Yes, Amazon is "the real predator" here. Not the folks who charge the same for providing electronic bits as they do for purchasing, printing, inventorying, and distributing the physical product.

That statement clearly shows who you are representing in this argument. The publishers are overcharging for electronic versions of their IP. They jumped at the chance offered by Apple, to justify this rape of the consumer. While you would be correct to point out that Amazon does nothing from altruistic motive, that's irrelevant. In this case, they felt they would profit from a situation where there was unfettered (or less fettered) competition, possibly even *gasp* between publishers themselves!. Apple, also not acting altruistically, just jumped on the opposing position, which the publishers (rightly) saw as the best opportunity for the continuation of these windfall profits.

"But wait!" (you will say) "You can't expect the publishers to act against their own interests, can you?" Well, no. But if eBooks went away entirely, or at least proved to be an insignificant part of the publishing industry, I think they'd be pretty happy about it. Their own actions speak to this, as they would rather discourage the purchase of eBooks (by insisting on profit in the mega-multiples compared to production cost) than compete against their own based-on-paper business model.

The disruptive technology of eBooks is causing these various actors to behave in non-intuitive ways, which gives YOU the opportunity to put forth FUD, confusing arguments, and false dilemas on behalf of (apparently) the publishers.

The publishers will learn. Eventually, many millions of lobbying $$ down the road, there will be legislation protecting the practice of charging $10.00 for something that costs them $1.50 to provide, since it costs them $x+$1.50 to produce the paper version. But until then, if it walks like collusion, and quacks like collusion and results in higher prices than necessary or justifiable to consumers, some parts of the government will actually perform their jobs and try to prevent it.

As long as you stop short of autogenocide.

I sincerely hope he's getting paid.

Though his corporate overlords probably give him most of the talking points, the deviousness, straw men, subject-shifting, red herrings and misrepresentation of terms show that this shill has thrown himself into the project. He deserves his pieces of silver.

This reads an AWFUL lot like talking points handed out by publishers' PR departments (vetted by, and with contributions from, legal). I mean, that's what I would say if people called me on unwarranted 600% markups on a product. And if all the other publishers wanted to mark up the automated transfer of digital files so that the cost to the consumer was the same as for the purchase, printing, warehousing, and distribution of paper books...why no "collusion" there! That's just coincidence!

And do you really expect people to not see that the only "harm" averted here is to those publishers' windfall profits? Amazon's ONLY crime was attempting to force the admission from the publishers that they could indeed sell eBooks for CONSIDERABLY less than the price of paper editions and still profit therefrom. Apples has nobly (/snarkasm) saved them from such an admission.

It's not the government's place to preserve the publishers' windfall, at least until such protection has been duly lobbied/paid for.

You fucking shill.

Yep.. I've always visualized Apple management storing their profits in cash in huge grain silos and "diving into it, swimming in it, and throwing it up and letting it hit me on the head" Scrooge McDuck style. aww yeh.