District Court Judge William Alsup continues to drive the process of explaining how the proposed Anthropic copyright infringement settlement would work, following last week’s list of 17 questions for the attorneys with a fresh list of 17 more “further questions.” Among them, he is still concerned with the situation in which multiple claims are submitted for the same work: “Assume a writer, an employer of writers, an old publisher, and a new publisher each submit a claim for the same work, making incompatible ownership claims. When and how is each notified of the others’ claims (if at all), and what […]
Antitrust Trial
That Stat Isn’t A Stat
The discourse is once again reckoning all over the internet with a factoid from the PRH-S&S antitrust trial in 2022 that was not an established fact at all. The provocative Substack declaration — “no one buys books” — is based on an exchange during the trial that has been misunderstood from the start. The popular takeaway is a belief that the Department of Justice found that half of the new books published every year sell fewer than 12 copies in a year. But going by the public record, that was never a fact introduced as evidence or supported by documentation […]
Reliving The Trial
Three months after Penguin Random House’s effort to acquire Simon & Schuster was terminated, Christian Lorentzen summarizes the August antitrust trial in a cover piece for Harper’s. Spoiler alert: PRH loses. About the most quotable graph: “The view put forth by the government was that the publishing industry was a market like any other, that its practices were routinized, that its players followed rules, and that its dynamics could be predicted by the scientific methods of economists. The defense presented it as a casino full of hippies gambling unlimited piles of money generously provided to them by multinational corporations happy […]
PRH US CEO Madeline McIntosh to Step Down
Madeline McIntosh will step down as ceo of Penguin Random House US after a transition period, she announced to staff in a memo on Tuesday. She wrote: “I am stepping down from my position as your U.S. CEO. I’m not leaving right away; instead, Nihar [Malaviya] and I are working very closely together to determine the best plan for the U.S. organization going forward. I know you’ll be in good hands with Nihar and the U.S. Board. They know and love this business as much as I do. For the time being, all remains as usual.” Malaviya was elevated to […]
EU Finalizes Amazon Antitrust Settlements
As previewed earlier in the month, the European Union announced the final “commitments” made by Amazon to avoid further enforcement action, including fines. As indicated earlier, within the EU Amazon will make the Buy Box more competitive, allow third-party merchants to participate in Prime while using outside logistics providers, and block Amazon from using internal data to compete with third-party merchants. Specifically, the EU states: Regarding data use, Amazon will not “use non-public data relating to, or derived from, the independent sellers’ activities on its marketplace, for its retail business. This applies to both Amazon’s automated tools and employees that […]
Top of the List
When our friends at Ingram encouraged us to max out the capabilities of print-on-demand with the big keepsake, case-bound edition of our book memorializing THE TRIAL, we never imagined we would find ourselves as the No. 1 new release in antitrust law! (And that’s ahead of both Ian Walden’s Telecommunications Law and Regulation and Conor Quigley’s European State Aid Law and Policy.) We can guarantee you THE TRIAL is a better read, as well as a great gift for the publishing person in your life. Buy the 6.7 pound, 1,994-page printed edition here (for free prime delivery); or from BN, […]