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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Seems a weird solution, given they aren't the gorilla in the ebook market

While some of the remedies are related to the market that was affected by the illegal actions they were found to have engaged in, the remedies as a whole aren't limited to the ebook market, and it seems more concerned with Apple using its mobile position and related retail platforms to facilitate similar publisher schemes in other markets to the one it engaged in in the e-book market.

Which, IMO, is what you'd expect of a company that wasn't found to be leveraging a monopoly or otherwise abusing power as a dominant player in one market, but instead was found to have used a significant-but-not-necessarily unique position in one market to provide a pivotal role in a price-fixing conspiracy among producers in another market.

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"...the remedies as a whole aren't limited to the ebook market, and it seems more concerned with Apple using its mobile position and related retail platforms to facilitate similar publisher schemes in other markets to the one it engaged in in the e-book market..."

Wait...

So Amazon bought all their eBooks on the wholesale model, basically, they pay a fixed price for the book, maybe $5 and sell the book for whatever... including selling for a loss if they choose.

Apple came along and said we will sell for whatever the publisher of the book wants us to sell for... and then we will take a percentage of that.

Now forgive me for my shameless selfishness here...

but that immediately calls to mind the App market to me.

So I have a question...

Would "...in other markets..." mean that Apple could conceivably be barred from letting me sell my App for whatever price I wanted on the App store? Or does it mean that they would just have to provide a link to my app on another store that would be selling my app at a loss?

I hope that's not true. In this case, that would mean that Apple, Amazon and Google would get to set the price at which one could sell one's app, since they own the store, and I would be just the publisher.

Well... technically, they couldn't set the price I could sell my app at, they could only refuse to buy my app and put it on their store for anything but their "wholesale" price.

I hope none of this applies to the app market.

Sigh.

Maybe I should have gone for that Law degree.

I've read articles saying that Amazon's App store does this. i.e. if they see you selling your app cheaper for iOS, they can go pricematch it. Or, if you give it away for free, Amazon can do the same thing an pay you nothing (since a percentage of zero is zero). AFAIK, Apple won't do the same thing, they'll just reject your app if it uses the wrong APIs or competes with a market they want to own in the near-term.

Perhaps, but it's an insane solution in a competitive environment where the other major players have actual monopolies and are using predatory pricing to enter other markets.

Apple has clearly overreached, but this kind of remedy is not about restoring competition.

> Apple has clearly overreached, but this kind of remedy is not about restoring competition.

This is about Apple using its retail outlet to advance and profit from a conspiracy among publishers to jointly set the terms on which they sold to retailers, including retail price fixing as the key focus. Insofar as it is about "restoring competition", its about restoring the need for publishers to each seek separately to make the best deals with retailers, rather than unilaterally imposing common terms. (This affects retail prices, but its not about retail competition.)

The remedies which benefit other retailers aren't about restoring competition, per se, they are about remedying the harms done by Apple's unlawful activity to other market participants. In Amazon's case, that also happens to reward the incumbent major player, but then, Amazon was the primary target of the illegal conspiracy. So this is not inappropriate.

As to your allegations against Amazon, if one assumes they are true, they might be a basis for anti-trust action against Amazon, but they aren't an argument for limiting the remedies imposed on Apple for conspiring with publishers in a price-fixing scheme.

I think the conspiracy is really correcting a wrong. The publishers felt they made a mistake giving Amazon so much leverage, so early in the development of e-commerce. To assume that all e-commerce should develop in the open web model is ludicrous. This has to be obvious to some in Washington.

"The publishers" is not a group of happy friends. They are in the same market, they should be each others greatest enemy. The moment thats not the case, you can be sure there will be an anti-trust investigation. Anti-trust isn't about whats right or wrong or visionary or faulty, it's not even about whose responsibility it really is, if their actions created a situation where competition subsided and prices raised, theres damage and fault.

> The moment thats not the case, you can be sure there will be an anti-trust investigation.

That was the case, there was an investigation. All the publishers quickly settled because they were caught colluding to use Apple to force Amazon to switch sales models.

You need to read the emails cited in the case. Apple was acting as ring leader, the publishers didn't get the idea and then used Apple.

If the remedies are structural ones designed to cripple Apple's ability to compete on a level playing field, they certainly is an argument for limiting them.

If Apple is forced to sell Amazon's books, Amazon should be forced to sell Apple's books on the e-ink Kindle.

The argument that Apple did something wrong therefore a destructive remedy is justified is absurd because it harms consumers even further by damaging the competitive market even more.

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