The ongoing battle that the Authors Guild has been waging against Amazon escalated this week, as the group made a formal request to the Department of Justice that it investigate the company for monopolistic practices and anti-competitive behavior. The Guild has been pushing this case for some time, along with a number of other groups representing authors and publishers, arguing that Amazon controls a giant chunk of the e-book market, and that it has been using this power for evil instead of good.
In a letter that the Guild sent to the DoJ recently supporting its request, the group lays out the core of its argument, and the key point that its case will hinge on: It says that even if Amazon’s behavior leads to lower prices for books, this shouldn’t be the department’s only concern. Instead, the Guild says that the regulator should look at how Amazon’s anti-competitive tactics affect society as a whole.
In a section of the letter that refers to the recent decision that found Apple guilty of conspiring with book publishers to raise e-book prices, the Guild warns the DoJ about “the long-term dangers of interpreting antitrust law solely to favor low book prices.” The court, it says, took a “narrow view of antitrust law, assuming that low book prices to consumers trump all, even if the low prices are artificial loss leaders intended to lure buyers into a single company’s shopping platform.” Instead, the Guild says:
Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017
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