“The judge overseeing Apple’s ebooks price-fixing case has indicated she will not crack down on the company as hard as the US government has requested, but she also said she was disappointed that Apple has not shown remorse,” Greg Sandoval reports for The Verge.
MacDailyNews Take: Remorse is for the guilty. Apple is appealing your baseless decision, Denise.
Sandoval reports, “For that reason, US District Judge Denise Cote suggested that when she makes her final ruling she will require that a third party monitors Apple to ensure that the company doesn’t violate antitrust laws in the future.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Blatant ebook price fixing” for which there is no proof of Apple’s involvement. Where’s the smoking gun, Denise?
“But U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan suggested a final injunction would be narrower than what the U.S. Department of Justice has been seeking, and would not restrict Apple’s agreements with suppliers of other types of content such as movies, music and TV shows,” Nate Raymond reports for Reuters. “She also said a provision related to Apple’s app store that would allow other e-book retailers to provide a link to their websites or e-bookstores via an e-books app without having to pay Apple for book sales was ‘unnecessary’ … ‘I want this injunction to rest as lightly as possible on how Apple runs its business,’ Cote said at a court hearing.”
“The monitor, she said, would likely be installed to review Apple’s internal antitrust compliance program and procedures and recommend changes, and also required annual antitrust training for employees in Apple’s e-books and content businesses,” Raymond reports. “Apple had vigorously contested hiring of a monitor, saying in court papers it would be ‘extremely costly and burdensome.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple is appealing this case.
She probably wants Jeff Bezos as the monitor.
Jeff Bezos, major donor to Democrat party. You do the math.
And regular attendee of Bilderberg, in the company of Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie of MS.
Cote is such a biased judicial ass. It’s not justice, just a vendetta.
‘Freek, it is incredible how you manage to dredge partisanship out of a post intended to be humorous and containing no factual information. If you ever wonder why people question the value of your posts, you have just provided another in a long line of examples. You do the math.
And her perspnal sugar dady !
Everything has a limit. Judge Denise has obvious comes to hers, at which no more sense further can be made.
Judge Denise Cote: a pre-cog from Minority Report whose sense of future events comes without a hint of irony.
She’s the one who needs supervision and monitoring.
If this was some fly-by-night solar power company with no products to speak of, the government would be trying to give them a billion tax payer dollars, in a move strangely non-competitive with other energy companies.
Requiring that Apple have 3rd party supervision is meant to embarrass the company, period.
There a scene in Atlas Shrugged just like this, where the government, pissed at Rearden Metal, convicts the company of an obscure law because the company refuses to sell its products to the government. The same government that tried to kill the products earlier on. As part of the government punishment for Rearden, they require the company to have a government lackey on hand at all times to “help the company adhere to the law in the future.”
A government representative explains to the owner of the company why the government passes so many stupid laws. “The laws are only useful when the right people accidentally break them.”
F*ck off bitch; you have yet to comprehend the “problem”!
Remember when the NSA, CIA, and FBI were upset
because they could snoop on every mobile phone
except the iPhone Here is what I think happened-
The government goes to Apple and says ” Please give us your code for iOS so we can secretly snoop
on your customers.” Apple replies screw off! The government says “You will be sorry, we can make doing business very hard on you!” And this is the result, with more to come.
Nonsense
Apple claims it does not provide “any government agency” with direct access to its servers, and that “any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order.”
That doesn’t mean the agencies aren’t asking for data. According to Apple, the company has received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data from Dec. 1, 2012, to May 31, 2013.
Apples does EXACLTY the same as all other actors in the market (Including Google or Facebook).
The rest of the data comes from the carriers ans is not dependant of the brand of the phone.
WTF you talking about? Apple does NOT embed NSA code into iOS or OS-X. There are NSA back doors embedded into Android and Windows and all Google S/W.
Where have you been last month or so? Under a rock?
Dear Paul…
Thank you for reading first and commenting after.
Where have I spoken about embedded code???
BTW… There were discussions with google about how to do it but as far as I know, nothing has (officially) been done at that time. It’s the same as Apple (officially) stating that blah blah blah
If you really want to believe that Apple protects you while all the others are happy to throw your data to every possible agency it’s up to you. You can also believe in pink fluffy unicorns. It’s OK for me.
Welcome back to the real world. The one where every big US company works with and for the US administration.
Wow… I dared to express an opinion != Apple’s the best, f_ck the rest on MDN. Sorry for this.
“Where have I spoken about embedded code???”
“Apples does EXACLTY the same as all other actors in the market (Including Google or Facebook). ”
Just here to help out.
It’s so easy to twist things around once out of context.
“Apples does EXACLTY the same as all other actors in the market (Including Google or Facebook). ” was in relation to:
Providing user data to the administration.
Add to this that you quoted my first post forgetting the second one. So let me help out:
“BTW… There were discussions with google about how to do it but as far as I know, nothing has (officially) been done at that time. It’s the same as Apple (officially) stating that blah blah blah”
So… If I’m right with what I say (and I think I am), Google (I don’t know about facebook) does the same as Apple… Providing user data on administration request.
Fanboyism appart… Do you REALLY think Apple is better than any other company and that it cares about you as an enduser?
“nothing has (officially) been done at that time”
Oh! I understand! So the NSA and Google is going to officially announce this to everyone!?! Can I be on this mailing list?… you really oughta stop externalizing “Fanboyism” when it should be directed inward upon yourself. Google sold out to the feds, and Android users are being tracked and losing their rights to privacy.
Google’s Eric Schmidt quote:
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
(There wasn’t, and isn’t going to be, an official announcement. The NSA code is on Android, and Android users should be up in arms, rather than defending Google. Get your fucking head out of your ass.)
When are we going to toss this government out as it over reaches and socializes us all while taking away our freedoms.
Once again, this administration has overstepped it’s bounds. And the result will be costly and unnecessary ‘supervision’.
small potatoes, the big dumbass is about to get us in World War III.
Amazon had about a 90% share of the e-book market, and they have a 70% share of all internet marketing. Amazon was engaged in price fixing on best sellers. $9.99 as I recall. So the Justice Department sued Apple. Right. (in your most cynical voice.) And Judge Cole finds Apple guilty? While they were trying to get into e-books? Hm. I guess The N.Y. Times wasn’t the only thing Bezos bought.
Apparently, the current rationale is that price fixing by a monopoly is OK when it is in the customer’s SHORT TERM interests by selling a “Loss Leader”.
Ironically, the opposite of this had been in effect in for the past 50 years: the price of Milk is regulated by the Government in 14 States, which includes a specific prohibition from retailers offering Milk as a “Loss Leader” to attract customers.
-hh
After Apple wind the appeal ( it will.) it will be time to put this judge over the coals and teach her about bias.
Wins this appeal…
Judge Cote is an Obama virus sent to destroy capitalism in its finest form and replace that with a form of economic inactivity called communism where the sun only shines down on the cronies of the administration.
There are well-established economic tests and analyses to ascertain monopolistic activity, price-fixing, and anti-competitive behavior. These are utilized when evaluating mergers for antitrust implications, for example. These economic tests and analyses can provide quantitive data on the topic, rather than having to resort to “he said, she said” type testimony, or subjective impressions of the Judge with respect to eyewitness and expert testimony.
A critical step in evaluating anti-competitive market behavior is to identify the relevant market. DOJ claims the relevant market here is ALL e-books. But the facts of the case indicate the relevant market is “new & best-selling titles”. At the very least, to make an informed decision, DOJ must evaluate “new/best titles” and “all other e- books” separately to ascertain pricing and anticompetitive behavior implications under legal review. These markets appear to have very different dynamics, and lumping them together will likely conceal important distinctions. (The DOJ may not wish to do this, however, because it will likely show anticompetitive behavior on the part of Amazon in the “new/best titles” book market.)
In addition, anticompetitive behavior must be considered over a relevant time period. Raising prices from ARTIFICIALLY low levels that are not sustainable in the long-run — ie, from below-cost prices set by Amazon, which they subsidize with other monies — is an irrelevant basis to ascertain the existence of “the artificial raising of consumer prices” indicative of anticompetitive behavior.
Anticompetitive trade laws are intended to foster competition. In this decision, however, it appears that the DOJ is protecting Amazon from fair competition. I believe Apple will win this case on appeal.
What Tom said.
I think Cote wants to be in the running for a spot on the supremes. Cooperating with the Obama Justice Department is a clear sign that right or wrong, you’re a team player.
I don’t mind most expletives seen on MDN, but I think you’ve crossed a line here. That is a particularly crude and ugly term. Save that one for private. Or better yet, eliminate it from your vocabulary.
Gotta agree.
I have driven with my son while he plays his explicit rap music…pretending I didn’t hear the lyrics. This gave me the same feeling.
I am missing something here? A third party, over site person/committee for establishing ebook pricing and contracts between Apple and the publishers, should technically amount to nothing.
Apple, I believe did not ban to gather with publishers to fix ebook prices for either general ebooks or NYT Best Sellers.
Wouldn’t a 3rd party, overseeing this, understand the truth, and not technically be effective in hindering exactly what Apple was doing? I mean rewind and place this person overseeing the beginning. Would they have been able to change anything.
We should assume that Apple get’s to choose who the 3rd party is, or they get to choose who it’s not. Therefore we would need to believe they are not agents of Amazon. Also, wouldn’t the 3rd party also need to be able to prove their point, as soon as they make an objection?
I am thinking, if the publishers and Apple need to re-negociate their contract, even if it’s one contract per month, over the next 5 months or so. Who’s to say it can’t be the same or similar to what they have now?
I mean, I don’t get this, and I don’t understand at what point the DOJ or the Court could possibly believe they are protecting the consumer, Apple, or Amazon, at any point of this, unless someone is being completely dishonest in the first place. Either the DOJ and the Court are lying, or Apple is lying, and it will all be brought to the surface anyway.
That’s what it seems like.
Can the court say? – “It doesn’t matter if you are innocent or not. It doesn’t matter if your contracts are fair or not. We decided we don’t like your contracts, and you have to renegotiate. Not only that, you cannot have, even remotely similar contracts as before, and you cannot take a 30% cut of anything. You must loose $3 per book on each sale, or not sell any books at all.”
Can any agency, government or otherwise really force a company to “loose” money on every sale? Demand that a company not make a profit? Demand how much a company can profit, if there is any to be had? Can they really say, “Umm, f*** it, close your doors, we want to ruin you, because we hate your guts.” And then there’s no recourse?
Who can actually enforce this? What police or army or politician can really stand behind this? Then, if there is someone who would stand behind this, how do we not have that? I am only speaking about, “injustice.”
If the United States truly wanted to help it’s citizens, they would strive to make as many publications (especially reference titles) available free online for public library card holders.
If USA just mind it’s own business, then there is no need to have NSA to spy on anything, just saying.
She is out of her mind. Great job! Getting the innocent guilty.