There were a gazillion Amazon headlines today across virtually every news site, tech blog and twitter feed I follow but almost none had the truly important news development about Amazon today. While everyone was gorging on the announcement of upgraded “Kindle Fire” tablet computers, U.S. federal judge Denise Cote in New York approved a controversial settlement to the massive ebook price fixing scandal.
The settlement requires three of the biggest book publishers in the world to soon terminate their so-called agency pricing arrangements over ebooks and allow Amazon and others to resume discounting ebooks. Two other major publisher and Apple were bitterly opposing the settlement. But the judge went with the Justice Department and major consumer groups. The law seemed pretty clearly on the side of the government and the settling publishers, as I wrote last month.
This will very soon benefit tens of millions of ebook buyers. And the long-term benefits of a slightly cheaper, slightly fancier tablet? Less so.
Update: Making my point further, the New York Times buried the story inside the business section and it’s not given prominent play on their web site, either. But their blog post about the ruling is the number one most emailed story right now. And, wow, the second-day coverage in the paper is embarrassingly bad, too. The Times story in print, link unseen, aside from various spokespersons, quotes a long-time publishing industry consultant, the head of the Author’s Guild and a publishing industry lawyer. The Wall Street Journal is no better, quoting the same lawyer and the AUthor’s Guild. Come on, people. You can do better.
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