Simon

Frank Romano is Professor Emeritus at RIT School of Media Sciences.

Is there such a thing as “Amazon Rangement Syndrome” (no “de” in front of “rangement”)? I’ve seen a couple fairly-high-profile posts lately questioning the idea that Amazon is bad for business. Not just grumbling author bloggers (though there have been some of those) but actual folks with academic or journalistic reputations. For starters, here’s Simon […]

The post Could Amazon’s defenders actually be the saner ones? appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

A History of Intellectual Property in the United States (Scholarly Kitchen) The history of patents, trademarks, and copyrights in the United States may not seem to be the most interesting topic in the world, but my favorite history podcast, BackStory with the American History Guys, manages to make it compelling on many levels. — Simon [...]

The post Morning Roundup: The future of smartphone reading appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Simon & Shuster, one of the five major book publishers accused in multiple lawsuits of conspiring with Apple to fix e-book prices, has settled the complaint filed by numerous states' attorney generals, CNET has learned. Denise Cote, the federal judge overseeing the three different antitrust complaints pending against Apple and the defendant publishers, granted a motion Tuesday to dismiss Simon & Shuster from the complaint originally filed by the attorney generals from Texas as well as 15 other state AGs. More states have joined that suit as plaintiffs and now number 29.

The first thing to be said about the lawsuit filed last week by the Justice Department against Apple and five book publishers is that the defendants very well may be guilty. There does seem to have been collusion among them to fix the price of e-books. But even if the book publishers’ actions were illegal, that’s not to suggest what they did wasn’t understandable. Indeed, there’s a plausible case to be made that the actions of the publishers actually amounted to combating an abusive monopoly—namely, Amazon. The Justice department may be acting correctly under existing antitrust law by suing

Once upon a time in the dark ages of e-books, a domineering overlord reigned supreme. As the sole gatekeeper for the largest viable platform, everyone had to play by this tyrant's oppressive rules. This authoritarian ruler laid down the law of the land until a knight in shining iArmor rode in to save the day. How dare the despot boldly declare that no e-book would cost more than $9.99? Who did it think it was? Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN Put up your dukesThe feds have recently charged a handful of alleged conspirators, including Apple and major publishers Hachette, News Corp.'s

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