“A question hangs over Apple Inc.’s e-books trial: Why is Apple fighting the U.S. Department of Justice when the book publishers the agency also sued chose to settle?” Jessica E. Lessin reports for The Wall Street Journal.
MacDailyNews Take: Because Apple is not guilty of the charges and the only reason this case exists at all is because Jeff Bezos is a whiny little bitch and the U.S. DOJ is morbidly inept.
“The answer lies in part in what’s at stake. Apple says it is fighting the high-profile case, now in the hands of a federal judge, on the principle it did nothing wrong,” Lessin writes. “But the company is defending a lot more than its tiny digital-books business. A win would help Apple maintain negotiating clout with media companies, which are searching for new ways to make money in markets shifting online. A loss could hamper its ability to compete with rivals like Amazon.com Inc. to land increasingly important media deals on favorable terms.”
Lessin writes, “While the government is only suing Apple over e-books, Apple uses a similar approach of trying to land partners by letting them set prices in other areas, like its app store. An ability to negotiate favorable terms is critical to its ability to compete with Amazon.com, which tries to offer lower digital prices. ‘Apple is smart enough to realize what is potentially at risk for digital commerce generally,’ said David Balto, a former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission. ‘They want to preserve their market power to disadvantage rivals and dictate the terms of competition.'”
Read more in the full article here.
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