Jordan Weissmann: ‘The Justice Department Just Made Jeff Bezos Dictator-for-Life’

Jordan Weissmann:

In other words, Amazon will have two years to consolidate its hold over the fast growing eBook market by offering virtually any sort of discount it pleases — a marketing strategy it can afford thanks to the volume of business it already does. The question, then, is what happens after that time is up? Will there be any company that can challenge Amazon in the digital market? Maybe not. Thanks to the use of DRM technology, most eBooks can only be read on a propriety device. Amazon’s eBooks can only be read on a Kindle, or a Kindle app. Barnes & Noble’s books can only be read on a Nook. So the larger a library any one customer builds with a single retailer, the less likely it is they’ll ultimately switch.

Weissmann’s argument is along the same lines as Scott Turow’s, who wrote, “The irony of this bites hard: our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition.”

★ Monday, 16 April 2012