“From the day it was filed there seemed something ill-conceived about the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Apple and five of the six major book publishers,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“The optics, as political operatives like to say, were wrong,” P.E.D. reports. “Here was the government helping Amazon (AMZN) regain monopoly control of the e-book market by attacking companies in a wounded industry that were, as author Jim (‘Chaos’) Gleick put it, ‘gasping for air.’ …’The irony bites hard,’ wrote Scott Thorow, president of the Authors Guild, just before the suit was filed. ‘Our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition.'”
P.E.D. reports, “Now a key Democratic Senator — and important supporter of President Obama’s reelection campaign — has thrown his considerable political weight behind Apple and the publishers. In a ‘Memo to DOJ’ published on the Wall Street Journal’s Op-Ed page Tuesday, Sen. Charles Schumer called on the administration to ‘drop the Apple e-book suit.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
U.S. senator Schumer: Myopic DOJ needs to drop Apple e-books suit – July 18, 2012
Apple’s U.S. e-books antitrust case set for 2013 trial – June 24, 2012
U.S. government complains, claims Apple trying to rush e-books antitrust case – June 21, 2012
Barnes & Noble blasts U.S. DOJ e-book settlement proposal – June 7, 2012
Apple: U.S. government’s e-book antitrust lawsuit ‘is fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law’ – May 24, 2012
Federal Judge rejects Apple and publishers’ attempt to dismiss civil case alleging e-book price-fixing – May 15, 2012
Court documents reveal Steve Jobs email pushing e-book agency model; 17 more states join class action suit – May 15, 2012
Apple vs. Amazon: Who’s really fixing eBook prices? – April 17, 2012
Apple: U.S. DOJ’s accusation of collusion against iBookstore is simply not true – April 12, 2012
Apple not likely to be a loser in legal fight over eBooks – April 12, 2012
16 U.S. states join DOJ’s eBook antitrust action against Apple, publishers – April 12, 2012
Australian gov’t considers suing Apple, five major publishers over eBook pricing – April 12, 2012
DOJ’s panties in a bunch over Apple and eBooks, but what about Amazon? – April 12, 2012
Antitrust experts: Apple likely to beat U.S. DOJ, win its eBook lawsuit – April 12, 2012
Why the market shrugged off the Apple antitrust suit – April 11, 2012
What’s wrong with the U.S. DOJ? – April 11, 2012
Macmillan CEO blasts U.S. DOJ; gov’t on verge of killing real competition for appearance of competition – April 11, 2012
U.S. DOJ hits Apple, major publishers with antitrust lawsuit, alleges collusion on eBook prices – April 11, 2012
U.S. DOJ may sue Apple over ebook price-fixing as early as today, sources say – April 11, 2012
Amazing that some Democrats have a brain. Spot on Sen. Schumer.
Ah yes, I forgot that all Republicans were Rhodes Scholars.
You mean like all of the Democrat brains in silicon valley?
One more time:
It is not Obama’s justice Dept. It wasn’t George Bush’s, or Bill Clinton’s.. And quit with the Republican claptrap.
hmm. thought the president appointed the Attorney General in his own cabinet…tbone, aka Mr Unconstitution, doesn’t the AG still run the Justice Department?
Not only does he appoint he “sits at the president’s pleasure” which is “govt speak” for , unlike a judge (who the President can’t remove for not doing what he wants after appointing) the AG can be removed at any time the president wants.
The justice department is actually linked even closer than that. The White House maintains “liaisons” within the DOC (actually THIS white house has an unprecedented number of them) to ensure that the DOJ and the policies of the white house are “in sync”.
Learn about your government tbone, it will serve you your entire life.
well, actually it is his. he nominated the political appointees. they work for him. if it isn’t his justice department, then this is a much worse situation and the president (any president who claims it isn’t his justice department) should be ashamed to admit he doesn’t have control over his own executive branch of government.
The Democrats do something right for once.
I mean other than Social Security, Medicare, building the American middle class, rescuing the American auto industry, pulling us back from the brink of two depressions, expanding access to health insurance to all, etc. Other than that, FOR ONCE, the Democrats get it right!
“..pulling us back from the brink of two depressions..” lol, yet another history revisionist.
For fun, once again, the Record:
The Great Depression, October 29, 1929 to December 7, 1941.
• Herbert Hoover, R, October 1929 to January 1933: 40 MONTHS.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, D, late January 1933 to early December, 1941: 106 MONTHS.
lol, Mr History, how is that “pulling us back from the brink of two depressions?” dipshit.
Including several years of WWII, botvinnik. That is a war that we did *not* create on our own…
The Great Depression is considered by historians as ended on December 7, 1941. Unemployment ceases to be a problem when your workforce is fighting a war.
President Obama’s horrendous political gaffe last week—“You didn’t build that”—triggered the same reaction I had when he insisted on pushing through Obamacare. Then, I had the creepy feeling that I was living in an occupied country. American politics didn’t work that way. Neither Democrats nor Republicans had ever forced through a transformative piece of legislation without substantial bipartisan support. A major American politician had never (to my knowledge) been indifferent to the kind of voter sentiment so clearly expressed in the Massachusetts senatorial election.
“You didn’t build that” is another example of the president’s tone-deafness when it comes to the music of the American culture. The phrase is not taken out of context. It didn’t come after a celebration of the inventiveness and risk taking of individual Americans that has made this country great. The president gave the mildest of acknowledgements to the role of the individual, followed by a paragraph of examples that cast American history as a series of collective accomplishments.
There’s a standard way for Americans to celebrate accomplishment. First, we call an individual onto the stage and say what great things that person has done. Then that person gives a thank-you speech that begins “I couldn’t have done this without…” and a list of people who helped along the way. That’s the way we’ve always done it. Everyone knows we all get help in life (and sometimes just get lucky). But we have always started with the individual and then worked out. It is not part of the American mindset to begin with the collective and admonish individuals for thinking too highly of their contribution.
That brings me back to the creepiness of it all. It is as if a Dutch politician—an intelligent, well-meaning Dutch politician—were somehow running for the American presidency, but bringing with him the Rawlsian, social-democratic ethos that, in the Netherlands, is the natural way to talk about a properly run society. We would listen to him and say to ourselves, “He doesn’t get this country.” That’s the thing about Obama. Time and again, he does things and says things that are un-American. Not evil. Not anti-American. Just un-American.
Yep, another anonymous cretin who learned to copy-and-paste and who believes that repetition of an idea, even one taken out of context in a manner intended to maximize its appear to a specific demographic, makes it true.
Once is more than enough, anonymous one. If you have to repeat your posts to emphasize your ideas, then maybe they just don’t mean that much to the rest of us.
There are so many dumbasses that still don’t know who is responsible for the greatest financial crisis in history.
Read and weep
At President Clinton’s direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties.
The threat was codified in a 20-page “Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending” and entered into the Federal Register on April 15, 1994, by the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining.
The edict — completely overlooked by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the mainstream media — was signed by then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Attorney General Janet Reno, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, along with the heads of six other financial regulatory agencies.
“The agencies will not tolerate lending discrimination in any form,” the document warned financial institutions.
So this is where it all started. In 1994. When the government pressured lenders to qualify the unqualified. To put people into houses they couldn’t afford. Or else.
Yes, and if this were the sole cause of our current economic woes, you’d have a valid point.
But it isn’t. The problems stem, not only from “sub-prime” mortgages, but also from how Wall Street acted in response, by *betting against the success of these mortgages*, and jerking the system around to manipulate prices to their own end.
The only thing we should’ve learned from all of this is to not trust Wall Street.
Schumer is opportunistic, but politically saavy. He was one of the first senators to say that he was in favor of the investigation. Now that Eric Holder’s reputation is weakened “Obama’s” DOJ was wrong. Schumer is correct, he is simply milking the truth for all it’s worth.