Legal Commentary

The Amazon, Apple, Macmillan Kerfuffle

By Kenneth Anderson

I have been trying to follow the story of the dustup among Amazon, Apple, and Macmillan on pricing on e-book readers, but have been distracted by other things.  What interests me are the business models being pursued by the various parties here ? and whose makes sense, whose doesn?t, and who is likely to survive and win out.  Plus ? someone tell me what the legal status is of ?books? that I purchase today on Kindle ? am I simply purchasing a revocable license of some kind to read it?  What?s the legal condition.  I love my Kindle, and anticipated that some kind of pricing battles would eventually break out ? but I sorta hoped that competition would favor me as a consumer.  At this point, is it?  Someone explain to me what?s going on.

Here?s Charles Martin on the business model; there are good stories in the Times, WSJ and FT.

Update:  Delighted to have Virginia Postrel, of whom I am a big fan, join the comments and point us to her article at the Atlantic business channel.  Very interesting article on pricing.

Update 2:  There are a number of exceptionally interesting comments here in the thread.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 02, 2010 (boomark / email).