Really? No one was arguing that Amazon was price dumping?
The publishers sold the right to sell the ebooks to Amazon for $x where $x was greater than $9.99. Amazon sold the ebook for $9.99. Was Amazon trying to make it up in volume?
> More, your argument was that sales of physical books were impacted
If the publisher sold the physical books for $16.99 and the right to sell the ebook for $14.99 to Amazon and then Amazon sold it for $9.99, how could it not be impacted?
> You can try and argue that the case was ruled incorrectly, but Apple was unable to do that
So in that case do you agree that the Epic vs Apple case was ruled correctly?
Price dumping is a very specific claim, and one that was not in the article you linked. By your definition, if I go to my local bookstore and they have a best seller discount at the front, they are price dumping, too? Sales pricing is a thing that is allowed by many contracts from publishers to sellers. For mostly very good reasons. (That is, you are misunderstanding a lot about that case by thinking that Amazon was breaking a deal with publishers to sell at a lower rate. That was contractually allowed by their current agreement with publishers. The "suggested retail price" was basically that, a "suggested" price. Apple helped the publishers move to a new contract that allowed the publishers to flat out set the price.)
Again, I'm not really wanting to defend Amazon here. I suspect it wouldn't be hard to find practices of theirs that I disagree with. I am not convinced they are or were breaking antitrust laws, though; by evidence of them not being accused of that.
I don't really have an opinion on the Epic case. Such that that is just another non-sequitur. Apple has been guilty of antitrust violations in the past, despite not having a monopoly. Any other argument can be fun, but is a different argument.
Why else do you think Amazon was selling below the wholesale costs? The local bookstore may be selling below list price. But they aren’t selling below wholesale costs.
Again did you read the link I posted, the publishers explicitly did not want Amazon selling ebooks below list cost.
> The "suggested retail price" was basically that, a "suggested"
Again you didn’t read the article. There are three prices involved
1. The wholesale price - this is the price that the publisher sells the right to Amazon to sell the book. For example $14.00
2. The suggested retail price could very well be $20.00
A “sale” that the bookstore would do would be somewhere between $14.00 and $19.99. They would not sell the book for $9.99 and lose $5.01
> Any other argument can be fun, but is a different argument.
But yet an argument about Apple being accused of “collusion” about books is somehow relevant to a discussion about a “monopoly” on the app store.
But a lawsuit about App Store where Apple was found not to be a monopoly isn’t relevant about selling an app?
The local bookstore is free to sell below wholesale cost, as well. Has often been done...
I did read the link. It did not, specifically, call out price dumping. What it called out was that publishers wanted people to value books at more than $9.99. Something that the Best Seller list of Amazon's was undermining. As someone that remembers this as it was happening, I also remember that other ebooks that Amazon was selling were at the suggested price.
Again, you are misrepresenting things. Wholesale price is the price the store paid to get the item. When they are not in the "agency" agreement, they are free to sell the item for whatever they value it at. Higher or lower. After all, the cost they paid is a sunk cost at that point and it may be worth it to move the item at a loss than to continue to store it. You are correct that price dumping resembles that idea, but it is a technically different thing. (I'll note that referring to ebooks as some sort of fixed inventory is silly for many other reasons...)
I don't know how to make it clearer, sadly, and feel you are purposely ignoring all points. An argument about Apple being guilty of antitrust violations despite not having a monopoly is solely an argument about monopoly not being a required factor of antitrust claims.
You have tried to argue that Amazon was actually the monopolist. There are some factual problems with that claim, but it is completely a non-sequitur on whether or not Apple needs to be a monopoly to run afoul of antitrust law. Same with whatever point you are trying to bring in about Epic. It is literally not relevant to the point that Apple may again be running afoul of antitrust rules.
Selling at a loss over wholesale is not, specifically, price dumping. In particular, price dumping is something that is specific to producers. Consider the old "movie theaters lose money showing the movies, but make it up on the concessions." By the naive argument, that would not be allowed. Yet here we are.
My main claim with regards to Amazon is mainly if they were guilty of price fixing, than it would have been pursued. Can you find any legal proceedings that take that charge against them? Heck, if they were guilty of price discrimination, that would likely have been pursued. It has been brought against them, but it has not gone anywhere that I can remember.
The discussion, per the top post of mine in this thread, is over whether or not Apple could be afoul of antitrust. I entered this branch by pointing out that antitrust != monopoly. It is a type of antitrust concern, but it is not the only one. You keep trying to pull up non-sequitur points that don't change that. Apple has been guilty of antitrust law in the past despite not having a monopoly.
If you are worried that Amazon has a monopoly on ebooks, note that their current ebook share is evidently close to what Apple's phone share is in Japan. Which... doesn't look good for your monopoly argument there, to be honest. That all said, I don't think that should change much of the legal issues here.
The majority of books they sold were not done so at a loss, oddly. Only the "best sellers" and that was something publishers didn't want to allow.
What goal post have I moved? It is incoherent to try and argue whether or not Amazon is a monopolist in a thread about whether or not Apple can be held to antitrust concerns. I continue responding as it is a little fun, though I confess I'm growing weary.
The claim of wholesale versus suggested retail is precisely what Apple helped publishers push. Apple conspired with the publishers to force an "agency" model where Amazon could not set the sale price. Contrasted with the outstanding "wholesale" model that they were in before.
You are arguing that Amazon was price dumping and that is specifically not something Amazon has been accused of. They have been accused of loss-leader pricing on the best sellers to get people to buy other books. But that is a different thing, entirely. You seem to think any loss-leader sales are illegal, and that isn't the case. It can look and feel very like predatory pricing, but it is a different thing.
Why exactly would people buy other books just because they bought best sellers at a loss. Are you really going to say now that you didn’t switch in mid stream from referring to selling below suggested retail price to selling below wholesale cost?
Even worse in a conversation about ebooks you brought up “holding costs” like we were talking about physical books.
The idea is that you would buy other books to read on your ereader between best sellers that you were interested in. This isn't exactly rocket science...
The "holding costs" is precisely why the publishers stuck to the wholesale contract, and is why I brought it up. They kept the same terms and added ebooks to the deal. Then got upset when Amazon took advantage of that. (And... I noted that that is a silly model here.)
And you did bring up the idea that Amazon was a monopolists here. Which I pointed out was incoherent to the topic. Apologies for letting you continue it. :(
The publishers sold the right to sell the ebooks to Amazon for $x where $x was greater than $9.99. Amazon sold the ebook for $9.99. Was Amazon trying to make it up in volume?
> More, your argument was that sales of physical books were impacted
If the publisher sold the physical books for $16.99 and the right to sell the ebook for $14.99 to Amazon and then Amazon sold it for $9.99, how could it not be impacted?
> You can try and argue that the case was ruled incorrectly, but Apple was unable to do that
So in that case do you agree that the Epic vs Apple case was ruled correctly?