“British media group Pearson’s Penguin unit has offered to scrap e-book deals with Apple that imposed price restrictions on Amazon and other retailers, EU antitrust regulators said on Friday,” Reuters reports.
“The concessions, if accepted by the European Commission, would make Penguin the fifth book publisher to settle with regulators, ending a 16-month long investigation without any finding of wrongdoing or fine,” Reuters reports. “Apple and publishers Simon & Schuster, News Corp unit HarperCollins, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Livre and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, the owner of Germany’s Macmillan, reached a settlement with the Commission in December.”
Read more in the full article here.
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DOJ is still IMMENSELY in the wrong on this. Government continues to support the Amazon monopoly on books. They will come to rue the day.
“Apple and publishers Simon & Schuster, News Corp unit HarperCollins, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Livre and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, the owner of Germany’s Macmillan, reached a settlement with the Commission in December.”
Apple did??
Where there’s the Penguin, you can be sure the DOJoker won’t be far behind.
peterblood71 and breeze, you may have missed that this article is talking about the European Commission – not the US DOJ. Yes, Apple DID settle with the EC back in December. The wrong-headed DOJ action is still proceeding, and hopefully will wind up in Apple’s favor. I’d also pray for embarrassment for the bureaucrats involved, but by the nature of things that’s impossible.
Thanx, missed it.
Me too, my bad. Just anxious to dump on the DOJ whenever possible.
I have concluded that the power of prayer does not extend to embarrassment, at least in the U.S., a land where shame seemingly lasts no longer than the public’s attention span. How else to explain the political re-emergence of Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, and Anthony Weiner? And there were so many others…but I can’t seem to remember them…
With luck and good fortune the US version of this will be found in Apple’s favor, and the outcome will be a binding settlement from the Government to bail Apple out following its pending collapse…
/s
“‘British media group Pearson’s Penguin unit has offered to scrap e-book deals with Apple that imposed price restrictions on Amazon and other retailers, EU antitrust regulators said on Friday,’ Reuters reports.”
This is 100% bullshit! The contractual terms say ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about restricting the prices Amazon or any other retailer can put forth. The restriciton was that if they allowed Amazon or any other retailer to sell the book at price X then they had to let Apple sell the book at price X too. Amazon (nor any other retailer) would be able to cut a special deal with the publisher that Apple could not get. Apple was/is just forcing an even playing field.
Hell, if the publisher let Amazon give the book away for free then Apple would have to be allowed to give the book away for free too. (This is an interesting case where Apple would actually lose money if they enforced the contract as stated.)
The EU (and the U.S.) regulators are pursuing these investigations based upon inaccurate reporting by these media groups. They have it ALL screwed up and the regulators are just buying it hook, line and sinker.
The truly sad thing is that the publishers, rather than sticking together and with Apple on this are thinking that it is just more cost effective in the long run to just cave in rather than do the right thing!