Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. won preliminary approval of a settlement in which it could pay $450 million to resolve claims by U.S. states and consumers that it led a conspiracy to fix prices on electronic books.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan said today that there’s “probable cause to find that the proposed settlement agreement is within the range of those that may be approved as fair and reasonable.”
I wonder if Amazon is rubbing their hands in glee?
Only way Amazon can win the war is by outbidding all the book before publishers can buying them.
Amazon’s argument that publishers are making too much margin on books is anti-constitution and all case law.
if Amazon can offer better deal to authors it would have already done it.
It doesn’t need public PR propaganda to convince any one.
outbidding and getting exclusive contracts.
Amazon likely isn’t doing anything given that nothing in any of these judgements says that publishers must renew with Amazon next time around. So their return to ‘wholesale’ could prove very limited. Publishers could simply decide not to re-up with Amazon in a few years when those contracts are over AND could decide to sue if Amazon pulls another Hachette (assuming they don’t sue now over that nonsense).
Plus this proposed settlement comes with the condition that Apple has to lose all appeals up to the highest for the federal case. If ultimately they win, the settlement is moot. And they can take that win to the state courts and get the case tossed over legal precedent. If they lose and the settlement does kick in, you can bet that there are clauses about ‘no payments to anyone that already got a refund’, so there’s no double dipping between the state and federal cases.