s “most favored nation” status, which currently allows Apple to lower its prices for an e-book to match the lowest price the book is available elsewhere. (Though the article doesn’t say whether Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which have a similar contract clause, would have to give it up as...

According to a March 9 story in the Wall Street Journal, The U.S. Department of Justice is considering suing Apple and five large US publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of ebooks. At the heart of the issue, I suspect, is concern over the agency pricing model. Agency pricing allows the publisher (or the indie author) to set the retail price of their book. Although Smashwords is not a party to this potential lawsuit, I felt it was important that the DoJ investigators hear the Smashwords side of the story, because any decisions they make could have significant ramifications for...

Well, the Harry Potter e-books are out, and they’re making a splash. There are a number of reactions being reported on the web to various aspects of the announcement, and it interests me to look at some of them. For starters, Tim Carmody at Wired calls attention to the fact that Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both unprecedentedly referring customers to Pottermore to register and buy the books, then automatically adding them to their respective e-reader accounts. (And both of them are promoting the Potter e-books on their respective front pages as if the sales were their own...

Although she did not mention any companies or business sectors explicitly, it is hard not to see departing Justice Department antitrust chief Sharis Pozen’s harsh words as aimed at the publishers and Apple who are under investigation for allegedly colluding on e-book pricing: "Competitors can't join together and make agreements on price," she says in an interview. "We're going to stop that." […] "We don't pick business models—that's not our job," Ms. Pozen says, without mentioning the case explicitly. "But when you see collusive behavior at the highest levels of...