Apple's Steve Jobs conspired on e-book price-fixing, lawsuits say

[Poll_Blind]

From the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-ebook-apple-antitrust-publishers-20120411,0,3774448.story

[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Apple's Steve Jobs conspired on e-book price-fixing, lawsuits say[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]WASHINGTON -- Former Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs and top executives at five major book publishers illegally conspired to raise the prices of e-books, costing consumers tens of millions of dollars, federal and state officials alleged in antitrust suits filed Wednesday.

The collusion began in 2009 and price fixing took effect with the launch of the iPad in early 2010, boosting the average cost of e-books by $2 to $3 each "virtually overnight," said Sharis Pozen, the acting head of the Justice Department's antitrust division.

"We allege that these executives knew full well what they were doing. That is, taking steps to make sure the prices consumers paid for e-books were higher," she said in announcing the federal suit. "'The customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway,'" Pozen quoted Jobs as saying at one point in the negotiations with publishers.

The suit said Apple proudly described the price-fixing plan -- which gave the iPad maker a guaranteed 30% commission on each e-book it sold through its online marketplace -- as an "aikido move," referring to the Japanese martial art.

Much more at the link. I don't know what to say...Jobs accused by the Federal government of price fixing?!

Apple products unnecessarily overpriced?

What is the world coming to?

PB

[arcane1]

1. No surprise there

Apple is a business, no different than any other.

[aspieextrodinare]

2. Jobs was the ultimate 1%

Why he got/gets so much respect from the left I will never know. He might have at one point in time supported liberal ideals, but that was A LONG TIME AGO.

[Poll_Blind]

3. I agree. But more than that, he held himself and his company as moral superiors not just to their..

..competitors but drew on a decades-long publicity campaign in which consumers of the purchased product were falsely imbued with the ability to invoke this so-called moral superiority themselves. Just for making the purchase.

Quite a racket!

Sort of the hipster's version of buying social responsibility indulgences from a 21st-century version of a 16th century Catholic church.

PB

[aspieextrodinare]

4. I find it funny when I am made to feel guilty from buying from Microsoft

because they are evil while Apple is good :-/. Whatever

[arcane1]

5. Such is the power of branding n/t

[Egalitarian Thug]

8. You should feel guilty about supporting M$, but Apple is not any better. n/t

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. He forgot where he came from and went insane about 5 minutes after Apple's first

popular success in the 80's.

[Whisp]

6. It's okay if Job's does it.

some pigs are more equal than other corporate pigs