EU Approves E-Book Price Fixing Deal With Apple, Publishers
Source: PC Magazine
The European Commission's year-long antitrust investigation into e-book pricing collusion ended today, when it adopted a proposal from Apple and four book publishers that offers more pricing freedom to e-book retailers like Amazon.
Apple and four publishers — Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Hachette Livre (Lagardère Publishing), and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (Macmillan) — agreed to stop using the agency model, whereby the publishers rather than the retailers set e-book pricing, for the next five years. They will also give e-book retailers the freedom to set prices, subject to certain conditions, for the next two years.
"The commitments proposed by Apple and the four publishers will restore normal competitive conditions in this new and fast-moving market, to the benefit of the buyers and readers of e-books," Joaquin Almunia, the EU vice president in charge of competition policy, said in a statement.
Read more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413185,00.asp
