America Sues Apple

"'As a result of this alleged conspiracy, we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles,' Holder said." The United States government decided to sue Apple because of "price manipulation." The main argument given by the government was that Apple and publishers conspired to eat into Amazon's share of the eBook industry through price manipulation.

Last I checked, it is still legal for a company to decide at what price it will sell its products. It appears that the United States government (and no, that does NOT mean it's all Obama's fault) is having some trouble figuring out how Capitalism works.

The government also was angry about how Apple made a product, as shown here.

"'Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99,' Jobs wrote to one of the publishers, according to the Justice Department's complaint.

Apple successfully persuaded the publishers to adopt an 'agency model' that allowed publishers to set the price of e-books and in turn, Apple would take a 30 percent cut, the government said. The Apple agreements with publishers effectively barred them from allowing rival retailers to sell the same books at lower prices.

The strategy upended the 'wholesale model' in which retailers pay for the product and charge what they like."


Oddly enough, the government doesn't seem to care that Amazon set eBook prices at $9.99, yet Apple trying to get higher prices is apparently an issue. As to why Amazon setting the price is legal, and Apple setting it isn't, I don't know.

The government didn't like that Apple was making a product differently than normal. There are legal reasons for the case, but the laws make very, very, very, very little sense. Thus, as one can expect with Apple, the case is being ignored by the corporation. Which is now technically a person. I guess they can't just put Apple into the back of a cop car.