Sony Under Investigation by DOJ 92
An anonymous reader writes "As the DOJ continues its investigation into RAM price fixing, it has started looking at Sony's operations. With all the negative press Sony has been getting, this couldn't come at a worse time." From the article: "The Japanese company received a subpoena from the Justice Department's antitrust division seeking information about Sony's static random access memory, or SRAM, business, company spokesman Atsuo Omagari said. 'Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry,' the company said in a short statement."
Ram! (Score:2, Funny)
Hooray! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!
Cheaper, faster, bigger, smaller
Hooray! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!
Now that people aren't makin' it expensive
Hooray! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!
It's gonna get cheaper!
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-stormin
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Hey, leave me out of this!
Re:Holy FUD Batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Earlier this month, U.S.-based chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor Corp. said its SRAM operations were also under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice."
That's one other company under investigation. Maybe the investigation is industry-wide, maybe it's not. There's no reason to assume Zonk is more biased than Sony. I mean, who could possibly be more biased about the fate of Sony than Sony?
In any case "everyone else was pricefixing too" (or whatever the charges, if any, turn out to be) is hardly likely to make the damage of this story go away. We've got ridiculous PS3 prices, the whole Sony DRM fiasco, the exploding laptop batteries, and now this. Even if this was an industry-wide problem, it's not like Cypress Semiconductor Corp has exactly had front-page news of any kind recently. This is like strike 4 for Sony, strike 1 for everyone else. The fact of the matter is that Sony is far, far more vulnerable to this press than another company due to both previous bad press and the vulnerable financial position they're in running up to the launch of the PS3.
I think I see vultures starting to circle...
-stormin
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And also, it isn't meaningless. Even without the PS3, a huge company like Sony being investigated is news. They may just be another company in the queue, but that doesn't meant that it is insignificant.
This investigation is poorly timed for Sony because they are already struggling
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Do you really think that matters? I realize that Sony is a conglomerate of rather disparate companies - but so far it looks as though all have of them have been misbehaving. Furthermore, that's kind of the breaks of sharing a brand identity. You sink or swim together.
Even though electronics has nothing to do with, say DRM, when either screws in an extremely public fashion up it's bad for the other. And when all th
The downside to being a conglomerate (Score:2)
This is one of the downsides to being a conglomerate. Perhaps the bad press about Sony combined with loss of market share across the board might encourage other companies not to overdiversify.
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I agree Sony's other problems add to this, but as for those questioning the "industry-wide" aspect of this news, consider this: it's not price-fixing if it's just one company involved. Seeing all the other price-fixing stories out of the semiconductor industry recently, of COURSE it's an industry-wide investigation.
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I don't think it will work like that. Humans like narratives. We like good guys and bad guys. These news stories are definitely putting Sony more and more as "the bad guy" instead of "company with great products". Consumer anger, in my limited experience, works on a kind of tipping-point basis. No one really cares until it hits a point where it becom
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Anybody know if there has been price fixing in the NAND flash market as well?
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-stormin
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Incorrect.
"....and there is no info even hinting that Sony did everything wrong."
Not coherent enough to be incorrect. It's a story about the impact of a DOJ SRAM (as opposed to the DRAM part which apparently caused your 'every manufacturer' confusion) investigation into a long and established company already suffering a number of other self-inflicted wounds. Why the tizzy, do you own Sony stock bunky?
For my part, Son
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I'll amend your selective emphasis a bit:
Does it look a little different now? I think we've all learned to never take the statements of a company under investigation at face value -- they've shareholders and executives to protect,
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Ok, how about taking the company statement with a teensy bit of logic:
Either Sony fixed prices for all companies all by themselves, or the investigation does comprise a signifcant portion of the manufacturing base.
My monkey brain selects number two. This knee-jerk Sony-bashing stuff is getting kind of
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I don't think it's weird -- I think it's a natural reaction to the comedy of errors that is currently Sony. Sony has destroyed their brand reputation among a significant subset of their consumer base by shipping defective product, by attempting to cover that up, by shipping product with consumer-harming add-ons, by making poor management decisions, by making promises they can't keep... etc.
Sure, some people take it a little far -- but it's Sony t
FUD or Spin or Just BS? (Score:2)
>>"Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry," the company said in a short statement. (Emphasis mine).
>So the DOJ appears to be investigating every manufacturer, and there is no info even hinting that Sony did everything wrong.
So, you feel that Sony's spin on this is highly credible? It also seems to me that allegations of price fixing might involve more than one company in an industry, since it would be pretty hard for a single company to fix
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Next weeks news (Score:1)
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PEEEEEEEEEOPLE!
Are you sure isn't not just (Score:1, Interesting)
"As the DOJ continues its investigation into RAM price fixing, it has started looking at Sony's operations."
"'Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry,' the company said in a short statement."
So in other words...
DOJ: "Let's see... next on the list is... Sony, you're up."
Greimel: "Lookit! Sony fucks up yet again, and then there's a PS3, and the 'sploding batteries, and Iwo Jima, and..."
Really
I'm sure price-fixing is industry-wide (Score:5, Insightful)
So, when people say that Sony isn't being singled out, that they're just one of many... that's exactly the point of the investigation.
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Second, did you read the article? Was the article not specifically about the DOJ's initiation of investigations into Sony Electronics? Did the article even give more than a passing nod to other companies that the DOJ is currently investigating? Did you even RTFA?
Why are YOU upset that the summary reflects the article? Just because the focus of the article happens to be Sony? Or because you e
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You forgot the BMG-Sony rootkit.
I really resented that.
Little do they know (Score:2, Funny)
The DOJ is expected to find that all evidence shows Sony to be innocent, all thanks to Anne in accounts who played a recent Celine Dion CD on her workstation.
Try again (Score:1)
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Can I modify my /. settings to auto-post this for every new story? :)
(I am not making a statement about the quality of the stories; I am making a statement about how often I've seen this lately.)
DOJ looking at sony's static ram dealings? (Score:2)
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hmm (Score:1)
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soon to be followed by... (Score:2)
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"Say it ain't so, Blu-Ray... Say it ain't so!"
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I don't find myself all that lucky when something dies right AFTER the warranty expires.
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Overpriced is difficult to define. For the grandparent the PS3 is overpriced. The PS3 isn't worth $500-600 to him regardless of how much it cost to make.
The point my initial hypothetical question makes is that no one in normal circumstances would pay $10 for a paper napkin. Paper napkins aren't that expensive! To many people the PS3 is in a similar boat. Consoles aren't normally priced so high even at launch. To
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Go Get Em! (Score:2)
Not the first news of SRAM price fixing .. (Score:1)
Some questions to think about. (Score:1)
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static? (Score:2)
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From wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]
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Tongue? Cheek? (Score:1)
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woooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!!
Also, you missed "sense" and "it's." You completely fail at naziism.
Couldn't come at a worse time? (Score:1)
Or couldn't come at a better time.
Hands Up (Score:2)
"You there, at the back, you have your hand up, no? Oh it's your hat, sorry my bad."
Massive damage (Score:2)
I Feel Kind of Bad (Score:1)
Even though recently Sony has been making a lot of fudge-ups and bad press, I kind of feel bad that Sony's having to deal with this now. This is the company that fought for better quality video [wikipedia.org], made portable audio a lifestyle [wikipedia.org], and innovated/invented several concepts that we could not live without. My family and I trusted the Sony brand for years, and it will be sad to see them getting closer and closer to another great example of a management failure in our business classes.