Justice Dept Look At Apple Over Digital Music Market
May 26th, 2010
According to the NYT, the Justice Department is looking into Apple’s tactics in the digital music market. Apparently they’ve been talking to a number of music labels and internet music retailers about the subject, and this is the first stages of an antitrust enquiry.
More than just market domination, this inquiry was apparently spurred by Apple using its position of dominance to strong-arm labels to “refuse to give the online retailer Amazon.com exclusive access to music about to be released.” This was based on a plan by Amazon to get exclusive digital rights for a number of songs for one day before the general release, in order to market a special promotion. Apple apparently leant on labels not to participate, and punished those who did.
While I have no legal background whatsoever, I’m not sure this qualifies as antitrust. They’re not attempting to force labels to completely abandon Amazon, just trying to combat them getting exclusive rights (even if only for a brief period). While it might be an abrasive move, I don’t see how that’s abusing a position of power.
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