Not radical. I watched the entire Clarence Thomas trial day by day, and that too was a "slam dunk" on the facts that the man was guilty as charged. Now he's on the Supreme court and no one even remembers what he did.
I'm the biggest Apple fanboy there is. I had an Apple II in the 80's and the first Macintosh II. I own stock and every single iThing. When e-books started appearing on Amazon, I bought them to read on the Kindle app on the iPad. Since it was no physical item, the prices were amazing compared to the real book. Then Apple added books to it's online store. Then the Amazon prices went up! I'm just saying.
You do realize that Amazon was selling its ebooks well below its cost, in order to gain a monopoly in the ebook market? So the prices were bound to go up eventually, when all competition was destroyed.
The judge warned Apple that it was in their best interests to settle before the trial. I have little sympathy for a company that ignores advice like this.
There also seems to be a lot of people in this thread who don't understand that judges often given guidance before cases. It's a sensible way to get sides to settle out of court and save both everyone money.
Okay - so if the Judge tells you that he or she has already decided that you are guilty before the trial has even begun that means you should just fold and not exercise your rights to plead your case?
Sounds a lot like Guido telling you that it would be in your best interest to pay your protection money so that nothing "bad" were to happen to you or your business.
Apple will file an appeal by the end of the day, citing if nothing else that pre trial comments by the judge showed that she had already come to a decision against them before seeing any evidence etc.
Whenever the law is bad, it is the judge's job to set aside the law and rule in the moral way.
This is exactly what judges are NOT supposed to do! The only way a judge should set aside a law is if it is inconflict with another law (ie, if they deem it to be unconstitutional). If the law is wrong it needs to be changed by the legislative branch of goverment. Having a bunch of loose cannons in the judicial branch making up their own rules can, and has, led to instances of a single person (often someone not even elected to their position) usurping the will of the people.
Do they not teach basic civics in school anymore these days?
Not radical. I watched the entire Clarence Thomas trial day by day, and that too was a "slam dunk" on the facts that the man was guilty as charged. Now he's on the Supreme court and no one even remembers what he did.
Was it a trial or a nomination hearing? Since the GOP did not have a majority, Dems voted to put him over the top.
The judge said the pricing change to agency model was NOT the result of market forces, but a price fixing conspiracy by corporations.
Yeah, like Amazon dictating $9.99 pricing caps to publishers was the result of "market forces."
Someone should file a suit over that, including the MFN and the exclusive restrictions. For books and video. Amazon, Netflix etc should not be able to restrict streaming video to their service alone. It's not in the market or consumers best interest. Same with books.
@rogifan LIsa Jackson has worked in the field of environmental protection. Totally unrelated to the issue at hand and thus a somewhat bizarre comment.
It's hard for me to understand the logic of Judge Cole but the law is complicated and I dare say nobody who comments at AppleInsider knows much about the technical aspects of the law that led to this counterintuitive decision. Clearly Jeff Bezos is laughing his head off on his private jet on his way to a weekend retreat somewhere that few of us can afford to visit. And the BusinessInsider types must be checking their thesauri and brainstorming appropriate snark as I type. The Verge will of course have their smug comments to make no doubt too.
Apple's case is a slam dunk. The purpose of judges is to prevent a miscarriage of justice, even in the case of a jury trial.
This "judge" is corrupt. Thus a jury trial wouldn't have made a difference. (Juries are more gullible and easier to fall for the government case than a judge is.)
Basically, the court was stacked against Apple from the beginning.... as every court in america is stacked against the defendant from the beginning. The government controls the judge, the prosecutor, the evidence, and even the defendant's lawyer is restricted from defending his client in many cases and ways simply because the government controls whether he can appear in court or not.
Having recent sat on a jury in a case where the the government was the plaintiff, I can state with certainty that your claim that every court is stacked against the defendant and your suggestion that some mysterious government entitiy controls all apsects of the trial is absolutely false.
All I can say is this judge knows nothing about the book industry. The Agency model has been king forever, and the way the book industry works is that prices have *always* been set artificially by collusion among publishers.
Anyone who has ever owned a bookstore can tell you this. You are told what the prices are, what the discounts are and how high or low you can sell them. It's almost always been this way and the so-called "free market" rules don't apply and never have.
So two wrongs make a right?
I'm not saying Apple is guilty, but your argument ("because that's the way we've always done it") certainly isn't a legitimate defense. If it was, the mafia and drug lords would love it..."sure I killed him, but that's they way we've always done business so why are you prosecuting me now?"
Perhaps this is the outcome Apple wanted. Like Amazon, Apple can now set prices. So set them at a buck a book. Add ten bucks to the cost of an iPad to cover the dif. Result: Amazon takes it in the neck cus' it promised Wall Street it would make money on books.
It's actually more about forcing right-wing market ideology which would be the opposite of communism.
What Amazon does is immoral, underhanded etc. but actually conforms closely to right-wing so-called "free market" ideology. What the publishers traditionally do is what's called the Agency model (Apple was trying to help them re-instate this model), which is technically "price setting through collusion," and somewhat in opposition to the right-wing free-market stuff. This is because it's a mode of selling and an approach to the market that evolved long before the rise of right-wing ideological politics in America.
The first is bad for the consumer, the writers, and the publishers but conformant to the ideology, the second is very good for the consumer, the writers and the publishers but does not conform to the ideology. In other words it's a government body enforcing capitalist ideology, not communist.
One may ask why a government body is enforcing *any* ideology and why they wouldn't just go with the law and the facts (even though the law is somewhat tainted by the same ideology) but there it is.
Perhaps this is the outcome Apple wanted. Like Amazon, Apple can now set prices. So set them at a buck a book. Add ten bucks to the cost of an iPad to cover the dif. Result: Amazon takes it in the neck cus' it promised Wall Street it would make money on books.
Maybe if Apple undercuts Amazon, Amazon will cry to the judge to make it stop. It's unfair to sell at a greater loss.
where exactly you think they would go? Seeing how the EU also sued them (and Apple settled) they would have been in the same situation - unless they went to what ,China?
I don't mean physically move the country but shift the remaining IP that is held in CA to some place like IDK Ireland. they are already chastised for have some of their IP there. Why not have it all there? we have the highest corporate tax rate in the word so anywhere else in the world would be an improvement. plus it might be a bit of a wake up call to congress if 1/40th of their corporate tax revenue moves out of town.
The judge warned Apple that it was in their best interests to settle before the trial. I have little sympathy for a company that ignores advice like this.
There also seems to be a lot of people in this thread who don't understand that judges often given guidance before cases. It's a sensible way to get sides to settle out of court and save both everyone money.
Judges are allowed to give guidance. They are not allowed to prejudge the case - as this judge did.
Apple really had nothing to lose in this trial. If they won, the problem was over. If they lost, the judge gave them clear grounds for appeal.
The judge said the pricing change to agency model was NOT the result of market forces, but a price fixing conspiracy by corporations.
Yeah, like Amazon dictating $9.99 pricing caps to publishers was the result of "market forces."
That didn't happen, either. Amazon didn't dictate $9.99 pricing caps. Rather, they sold the books at $9.99 and paid the correct price to the publisher - eating a loss on many books in order to gain market share.
I'm not saying Apple is guilty, but your argument ("because that's the way we've always done it") certainly isn't a legitimate defense. If it was, the mafia and drug lords would love it..."sure I killed him, but that's they way we've always done business so why are you prosecuting me now?"
I would argue that the Agency model is actually "right" though or at least much more right than the Amazon capitalist anal-raping model.
What would be better than both, is a model that puts the actual creator/author in charge but that's way to radical for most folks. The people that actually create things (writers, artist, etc.) are basically persona non grata in our society, especially in modern capitalist economies that favour the businesses (basically the distributors, and sellers of the creators works) over the creators themselves, who get "chump change" most of the time for their efforts.
Apple's iBooks and App stores are close to a model where the creator is in charge, (at least theoretically) but even so, they favour the distributors and larger companies much more than individuals.
Also, copyright law needs to be seriously reformed before the creators to actually be put back in the drivers seat on their own creations and that isn't likely to happen for many years. Currently, even hipsters believe that copyright protections are something that need to be eliminated not strengthened and despite their counter-culture stance on everything else, are constantly whining on about how everything should just be "free to copy by everyone" which is ironically a right-wing argument that posits that the act of creation itself is of no value. The fact that large corporations are in control of the political and legal process to a large degree in most Western economies also argues against any real reform of copyright laws or any protections for the people that actually create all the cool stuff you see in society.
I think it's slowly changing and within a hundred years or so it will happen, but not anytime soon.
Was it a trial or a nomination hearing? Since the GOP did not have a majority, Dems voted to put him over the top.
I'm talking about the Anita Hill thing of course. No unbiased person could read the record on that and not come away with the conclusion that Thomas was a perverted, lying, molester with a history of violence and abuse against almost every woman that's ever worked for him. As I said, I watched those hearings every day, word for word. He won the argument based on simply stonewalling (saying "she's lying" over and over again), and Anita Hill was portrayed as some kind of crazy lying weirdo that shouldn't be believed. They ignored a lot of facts and excluded a lot of the hard evidence through various underhanded means so it basically became his word against hers.
Unfortunately, history has proven that he actually lied over and over again, and she turned out to be a person of excellent and impeachable character and morals.
This disgusting lying pervert now sits in the highest seat in the land, for life, and is unimpeachable. The crazy shit he does in his bedroom, especially if the women he is with actually like being hit, is his own business, but to anyone who wants to actually look at the record, this man is a proven liar. Before Congress no less.
Evil Apple and its understanding of basic economics...
The publishers were upset because Amazon forced prices low. Publishers believed they should sell their books for more. I don't get how the court can say that prices didn't follow market forces. The absolutely did, but they just went up instead of down.
Amazon wasn't allowing the market to work. It was price fixing. Publishers had to play along with Amazon's rules until an alternative came along. Apple's solution was actually more free-market than Amazon's fixed price, but the result was a price increase instead of a decrease. Apple allowed the publishers to set the price and the result was higher priced e-books that sold well. This all sounds like economics 101 to me. Amazon fixed the price artificially low (and even took a loss) and Apple allowed it to go up.
The problem here is the lack of understanding of how economies work. There is not always evil at work when the price of something goes up. Sometimes it is basic supply and demand. Publishers want to maximize revenue, so even if they sell fewer e-books, they have more money coming in. That's the sweet spot.
I am not sure what Amazon was after with the fixed price, but it certainly wasn't in the publisher's best interests.
Someone getting a master's degree in economics should do a thesis on this case because it is very fascinating.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by jungmark
Please take your radical views elsewhere.
Not radical. I watched the entire Clarence Thomas trial day by day, and that too was a "slam dunk" on the facts that the man was guilty as charged. Now he's on the Supreme court and no one even remembers what he did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by themouse
I'm the biggest Apple fanboy there is. I had an Apple II in the 80's and the first Macintosh II. I own stock and every single iThing. When e-books started appearing on Amazon, I bought them to read on the Kindle app on the iPad. Since it was no physical item, the prices were amazing compared to the real book. Then Apple added books to it's online store. Then the Amazon prices went up! I'm just saying.
You do realize that Amazon was selling its ebooks well below its cost, in order to gain a monopoly in the ebook market? So the prices were bound to go up eventually, when all competition was destroyed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
The judge warned Apple that it was in their best interests to settle before the trial. I have little sympathy for a company that ignores advice like this.
There also seems to be a lot of people in this thread who don't understand that judges often given guidance before cases. It's a sensible way to get sides to settle out of court and save both everyone money.
Okay - so if the Judge tells you that he or she has already decided that you are guilty before the trial has even begun that means you should just fold and not exercise your rights to plead your case?
Sounds a lot like Guido telling you that it would be in your best interest to pay your protection money so that nothing "bad" were to happen to you or your business.
Whenever the law is bad, it is the judge's job to set aside the law and rule in the moral way.
This is exactly what judges are NOT supposed to do! The only way a judge should set aside a law is if it is inconflict with another law (ie, if they deem it to be unconstitutional). If the law is wrong it needs to be changed by the legislative branch of goverment. Having a bunch of loose cannons in the judicial branch making up their own rules can, and has, led to instances of a single person (often someone not even elected to their position) usurping the will of the people.Do they not teach basic civics in school anymore these days?
Was it a trial or a nomination hearing? Since the GOP did not have a majority, Dems voted to put him over the top.
Someone should file a suit over that, including the MFN and the exclusive restrictions. For books and video. Amazon, Netflix etc should not be able to restrict streaming video to their service alone. It's not in the market or consumers best interest. Same with books.
It's hard for me to understand the logic of Judge Cole but the law is complicated and I dare say nobody who comments at AppleInsider knows much about the technical aspects of the law that led to this counterintuitive decision. Clearly Jeff Bezos is laughing his head off on his private jet on his way to a weekend retreat somewhere that few of us can afford to visit. And the BusinessInsider types must be checking their thesauri and brainstorming appropriate snark as I type. The Verge will of course have their smug comments to make no doubt too.
Apple's case is a slam dunk. The purpose of judges is to prevent a miscarriage of justice, even in the case of a jury trial.
This "judge" is corrupt. Thus a jury trial wouldn't have made a difference. (Juries are more gullible and easier to fall for the government case than a judge is.)
Basically, the court was stacked against Apple from the beginning.... as every court in america is stacked against the defendant from the beginning. The government controls the judge, the prosecutor, the evidence, and even the defendant's lawyer is restricted from defending his client in many cases and ways simply because the government controls whether he can appear in court or not.
Having recent sat on a jury in a case where the the government was the plaintiff, I can state with certainty that your claim that every court is stacked against the defendant and your suggestion that some mysterious government entitiy controls all apsects of the trial is absolutely false.All I can say is this judge knows nothing about the book industry. The Agency model has been king forever, and the way the book industry works is that prices have *always* been set artificially by collusion among publishers.
Anyone who has ever owned a bookstore can tell you this. You are told what the prices are, what the discounts are and how high or low you can sell them. It's almost always been this way and the so-called "free market" rules don't apply and never have.
So two wrongs make a right?I'm not saying Apple is guilty, but your argument ("because that's the way we've always done it") certainly isn't a legitimate defense. If it was, the mafia and drug lords would love it..."sure I killed him, but that's they way we've always done business so why are you prosecuting me now?"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
It's actually more about forcing right-wing market ideology which would be the opposite of communism.
What Amazon does is immoral, underhanded etc. but actually conforms closely to right-wing so-called "free market" ideology. What the publishers traditionally do is what's called the Agency model (Apple was trying to help them re-instate this model), which is technically "price setting through collusion," and somewhat in opposition to the right-wing free-market stuff. This is because it's a mode of selling and an approach to the market that evolved long before the rise of right-wing ideological politics in America.
The first is bad for the consumer, the writers, and the publishers but conformant to the ideology, the second is very good for the consumer, the writers and the publishers but does not conform to the ideology. In other words it's a government body enforcing capitalist ideology, not communist.
One may ask why a government body is enforcing *any* ideology and why they wouldn't just go with the law and the facts (even though the law is somewhat tainted by the same ideology) but there it is.
I was being ironic. I'm an ironist.
Maybe if Apple undercuts Amazon, Amazon will cry to the judge to make it stop. It's unfair to sell at a greater loss.
Quote:
Originally Posted by agramonte
where exactly you think they would go? Seeing how the EU also sued them (and Apple settled) they would have been in the same situation - unless they went to what ,China?
I don't mean physically move the country but shift the remaining IP that is held in CA to some place like IDK Ireland. they are already chastised for have some of their IP there. Why not have it all there? we have the highest corporate tax rate in the word so anywhere else in the world would be an improvement. plus it might be a bit of a wake up call to congress if 1/40th of their corporate tax revenue moves out of town.
Judges are allowed to give guidance. They are not allowed to prejudge the case - as this judge did.
Apple really had nothing to lose in this trial. If they won, the problem was over. If they lost, the judge gave them clear grounds for appeal.
It was obvious that would happen - in spite of all the shills here who insisted that Amazon would never do such a thing.
That didn't happen, either. Amazon didn't dictate $9.99 pricing caps. Rather, they sold the books at $9.99 and paid the correct price to the publisher - eating a loss on many books in order to gain market share.
Please stick to the facts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by reroll
I was being ironic. I'm an ironist.
Yeah, i realised that after I posted but what I said was such a cool summing up of the whole situation I left it alone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wiggin
So two wrongs make a right?I'm not saying Apple is guilty, but your argument ("because that's the way we've always done it") certainly isn't a legitimate defense. If it was, the mafia and drug lords would love it..."sure I killed him, but that's they way we've always done business so why are you prosecuting me now?"
I would argue that the Agency model is actually "right" though or at least much more right than the Amazon capitalist anal-raping model.
What would be better than both, is a model that puts the actual creator/author in charge but that's way to radical for most folks. The people that actually create things (writers, artist, etc.) are basically persona non grata in our society, especially in modern capitalist economies that favour the businesses (basically the distributors, and sellers of the creators works) over the creators themselves, who get "chump change" most of the time for their efforts.
Apple's iBooks and App stores are close to a model where the creator is in charge, (at least theoretically) but even so, they favour the distributors and larger companies much more than individuals.
Also, copyright law needs to be seriously reformed before the creators to actually be put back in the drivers seat on their own creations and that isn't likely to happen for many years. Currently, even hipsters believe that copyright protections are something that need to be eliminated not strengthened and despite their counter-culture stance on everything else, are constantly whining on about how everything should just be "free to copy by everyone" which is ironically a right-wing argument that posits that the act of creation itself is of no value. The fact that large corporations are in control of the political and legal process to a large degree in most Western economies also argues against any real reform of copyright laws or any protections for the people that actually create all the cool stuff you see in society.
I think it's slowly changing and within a hundred years or so it will happen, but not anytime soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jungmark
Was it a trial or a nomination hearing? Since the GOP did not have a majority, Dems voted to put him over the top.
I'm talking about the Anita Hill thing of course. No unbiased person could read the record on that and not come away with the conclusion that Thomas was a perverted, lying, molester with a history of violence and abuse against almost every woman that's ever worked for him. As I said, I watched those hearings every day, word for word. He won the argument based on simply stonewalling (saying "she's lying" over and over again), and Anita Hill was portrayed as some kind of crazy lying weirdo that shouldn't be believed. They ignored a lot of facts and excluded a lot of the hard evidence through various underhanded means so it basically became his word against hers.
Unfortunately, history has proven that he actually lied over and over again, and she turned out to be a person of excellent and impeachable character and morals.
This disgusting lying pervert now sits in the highest seat in the land, for life, and is unimpeachable. The crazy shit he does in his bedroom, especially if the women he is with actually like being hit, is his own business, but to anyone who wants to actually look at the record, this man is a proven liar. Before Congress no less.
Evil Apple and its understanding of basic economics...
The publishers were upset because Amazon forced prices low. Publishers believed they should sell their books for more. I don't get how the court can say that prices didn't follow market forces. The absolutely did, but they just went up instead of down.
Amazon wasn't allowing the market to work. It was price fixing. Publishers had to play along with Amazon's rules until an alternative came along. Apple's solution was actually more free-market than Amazon's fixed price, but the result was a price increase instead of a decrease. Apple allowed the publishers to set the price and the result was higher priced e-books that sold well. This all sounds like economics 101 to me. Amazon fixed the price artificially low (and even took a loss) and Apple allowed it to go up.
The problem here is the lack of understanding of how economies work. There is not always evil at work when the price of something goes up. Sometimes it is basic supply and demand. Publishers want to maximize revenue, so even if they sell fewer e-books, they have more money coming in. That's the sweet spot.
I am not sure what Amazon was after with the fixed price, but it certainly wasn't in the publisher's best interests.
Someone getting a master's degree in economics should do a thesis on this case because it is very fascinating.