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Where’s the ferocious price war over e-books?
Last spring, the Justice Department sued five major publishers and Apple on e-book price-fixing charges. The case was a major victory for Amazon, and afterward there were widespread expectations — fueled by Amazon — that the price of e-books would plunge. But doomsday has not arrived, at least not yet. As four of the publishers have entered into settlements with regulators and revised the way they sell e-books, prices have selectively fallen but not as broadly or drastically as anticipated. The $10 floor that publishers fought so hard to maintain for popular new novels is largely intact. Amazon, for instance, is selling Michael Connelly’s new mystery, “The Black Box,” for $12.74. New best sellers by David Baldacci and James Patterson cost just over $11. One big reason for the lack of fireworks is that the triumph of e-books over their physical brethren is not happening quite as fast as forecast. “The e-book market isn’t growing at the caffeinated level it was,” said Michael Norris, a Simba Information analyst who follows the publishing industry. “Even retailers like Amazon have to be wondering, how far can we go — or should we go — to make our prices lower than the other guys if it’s not helping us with market share?”
Little Sign of a Predicted E-Book Price War
Members of the media may declare blackouts for many reasons. Some are out of caution. But more often, the blackout is more akin to a boycott that, when made public, can be a tool for media outlets or commentators to raise the level of discourse, to focus the public’s attention elsewhere or to glean some attention from those they are barring.
When Media’s Decision in the Face of Events Is to Say Nothing About Them
The ruckus (now lawsuit) over whether Instagram would use your pictures to make money has drawn new attention to an unresolved battle of the Web era: Who owns your stuff online? As the law professor Eric Goldman points out, we might own our data, but we may not always control what happens to it. There are too many complicated, sometimes impenetrable clauses in company Terms of Service. Instagram is a free service, and the business model of free Web services relies precisely on taking advantage of user data, including the “content” users produce. Facebook makes money by letting advertisers direct marketing messages at prospective customers, based on what they reveal about themselves and who their friends are. And even as Facebook too says it doesn’t “own” any of it, personal data is the company’s most valuable asset. Advertising is its principal moneymaker.
Instagram Flap Shows Confusion Over Control of Content
Analysts and prospective buyers are preparing for horse trading to begin over the Tribune Company’s newspapers now that the company, whose holdings include The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, has emerged from bankruptcy protection.
Tribune, which completed its bankruptcy paperwork on Dec 31, has not announced the sale of any assets, but it is likely to do so in the next several months so it can streamline its business, said Reed Phillips, managing partner of DeSilva & Phillips, a media banking firm. The troubled state of the newspaper industry makes those assets most likely to be sold, he added. Less clear, however, is whether the company will sell them all at once or by region, for example selling The Chicago Tribune with Chicago magazine.
Tribune, Bankruptcy Over, Is Expected to Sell Assets Tribune Co. looks to television after bankruptcy (LATimes) Tough decisions await new Tribune Co. board (Chicago Tribune) Content has power to keep media king (Chicago Tribune)
[Commentary] Many post-mortems of the 2012 presidential campaign suggest that Mitt Romney erred by allowing President Barack Obama to “define” him early through an advertising blitz in battleground states. The problem, however, is that there is very little evidence that these early ads mattered much, according to research I have done along with Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, for an upcoming book, The Gamble.
Some of that evidence comes from political science research into other campaigns, including presidential races. As I noted here over a year ago, this research finds that political ads have short-lived effects. If during one week a candidate broadcasts significantly more advertisements than the opponent, that candidate may see a boost in the polls, but the effect of that advertising will be mostly gone within a few days. Political ads are a bit like morphine: you need dose after dose for them to keeping working. Political science research and this initial evidence from 2012 suggests that the Obama campaign’s blitz of early advertising did little apparent damage to Mr. Romney in the minds of voters.
Were Obama’s Early Ads Really the Game Changer?
Silicon Valley lobbied hard in Washington in 2012, and despite some friction with regulators, fared fairly well. In 2013, though, government scrutiny is likely to grow. And with this scrutiny will come even greater efforts by the tech industry to press its case in the nation’s capital and overseas.
In 2012, among other victories, the industry staved off calls for federal consumer privacy legislation and successfully pushed for a revamp of an obscure law that had placed strict privacy protections on Americans’ video rental records. It also helped achieve a stalemate on a proposed global effort to let Web users limit behavioral tracking online, using Do Not Track browser settings. But this year is likely to put that issue in the spotlight again, and bring intense negotiations between industry and consumer rights groups over whether and how to allow consumers to limit tracking. Congress is likely to revisit online security legislation — meant to safeguard critical infrastructure from attack — that failed last year. And a looming question for Web giants will be who takes the reins of the Federal Trade Commission, the industry’s main regulator, this year. David C. Vladeck, the director of the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, has resigned, and there have been suggestions that its chairman, Jon Leibowitz, would step down.
Tech Giants Brace for More Scrutiny From Regulators
Four big technology fiefs -- Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook -- have been creeping into each other's turf for years. In 2013, their war is set to escalate around two fronts: hardware and search.
Software giants including Google and Amazon are interested in ramping up hardware to boost customer loyalty and to extend control over their software services and the revenues that flow from them. That is heightening their collision course with Apple, which is responding by building more of its own software to make its devices stand out. Google, with the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility under its belt, plans to use the phone maker to release new Android devices to help knock Apple's iPhone off its perch. And Amazon, which has upped the ante in the tablet wars with the Kindle Fire, has also been testing its own phone. Meanwhile, all four companies see search as a big opportunity for retaining and profiting off customers. While Google's paradigm of typing queries in a search box has prevailed for years, now its rivals want to undercut the Web-search giant through mobile search on smartphones and other devices, and a slew of search services that allow recommendations from friends.
Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook vs. Amazon
[Commentary] There's a crass old joke about how you can never buy beer, just rent it. Who would think that the same joke applies to book buying in the digital age? But that's the case.
Many people who'll be unwrapping iPads, Amazon Kindles or Barnes & Noble Nooks on Tuesday morning and loading them with bestsellers or classics won't have any idea how limited their rights are as their books' "owners." In fact, they won't be owners at all. They'll be licensees. Unlike the owners of a physical tome, they won't have the unlimited right to lend an e-book, give it away, resell it or leave it to their heirs. If it's bought for their iPad, they won't be able to read it on their Kindle. And if Amazon or the other sellers don't like what they've done with it, they can take it back, without warning. All these restrictions "raise obvious questions about what 'ownership' is," observes Dan Gillmor, an expert on digital media at Arizona State University. "The companies that license stuff digitally have made it clear that you own nothing."
E-book restrictions leave 'buyers' with few rights
A group of 46 House Republicans, led by Reps. Marsha Blackburn (TN) and Steve Scalise (LA), sent President Barack Obama a letter on Dec 21 urging him not to issue an executive order on cybersecurity.
"Instead of preempting Congress' will and pushing a top-down regulatory framework, your administration should engage Congress in an open and constructive manner to help address the serious cybersecurity challenges facing our country," the lawmakers wrote. They said the president should support the Republicans' cybersecurity bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which would encourage companies to share information about cyber threats. "This framework will work better than attempts to place the government in charge of overseeing minimum standards for industries seeking to invest in new and innovative security solutions," the Republicans wrote.
House Republicans urge Obama not to issue cybersecurity order
Free Press filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission on media ownership diversity and its conclusion was that a recent ownership report showed abysmally low levels of station ownership by women and minorities.
"We appreciate the opportunity to comment on the data," said Free Press policy director Matt Wood, "which still shows shockingly low levels of broadcast ownership diversity. But the FCC's truncated comment period - during the holiday season, no less - is hardly a serious attempt to address this matter.... Releasing these numbers is the first step the FCC needs to take, but it's not enough. Just having the numbers in hand won't satisfy the mandate of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the agency's attempts to weaken ownership rules on two prior occasions." Free Press wants the FCC to study the impact of the chairman's proposal on those "abysmally" low numbers, suggesting that analysis would result in the conclusion they any more deregulation cannot be justified.
Free Press Says Any More Deregulation Is Unjustified