In a confident and assured filing of “findings of fact and conclusions of law,” the Department of Justice restated for the final time their case to block Penguin Random House’s acquisition of Simon & Schuster. “The proposed acquisition is precisely the march toward concentration and monopsony power that Congress enacted the Clayton Act to prevent. One entity’s control of almost half of the nation’s anticipated top-selling books threatens competition in multiple ways. Authors’ advances would fall—advances that they use to pay their bills and that reflect compensation for their work. The contractual terms publishers offer authors would worsen. Authors would […]
