Pushing the boundaries of law is a good thing and I'm glad Apple does that. Pushing the boundaries of morals, ethics and decency are BAD things and I'm glad Apple does not do that.
I would imagine every really successful company bumps up to the legality line fairly regularly. Once in awhile they get too aggressive with it or misjudge the winds and end up in illegal territory. With well run companies that's rare and Apple is one of those.
In Sewell's defense he does say had he known the entire details surrounding Mr Jobs and his communications with and between the publishers he implies he would have recommended against designing it the was Apple did. He seems to be admitting in hindsight that it was illegal as done tho he was not originally privy to all of it.
I think you're confused. Sewell is referring the the collusion between publishers, not Jobs.
I'm not at all confused. Who enabled the publishers working in concert to blunt any worries about Amazon fighting back?
Nope, you're definitely confused. Who said that's the exact piece of unknown info Sewell is referring to? The impression I got was he was unaware of publisher collusion independent of Apple. From his own mouth:
"There were some things going on amongst a group of publishers that I didn't know about," he continued. "If I had known about them, I would've taken a different tack."
...nowhere does he also say that "...that we were orchestrating..."
Cool narrative tho. Keep it up!
Bad day in your think-it-through department Strangedays? Another cup of coffee perhaps. You yourself admit to it being "your impression" of it when trying to read between the lines, not fact. Try aligning Sewell's comments with those of the trial judge and it might makes things clearer. Or not.
...Book writers are the one who are going to get screwed by Apple loosing this case.
Exactly right. As an author, and someone who knows a lot of authors, that's the biggest complaint I hear. Amazon's tactics have driven royalties to the bottom. Nobody can make a living writing. Hell half the time you can't get paid at all. Unless you get a deal to write for a series, become famous you've got no chance.
For the record I don't buy from Amazon. I don't just because I don't like what they've done to publishing, and a lot of other fields. It's a hopeless protest but at least my money isn't feeding the monster.
I don't either. I've found that Ebay has at least as much to offer product wise (probably a LOT more), I like their user reviews of the sellers, and I tend to get better deals there.
But, I don't mind Amazon's ruthless competition. Despite being a hopeless Libtard, I recognize that eventually the free market always wins out eventually, and the better mouse trap always rises to the top (well it SHOULD anyway!).
Book writers are the one who are going to get screwed by Apple loosing this case.
Are getting screwed. Apple losing the iBooks lawsuit has enabled Amazon to run roughshod over authors, and especially those that independently publish.
As Apple fanboy believing in the ethical Apple, this shakes me a bit, I must admit.. They are not into illegal stuff, but into 'barely legal' stuff.. I don't like it..
So you just now fell off the turnip truck? At the end of the day Apple is a corporation who’s existence is dependent on satisfying investors and customers, just like very other corporation. You and I do “barely legal stuff” every time we exceed the speed limit, “forget” to report some income to the IRS, or jaywalk. There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking up to the line and taking a peek.
“You and I do “barely legal stuff” every time we exceed the speed limit, “forget” to report some income to the IRS, or jaywalk. There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking up to the line and taking a peek.”
Hardly “barely legal” stuff — it is illegal. Plus, speak for yourself. If you are “forgetting” to report income, you are a scofflaw, a law breaker, and costing the rest of us. If you jaywalk and break speed limits wantonly, you are crossing the line, not walking or driving close to it!
The law should not be used as a cover for skirting the law. I agree with Charles 100%. It was appalling to read the lawyer's statements; indeed, one wonders if it won't lead to an ABA or state bar investigation.
Note: Just because there are investors doesn't mean that anything goes for them! The SEC has rules you know!
As your case, hope the IRS and the local police catch you and dole out consequences.
What I found interesting about the bringing of the case, was that most antitrust professors thought that the Justice Department made an error in going after Apple. One was that Apple had nothing to do with the supposed conspiracy between publishers, and so should have been judged on that. But also, it was felt that the real monopoly was in Amazon having about a 90% share of online book sales at the time. iBooks had brought that down to less than 70%, and falling.
so there’s this concept that an organization that’s not a monopoly can do what an organization having a monopoly cannot. I was wondering at the time if someone in the Justice Department had a large chunk of Amazon stock.
Pushing the boundaries of law is a good thing and I'm glad Apple does that. Pushing the boundaries of morals, ethics and decency are BAD things and I'm glad Apple does not do that.
I would imagine every really successful company bumps up to the legality line fairly regularly. Once in awhile they get too aggressive with it or misjudge the winds and end up in illegal territory. With well run companies that's rare and Apple is one of those.
In Sewell's defense he does say had he known the entire details surrounding Mr Jobs and his communications with and between the publishers he implies he would have recommended against designing it the was Apple did. He seems to be admitting in hindsight that it was illegal as done tho he was not originally privy to all of it.
I think you're confused. Sewell is referring the the collusion between publishers, not Jobs.
I'm not at all confused. Who enabled the publishers working in concert to blunt any worries about Amazon fighting back?
yeah, you’re either confused, or want to spin it otherwise.
at one point had 350 lawyers billing time. They had between seven and eight million documents to review
How are we defining "documents" here? Does it include one-line emails perhaps? Because 8 million divided by 350 is still almost 23,000 "documents" each!
Pushing the boundaries of law is a good thing and I'm glad Apple does that. Pushing the boundaries of morals, ethics and decency are BAD things and I'm glad Apple does not do that.
I would imagine every really successful company bumps up to the legality line fairly regularly. Once in awhile they get too aggressive with it or misjudge the winds and end up in illegal territory. With well run companies that's rare and Apple is one of those.
In Sewell's defense he does say had he known the entire details surrounding Mr Jobs and his communications with and between the publishers he implies he would have recommended against designing it the was Apple did. He seems to be admitting in hindsight that it was illegal as done tho he was not originally privy to all of it.
I think you're confused. Sewell is referring the the collusion between publishers, not Jobs.
I'm not at all confused. Who enabled the publishers working in concert to blunt any worries about Amazon fighting back?
yeah, you’re either confused, or want to spin it otherwise.
Because? You're not explaining why I'm "confused".
Did Apple not act as the go-between, essentially enabling the publishers to plan in unison with a willing organizer? Did Sewell not indicate that had he been privy to all the communications and planning between the parties he might have nixed it? The "parties" included Apple as the principal organizer did it not?
So are are you thinking Apple was simply a clueless bystander who did not reach out to and encourage the publishers to synchronize their planning with Apple acting as the go-between and coordinator? If so you should familiarize yourself with the court's findings after days testimony. Eddy Cue in particular admitted to Apple communicating the issues and points of agreement and disagreement between the publishers so that all of them ended up on the same page with a unified front, tho he portrayed it as simply Apple offering reassurance to each of them that all the others would be doing the same thing, coming to the same agreement, and using the same playbook.
As I said before not evil at all and something that a whole lot of companies probably do. In this specific case it was simply reaching too far and crossed a line, and Sewell indicating he wasn't fully in the loop to make different recommendations had he been aware of it all. He certainly isn't going so far as to claim the court made a mistake in it's ruling which he could have if that was his belief when talking to those law students.
Does that make Amazon a good guy? Not in the least. Apple's "fix" for the Amazon problem just wasn't a good one from a legal standpoint even if the publishers might have been better off, and might even have been willing to make the writer's better off too by sharing the wealth equally with them. IMO probably not but a different discussion.
So no not confused, but feel free to explain why you think I am and the facts behind why you believe so.
By the way this is the link to the actual video. A bit long but really quite good and covers a lot of ground with what being a "legal counsel" in a corporation means, and how it mixes with a lot of different facets such as PR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wuf3KI76Ds
For you impatient folks there's lots of good moments in the video, ex, 7 minutes in covers a number of topics, and there are others. The part pertinent to the iBooks case begins about 37 minutes in but doesn't go into much detail instead having more to do with "sometimes you get it wrong and that's OK".
The entire thing is worth watching if you have the time.
Pushing the boundaries of law is a good thing and I'm glad Apple does that. Pushing the boundaries of morals, ethics and decency are BAD things and I'm glad Apple does not do that.
I would imagine every really successful company bumps up to the legality line fairly regularly. Once in awhile they get too aggressive with it or misjudge the winds and end up in illegal territory. With well run companies that's rare and Apple is one of those.
In Sewell's defense he does say had he known the entire details surrounding Mr Jobs and his communications with and between the publishers he implies he would have recommended against designing it the was Apple did. He seems to be admitting in hindsight that it was illegal as done tho he was not originally privy to all of it.
There's the impression that what Steve Jobs did was illegal, yet many do not see that.
I certainly don't see that, but it is also true that the publishers did collude with each other.
Sewell would have almost certainly have been aware of Steve Job's email at that time, and not of the collusion between publishers.
Apple was absolutely aware of the "collusion between publishers' as they were the ones keeping each of then apprised of what each of the others agreed to.
Apple devised a Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause in its contracts with publishers which "guaranteed that the e-books in Apple’s e-bookstore would be sold for the lowest retail price available in the marketplace," Cote wrote. For the publishers to charge up to $14.99 for e-books on Apple's iBooks store, they had to raise prices on Amazon's Kindle store as well by collectively forcing Amazon to accept the agency model. As Cue acknowledged at trial, “I just wanted to assure them that they weren’t going to be alone, so that I would take the fear away of the Amazon retribution that they were all afraid of.” By acting in concert, enabled by Apple being the coordinator between them, they removed Amazon as a problem.
I don't think Sewell would have signed off on it had he known all the communication details and he now suggests that's exactly what he would have done, recommended against it It doesn't make Apple the corporation "bad", more a rare error in judgement by executive management.
There was no evidence presented that Apple knew about communications between Publisher, if they did it would have been "collusion" the real legal term is acting in concert with one another or conspired, there is no law about collusion. Apple knew what they said to each publisher, but was not aware the publisher were all talking behind the scenes and using Apples proposal to under mind what Apple was trying to do.
MFN clauses are pretty standard. They all say, if company lowers the selling price to a competitor, they have to offer it to you at the same price. I have negotiated these terms many times in the past and they usually have other language around them which we have not see in the Apple case. The extra language usually boxes in the MFN clause so it does not apply in all transactions. In one contract I did, the supplier show up with a check one quarter because they sold parts to a competitor at price below our negotiate price and the MFN clause so they do work and are legal. Most times this does not happen since a company gets around MFN by offering a rebate verses unit price discount. Apple could have done this if all they were worried about was protecting their profits.
In the Ibook Case Apple was allowing Publishers to set the selling price which Apple would get a % of the sale, High unit selling price mean more $ in apples bank account. Verses Apple buying the books at give price and then selling it at what every price they like (normal distribution modal). Apple's MFN clause was just saying do not put the Ibook store at a disadvantage if they allowed Amazon to sell at a lower cost. The real issue here is the fact Publisher did not control Amazon's selling price in all cases and in some cases Amazon sold books at a loss. In other cases Publisher sold books to Amazon pennies on dollar when they over produced a book. This was the dirty little secret that did not come out in the court case, the Publishers did not want to lose the ability to dump books they over produced. Keep in mind Authors usually get paid after expenses, the same way musician go paid after the record label covered all their costs on making/distributing/marketing an album. If publishers over produce a book, those costs came out before an author got their check. If Publishers pissed Amazon off they would loose this ability to recoup costs.
The Court blamed Apple for having the MFN clause with all the publishers who then use it to conspire with one another. Then someone in the circle decide to rat them all out.
As Sewell said, if he had known the publisher were working in conjunction with one another the approach may have been different. But I believe his statement was not about how they argue the case against the government. I kind of get the feeling his statement was about how they set up the agreement with the Publishers. Most likely his staff had to signoff on those agreements before they were executed which in turn started the ball rolling into the court case.
...Book writers are the one who are going to get screwed by Apple loosing this case.
Exactly right. As an author, and someone who knows a lot of authors, that's the biggest complaint I hear. Amazon's tactics have driven royalties to the bottom. Nobody can make a living writing. Hell half the time you can't get paid at all. Unless you get a deal to write for a series, become famous you've got no chance.
For the record I don't buy from Amazon. I don't just because I don't like what they've done to publishing, and a lot of other fields. It's a hopeless protest but at least my money isn't feeding the monster.
I don't either. I've found that Ebay has at least as much to offer product wise (probably a LOT more), I like their user reviews of the sellers, and I tend to get better deals there.
But, I don't mind Amazon's ruthless competition. Despite being a hopeless Libtard, I recognize that eventually the free market always wins out eventually, and the better mouse trap always rises to the top (well it SHOULD anyway!).
Actually, many, if not most, sellers are on both Amazon and eBay. I buy a lot on eBay. But often, I get the shipment in an Amazon Prime package. At first, I don’t recognize it, because I didn’t order something from Amazon (confession I buy a lot from Amazon as well), and the name is the seller is different.
but it’s the same seller. Their name on eBay may be something like “Sammy’s Industrial Surplus”. But the same seller may be named “Venus beauty products” on Amazon. That’s because so many sellers use third party companies to supply them, and they have very large numbers of what seems to be totally unrelated items, so they can name themselves anything, and not be wrong.
Sewell would have almost certainly have been aware of Steve Job's email at that time, and not of the collusion between publishers.
Apple was absolutely aware of the "collusion between publishers' as they were the ones keeping each of then apprised of what each of the others agreed to.
Apple devised a Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause in its contracts with publishers which "guaranteed that the e-books in Apple’s e-bookstore would be sold for the lowest retail price available in the marketplace," Cote wrote. For the publishers to charge up to $14.99 for e-books on Apple's iBooks store, they had to raise prices on Amazon's Kindle store as well by collectively forcing Amazon to accept the agency model.
As Cue acknowledged at trial, “I just wanted to assure them that they weren’t going to be alone, so that I would take the fear away of the Amazon retribution that they were all afraid of.” By acting in concert, enabled by Apple being the coordinator between them, they removed Amazon as a problem.
I don't think Sewell would have signed off on it had he known all the communication details and he now suggests that's exactly what he would have done, recommended against it It doesn't make Apple the corporation "bad", more a rare error in judgement by executive management.
You are awfully confident for a guy who lacks understanding of the basic facts of the case.
1. "Apple was absolutely aware of the "collusion between publishers' as they were the ones keeping each of then apprised of what each of the others agreed to."
First you got the collusion bit wrong. The only collusion that occurred was between the publishers on their dealings with Amazon. Apple had nothing to do with it.
Apple sharing information with multiple publishers on it's own plan is neither illegal nor unethical. This is normal practice when dealing with business partners who are not direct competitors (To dumb it down for you - publishers are not 'direct competitors', because each one has exclusive rights to certain works. By definition, they cannot illegally collude to alter the market price of Tom Clancy's latest book, because only one publisher has the rights to it).
2. "Apple devised a Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause in its contracts with publishers which "guaranteed that the e-books in Apple’s e-bookstore would be sold for the lowest retail price available in the marketplace," Cote wrote. For the publishers to charge up to $14.99 for e-books on Apple's iBooks store, they had to raise prices on Amazon's Kindle store as well by collectively forcing Amazon to accept the agency model."
How clueless can one person be?!! Apple did not 'devise the MFN clause' - it has been in use for many decades in multiple industries, and has been found valid by many courts. Given that Amazon has been 'dumping' eBooks on the market (selling below cost to disrupt normal free-market forces and artificially lower their value) for many years, publishers 'banding' together to deal with Amazon was perfectly legal and ethical. The Justice Department's misreading of anti-trust law as 'anything goes if it lowers the cost to consumers' ignores the predictable and real danger of a monopoly (Amazon) raising costs once the competition is eliminated.
3. As for Coates, her pre-trial bias against Apple is a matter of public record. Her unilateral dismissal of Cue's testimony, and illogical interpretation of Job's email to fit her predetermined notions were extra-legal. The only reason her decisions was not overturned by an Appellate Court was our system's almost-religious belief in a Judge's autonomy and the absurdly technical standards for reversal. Her 'collusion' with her 'friend' the 'no-experience anti-trust lawyer' to defraud Apple out of millions was finally stopped by a superior court.
...Book writers are the one who are going to get screwed by Apple loosing this case.
Exactly right. As an author, and someone who knows a lot of authors, that's the biggest complaint I hear. Amazon's tactics have driven royalties to the bottom. Nobody can make a living writing. Hell half the time you can't get paid at all. Unless you get a deal to write for a series, become famous you've got no chance.
For the record I don't buy from Amazon. I don't just because I don't like what they've done to publishing, and a lot of other fields. It's a hopeless protest but at least my money isn't feeding the monster.
I don't either. I've found that Ebay has at least as much to offer product wise (probably a LOT more), I like their user reviews of the sellers, and I tend to get better deals there.
But, I don't mind Amazon's ruthless competition. Despite being a hopeless Libtard, I recognize that eventually the free market always wins out eventually, and the better mouse trap always rises to the top (well it SHOULD anyway!).
Actually, many, if not most, sellers are on both Amazon and eBay. I buy a lot on eBay. But often, I get the shipment in an Amazon Prime package. At first, I don’t recognize it, because I didn’t order something from Amazon (confession I buy a lot from Amazon as well), and the name is the seller is different.
but it’s the same seller. Their name on eBay may be something like “Sammy’s Industrial Surplus”. But the same seller may be named “Venus beauty products” on Amazon. That’s because so many sellers use third party companies to supply them, and they have very large numbers of what seems to be totally unrelated items, so they can name themselves anything, and not be wrong.
Yeh, I've found the same... But where (I think) EBay excels is in scope: I just ordered a docking station for my 13 year old ThinkPad T60P (Yeh! it runs like the day it was new!). Or, prior to that I ordered a throttle for a hand-me-down Mantis Tiller that is probably 25-30 years old. I doubt I could have obtained those parts anywhere else.
But mostly what I like about EBay is that I just feel more comfortable ordering from them -- knowing that if the seller misrepresents something that I have them behind me and the fact that I've had generally good experiences there. And plus: that I only have to pay shipping if I want to. I hate buying a $5.00 item and then paying $4.00 to ship it (and I'm not about to pay Amazon for the privilege of buying their stuff!)
...Book writers are the one who are going to get screwed by Apple loosing this case.
Exactly right. As an author, and someone who knows a lot of authors, that's the biggest complaint I hear. Amazon's tactics have driven royalties to the bottom. Nobody can make a living writing. Hell half the time you can't get paid at all. Unless you get a deal to write for a series, become famous you've got no chance.
For the record I don't buy from Amazon. I don't just because I don't like what they've done to publishing, and a lot of other fields. It's a hopeless protest but at least my money isn't feeding the monster.
I don't either. I've found that Ebay has at least as much to offer product wise (probably a LOT more), I like their user reviews of the sellers, and I tend to get better deals there.
But, I don't mind Amazon's ruthless competition. Despite being a hopeless Libtard, I recognize that eventually the free market always wins out eventually, and the better mouse trap always rises to the top (well it SHOULD anyway!).
Actually, many, if not most, sellers are on both Amazon and eBay. I buy a lot on eBay. But often, I get the shipment in an Amazon Prime package. At first, I don’t recognize it, because I didn’t order something from Amazon (confession I buy a lot from Amazon as well), and the name is the seller is different.
but it’s the same seller. Their name on eBay may be something like “Sammy’s Industrial Surplus”. But the same seller may be named “Venus beauty products” on Amazon. That’s because so many sellers use third party companies to supply them, and they have very large numbers of what seems to be totally unrelated items, so they can name themselves anything, and not be wrong.
Yeh, I've found the same... But where (I think) EBay excels is in scope: I just ordered a docking station for my 13 year old ThinkPad T60P (Yeh! it runs like the day it was new!). Or, prior to that I ordered a throttle for a hand-me-down Mantis Tiller that is probably 25-30 years old. I doubt I could have obtained those parts anywhere else.
But mostly what I like about EBay is that I just feel more comfortable ordering from them -- knowing that if the seller misrepresents something that I have them behind me and the fact that I've had generally good experiences there. And plus: that I only have to pay shipping if I want to. I hate buying a $5.00 item and then paying $4.00 to ship it (and I'm not about to pay Amazon for the privilege of buying their stuff!)
I find Amazon easy to deal with. Recently I bought a torque wrench from a company I never bought from before, because a guy I watch on You Tube who does this work said that the company was pretty good, so I thought I’d try them. I bought if from Amazon. I checked a couple of days after it was supposed to be delivered to check my orders. It said that it was left in my mailbox two days earlier. Well, I don’t have a mailbox. I have a an 11” slot in my outer door that I installed many years ago. Smaller soft packages can get in, but not boxes. I waited about a week before calling Amazon. Why? Because we have road, street and avenue. All with the same addresses, and sometimes we get other’s mail and packages and reverse. We all give it to the proper person if something gets delivered to the wrong person.
so I told this to the Amazon rep. She immediately gave me a credit. She said not to worry if the first one came, just to keep it. I then tapped the “buy another” button, and two days later, it arrived. Of course, I have a perfect record with them so she knew I wasn’t trying to scam them.
i don’t know what you mean that you only have to pay shipping if you want to. I’ve been on eBay since 2002, and I’ve bought thousands of items there. If they charge shipping, you pay shipping. Some vendors don’t charge, but the prices are higher. I’ve never been given a choice.
And because of this we are left with a virtual Amazon monopoly in the book market. How Barnes and Noble stays in business is beyond my comprehension.
They just got bought up by a vulture capitalist, so they won’t be in business for too many more years (see also Borders, Sears, Toys R Us and other brand names ruined by vulture capitalists).
Book writers are getting screwed, primarily, by Apple not offering Apple Books on platforms other than their own. The key to iTunes and Apple Music, is its availability on Windows and Android - it provides a service to the content providers by getting their work in front of, effectively, 100% of customers.
Publishing on Apple Books, you're limited to only iOS / Mac users, so you still have to publish on Google Books and an Amazon-owned platform, so you still get screwed by those companies, but now you also have to cover the costs of developing for multiple platforms, and spread your revenue over multiple vendors, so it's harder to meet minimum payout levels.
Effectively, Apple is using Book content as a leverage / lockin for their own device sales - there's nothing magnanimous about their efforts.
The worst thing about it is, Apple's platform is really a lot better than anyone else's - to give an example for Comics / Graphic Novels:
With Apple:
you get ~70% of the coverprice.
you have total control over the file you make, Apple doesn't re-author your file.
Apple Books is a great reading experience, because it's WebKit, you can use JQuery to build rich interactivity (eg use an off-the-shelf lightbox to remake ComiXology's "patented" panel-by-panel view).
~24hour turnaround from submission to live.
With Google:
you get as little as 50% of the coverprice if they sell through an affiliate
their EPUB reader has no support for javascript.
With ComiXology (Amazon):
You get (IIRC) 50% of the 70% Apple left ComiXology keep when it sells through the ComiXology App (so 35% overall).
You have no control over the authored file - ComiXology takes your high resolution .pdf and remakes it manually into their format - all that frame by frame stuff is done by hand.
turnaround from submissions and corrections can be months.
With Kindle:
you get 30% of the coverprice.
If you want 70%, you have to agree to pay download fees per sale. So for each $5 comic book, you'd have to pay Amazon ~$25 in download fees.
Book writers are getting screwed, primarily, by Apple not offering Apple Books on platforms other than their own. The key to iTunes and Apple Music, is its availability on Windows and Android - it provides a service to the content providers by getting their work in front of, effectively, 100% of customers.
Publishing on Apple Books, you're limited to only iOS / Mac users, so you still have to publish on Google Books and an Amazon-owned platform, so you still get screwed by those companies, but now you also have to cover the costs of developing for multiple platforms, and spread your revenue over multiple vendors, so it's harder to meet minimum payout levels.
Effectively, Apple is using Book content as a leverage / lockin for their own device sales - there's nothing magnanimous about their efforts.
I'm not so sure your point is valid: it seems like many app developers are quite happy to build for iOS only, because the Apple ecosystem contains a much higher percentage of people willing to spend for what they perceive as quality items. It was the same back in the 1990s when it was possible to build a business selling only Mac software even though Windows accounted for >90% of the supposed market.
YMMV, but if you can't make enough profit selling to "everybody" you might be better off withdrawing from some markets and concentrate on selling to your most profitable customers. If you can accumulate enough money doing that, investigate re-entering some markets with perhaps a different approach that will keep your profits growing.
As Apple fanboy believing in the ethical Apple, this shakes me a bit, I must admit.. They are not into illegal stuff, but into 'barely legal' stuff.. I don't like it..
Naivety will just get you nowhere. But to respond to you, top 100 fortune companies are all taking risks with barely legal stuff every single days. It's nothing new here.
I'm not so sure your point is valid: it seems like many app developers are quite happy to build for iOS only, because the Apple ecosystem contains a much higher percentage of people willing to spend for what they perceive as quality items. It was the same back in the 1990s when it was possible to build a business selling only Mac software even though Windows accounted for >90% of the supposed market.
Content and apps don't have the same basic economics or purchasing paradigms behind them, however. Content is expected to be portable. Apps, you can find functional equivalents when you change platform (those that aren't cross-platform) - but functional equivalence doesn't really apply to content - what's unique and specific about a work is its value.
Books are the anomaly in Apple's ecosystem - everything else in their content library is multi-platform / cross platform and portable if you change platforms. But even DRM-Free books from Apple Books, even in EPUB format - there's no way to purchase them outside of an Apple device, and effectively no way to read them outside of an Apple device.
...Book writers are the one who are going to get screwed by Apple loosing this case.
Exactly right. As an author, and someone who knows a lot of authors, that's the biggest complaint I hear. Amazon's tactics have driven royalties to the bottom. Nobody can make a living writing. Hell half the time you can't get paid at all. Unless you get a deal to write for a series, become famous you've got no chance.
For the record I don't buy from Amazon. I don't just because I don't like what they've done to publishing, and a lot of other fields. It's a hopeless protest but at least my money isn't feeding the monster.
I don't either. I've found that Ebay has at least as much to offer product wise (probably a LOT more), I like their user reviews of the sellers, and I tend to get better deals there.
But, I don't mind Amazon's ruthless competition. Despite being a hopeless Libtard, I recognize that eventually the free market always wins out eventually, and the better mouse trap always rises to the top (well it SHOULD anyway!).
Actually, many, if not most, sellers are on both Amazon and eBay. I buy a lot on eBay. But often, I get the shipment in an Amazon Prime package. At first, I don’t recognize it, because I didn’t order something from Amazon (confession I buy a lot from Amazon as well), and the name is the seller is different.
but it’s the same seller. Their name on eBay may be something like “Sammy’s Industrial Surplus”. But the same seller may be named “Venus beauty products” on Amazon. That’s because so many sellers use third party companies to supply them, and they have very large numbers of what seems to be totally unrelated items, so they can name themselves anything, and not be wrong.
Yeh, I've found the same... But where (I think) EBay excels is in scope: I just ordered a docking station for my 13 year old ThinkPad T60P (Yeh! it runs like the day it was new!). Or, prior to that I ordered a throttle for a hand-me-down Mantis Tiller that is probably 25-30 years old. I doubt I could have obtained those parts anywhere else.
But mostly what I like about EBay is that I just feel more comfortable ordering from them -- knowing that if the seller misrepresents something that I have them behind me and the fact that I've had generally good experiences there. And plus: that I only have to pay shipping if I want to. I hate buying a $5.00 item and then paying $4.00 to ship it (and I'm not about to pay Amazon for the privilege of buying their stuff!)
I find Amazon easy to deal with. Recently I bought a torque wrench from a company I never bought from before, because a guy I watch on You Tube who does this work said that the company was pretty good, so I thought I’d try them. I bought if from Amazon. I checked a couple of days after it was supposed to be delivered to check my orders. It said that it was left in my mailbox two days earlier. Well, I don’t have a mailbox. I have a an 11” slot in my outer door that I installed many years ago. Smaller soft packages can get in, but not boxes. I waited about a week before calling Amazon. Why? Because we have road, street and avenue. All with the same addresses, and sometimes we get other’s mail and packages and reverse. We all give it to the proper person if something gets delivered to the wrong person.
so I told this to the Amazon rep. She immediately gave me a credit. She said not to worry if the first one came, just to keep it. I then tapped the “buy another” button, and two days later, it arrived. Of course, I have a perfect record with them so she knew I wasn’t trying to scam them.
i don’t know what you mean that you only have to pay shipping if you want to. I’ve been on eBay since 2002, and I’ve bought thousands of items there. If they charge shipping, you pay shipping. Some vendors don’t charge, but the prices are higher. I’ve never been given a choice.
I agree that EBay would be very unlikely to have responded the same way in such a situation.
As for a choice of whether or not to pay shipping: You generally have the option choosing which vendors charge a shipping fee or not. You don't get that choice on Amazon.
Book writers are getting screwed, primarily, by Apple not offering Apple Books on platforms other than their own. The key to iTunes and Apple Music, is its availability on Windows and Android - it provides a service to the content providers by getting their work in front of, effectively, 100% of customers.
Publishing on Apple Books, you're limited to only iOS / Mac users, so you still have to publish on Google Books and an Amazon-owned platform, so you still get screwed by those companies, but now you also have to cover the costs of developing for multiple platforms, and spread your revenue over multiple vendors, so it's harder to meet minimum payout levels.
Effectively, Apple is using Book content as a leverage / lockin for their own device sales - there's nothing magnanimous about their efforts.
The worst thing about it is, Apple's platform is really a lot better than anyone else's - to give an example for Comics / Graphic Novels:
With Apple:
you get ~70% of the coverprice.
you have total control over the file you make, Apple doesn't re-author your file.
Apple Books is a great reading experience, because it's WebKit, you can use JQuery to build rich interactivity (eg use an off-the-shelf lightbox to remake ComiXology's "patented" panel-by-panel view).
~24hour turnaround from submission to live.
With Google:
you get as little as 50% of the coverprice if they sell through an affiliate
their EPUB reader has no support for javascript.
With ComiXology (Amazon):
You get (IIRC) 50% of the 70% Apple left ComiXology keep when it sells through the ComiXology App (so 35% overall).
You have no control over the authored file - ComiXology takes your high resolution .pdf and remakes it manually into their format - all that frame by frame stuff is done by hand.
turnaround from submissions and corrections can be months.
With Kindle:
you get 30% of the coverprice.
If you want 70%, you have to agree to pay download fees per sale. So for each $5 comic book, you'd have to pay Amazon ~$25 in download fees.
Thanks for the insight on this. When i read Apple screws people by not offering ibook on other platform my though it does not matter, since everything we read is just plain text type book no real graphics in our house we have ipad and a kindle and we get a book in one format and I have converter which converts it to another format, its not that difficult. I never bought a book which had a high level of graphics in the book. I would be curious what percentage of ebooks are plain text verses visual graphics which are important to content of the book.
Comments
But, I don't mind Amazon's ruthless competition. Despite being a hopeless Libtard, I recognize that eventually the free market always wins out eventually, and the better mouse trap always rises to the top (well it SHOULD anyway!).
“You and I do “barely legal stuff” every time we exceed the speed limit, “forget” to report some income to the IRS, or jaywalk. There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking up to the line and taking a peek.”
Hardly “barely legal” stuff — it is illegal. Plus, speak for yourself. If you are “forgetting” to report income, you are a scofflaw, a law breaker, and costing the rest of us. If you jaywalk and break speed limits wantonly, you are crossing the line, not walking or driving close to it!
The law should not be used as a cover for skirting the law. I agree with Charles 100%. It was appalling to read the lawyer's statements; indeed, one wonders if it won't lead to an ABA or state bar investigation.
Note: Just because there are investors doesn't mean that anything goes for them! The SEC has rules you know!
As your case, hope the IRS and the local police catch you and dole out consequences.
so there’s this concept that an organization that’s not a monopoly can do what an organization having a monopoly cannot. I was wondering at the time if someone in the Justice Department had a large chunk of Amazon stock.
Did Apple not act as the go-between, essentially enabling the publishers to plan in unison with a willing organizer? Did Sewell not indicate that had he been privy to all the communications and planning between the parties he might have nixed it? The "parties" included Apple as the principal organizer did it not?
So are are you thinking Apple was simply a clueless bystander who did not reach out to and encourage the publishers to synchronize their planning with Apple acting as the go-between and coordinator? If so you should familiarize yourself with the court's findings after days testimony. Eddy Cue in particular admitted to Apple communicating the issues and points of agreement and disagreement between the publishers so that all of them ended up on the same page with a unified front, tho he portrayed it as simply Apple offering reassurance to each of them that all the others would be doing the same thing, coming to the same agreement, and using the same playbook.
As I said before not evil at all and something that a whole lot of companies probably do. In this specific case it was simply reaching too far and crossed a line, and Sewell indicating he wasn't fully in the loop to make different recommendations had he been aware of it all. He certainly isn't going so far as to claim the court made a mistake in it's ruling which he could have if that was his belief when talking to those law students.
Does that make Amazon a good guy? Not in the least. Apple's "fix" for the Amazon problem just wasn't a good one from a legal standpoint even if the publishers might have been better off, and might even have been willing to make the writer's better off too by sharing the wealth equally with them. IMO probably not but a different discussion.
So no not confused, but feel free to explain why you think I am and the facts behind why you believe so.
By the way this is the link to the actual video. A bit long but really quite good and covers a lot of ground with what being a "legal counsel" in a corporation means, and how it mixes with a lot of different facets such as PR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wuf3KI76Ds
For you impatient folks there's lots of good moments in the video, ex, 7 minutes in covers a number of topics, and there are others. The part pertinent to the iBooks case begins about 37 minutes in but doesn't go into much detail instead having more to do with "sometimes you get it wrong and that's OK".
The entire thing is worth watching if you have the time.
MFN clauses are pretty standard. They all say, if company lowers the selling price to a competitor, they have to offer it to you at the same price. I have negotiated these terms many times in the past and they usually have other language around them which we have not see in the Apple case. The extra language usually boxes in the MFN clause so it does not apply in all transactions. In one contract I did, the supplier show up with a check one quarter because they sold parts to a competitor at price below our negotiate price and the MFN clause so they do work and are legal. Most times this does not happen since a company gets around MFN by offering a rebate verses unit price discount. Apple could have done this if all they were worried about was protecting their profits.
In the Ibook Case Apple was allowing Publishers to set the selling price which Apple would get a % of the sale, High unit selling price mean more $ in apples bank account. Verses Apple buying the books at give price and then selling it at what every price they like (normal distribution modal). Apple's MFN clause was just saying do not put the Ibook store at a disadvantage if they allowed Amazon to sell at a lower cost. The real issue here is the fact Publisher did not control Amazon's selling price in all cases and in some cases Amazon sold books at a loss. In other cases Publisher sold books to Amazon pennies on dollar when they over produced a book. This was the dirty little secret that did not come out in the court case, the Publishers did not want to lose the ability to dump books they over produced. Keep in mind Authors usually get paid after expenses, the same way musician go paid after the record label covered all their costs on making/distributing/marketing an album. If publishers over produce a book, those costs came out before an author got their check. If Publishers pissed Amazon off they would loose this ability to recoup costs.
The Court blamed Apple for having the MFN clause with all the publishers who then use it to conspire with one another. Then someone in the circle decide to rat them all out.
As Sewell said, if he had known the publisher were working in conjunction with one another the approach may have been different. But I believe his statement was not about how they argue the case against the government. I kind of get the feeling his statement was about how they set up the agreement with the Publishers. Most likely his staff had to signoff on those agreements before they were executed which in turn started the ball rolling into the court case.
but it’s the same seller. Their name on eBay may be something like “Sammy’s Industrial Surplus”. But the same seller may be named “Venus beauty products” on Amazon. That’s because so many sellers use third party companies to supply them, and they have very large numbers of what seems to be totally unrelated items, so they can name themselves anything, and not be wrong.
You are awfully confident for a guy who lacks understanding of the basic facts of the case.
1. "Apple was absolutely aware of the "collusion between publishers' as they were the ones keeping each of then apprised of what each of the others agreed to."
First you got the collusion bit wrong. The only collusion that occurred was between the publishers on their dealings with Amazon. Apple had nothing to do with it.
Apple sharing information with multiple publishers on it's own plan is neither illegal nor unethical. This is normal practice when dealing with business partners who are not direct competitors (To dumb it down for you - publishers are not 'direct competitors', because each one has exclusive rights to certain works. By definition, they cannot illegally collude to alter the market price of Tom Clancy's latest book, because only one publisher has the rights to it).
2. "Apple devised a Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause in its contracts with publishers which "guaranteed that the e-books in Apple’s e-bookstore would be sold for the lowest retail price available in the marketplace," Cote wrote. For the publishers to charge up to $14.99 for e-books on Apple's iBooks store, they had to raise prices on Amazon's Kindle store as well by collectively forcing Amazon to accept the agency model."
How clueless can one person be?!! Apple did not 'devise the MFN clause' - it has been in use for many decades in multiple industries, and has been found valid by many courts. Given that Amazon has been 'dumping' eBooks on the market (selling below cost to disrupt normal free-market forces and artificially lower their value) for many years, publishers 'banding' together to deal with Amazon was perfectly legal and ethical. The Justice Department's misreading of anti-trust law as 'anything goes if it lowers the cost to consumers' ignores the predictable and real danger of a monopoly (Amazon) raising costs once the competition is eliminated.
3. As for Coates, her pre-trial bias against Apple is a matter of public record. Her unilateral dismissal of Cue's testimony, and illogical interpretation of Job's email to fit her predetermined notions were extra-legal. The only reason her decisions was not overturned by an Appellate Court was our system's almost-religious belief in a Judge's autonomy and the absurdly technical standards for reversal. Her 'collusion' with her 'friend' the 'no-experience anti-trust lawyer' to defraud Apple out of millions was finally stopped by a superior court.
In short, you are full of it.
But where (I think) EBay excels is in scope: I just ordered a docking station for my 13 year old ThinkPad T60P (Yeh! it runs like the day it was new!). Or, prior to that I ordered a throttle for a hand-me-down Mantis Tiller that is probably 25-30 years old. I doubt I could have obtained those parts anywhere else.
But mostly what I like about EBay is that I just feel more comfortable ordering from them -- knowing that if the seller misrepresents something that I have them behind me and the fact that I've had generally good experiences there. And plus: that I only have to pay shipping if I want to. I hate buying a $5.00 item and then paying $4.00 to ship it (and I'm not about to pay Amazon for the privilege of buying their stuff!)
so I told this to the Amazon rep. She immediately gave me a credit. She said not to worry if the first one came, just to keep it. I then tapped the “buy another” button, and two days later, it arrived. Of course, I have a perfect record with them so she knew I wasn’t trying to scam them.
i don’t know what you mean that you only have to pay shipping if you want to. I’ve been on eBay since 2002, and I’ve bought thousands of items there. If they charge shipping, you pay shipping. Some vendors don’t charge, but the prices are higher. I’ve never been given a choice.
Publishing on Apple Books, you're limited to only iOS / Mac users, so you still have to publish on Google Books and an Amazon-owned platform, so you still get screwed by those companies, but now you also have to cover the costs of developing for multiple platforms, and spread your revenue over multiple vendors, so it's harder to meet minimum payout levels.
Effectively, Apple is using Book content as a leverage / lockin for their own device sales - there's nothing magnanimous about their efforts.
The worst thing about it is, Apple's platform is really a lot better than anyone else's - to give an example for Comics / Graphic Novels:
With Apple:
- you get ~70% of the coverprice.
- you have total control over the file you make, Apple doesn't re-author your file.
- Apple Books is a great reading experience, because it's WebKit, you can use JQuery to build rich interactivity (eg use an off-the-shelf lightbox to remake ComiXology's "patented" panel-by-panel view).
- ~24hour turnaround from submission to live.
With Google:- you get as little as 50% of the coverprice if they sell through an affiliate
- their EPUB reader has no support for javascript.
With ComiXology (Amazon):- You get (IIRC) 50% of the 70% Apple left ComiXology keep when it sells through the ComiXology App (so 35% overall).
- You have no control over the authored file - ComiXology takes your high resolution .pdf and remakes it manually into their format - all that frame by frame stuff is done by hand.
- turnaround from submissions and corrections can be months.
With Kindle:YMMV, but if you can't make enough profit selling to "everybody" you might be better off withdrawing from some markets and concentrate on selling to your most profitable customers. If you can accumulate enough money doing that, investigate re-entering some markets with perhaps a different approach that will keep your profits growing.
Books are the anomaly in Apple's ecosystem - everything else in their content library is multi-platform / cross platform and portable if you change platforms. But even DRM-Free books from Apple Books, even in EPUB format - there's no way to purchase them outside of an Apple device, and effectively no way to read them outside of an Apple device.
As for a choice of whether or not to pay shipping: You generally have the option choosing which vendors charge a shipping fee or not. You don't get that choice on Amazon.