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DOJ Shows Up Late Again; Follows Spitzer's Lead In Online Music Price Fixing

Legal Issues

from the a-bit-slow-on-the-ball dept

Fri, Mar 3rd 2006 1:47am — Mike Masnick
Late last year, we pointed out how the head of some record labels, in pushing Apple to change its pricing policy, appeared to be very publicly trying to fix prices -- something the industry had gotten into trouble for multiple times in the past. It took a few months for NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to start up an investigation, and as with more than a few Spitzer probes, he showed himself to be a bit ahead of the Department of Justice -- who you would think should be the one investigating all of this. The Justice Department has now begun its own investigation, which is apparently essentially the same as Spitzer's.
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7 Comments

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  1. identicon
    Anarchy_Creator, 3 Mar 2006 @ 3:32am

    meh...

    The DOJ is too busy trying to get at Google's top secret search results to do any real work right now.
    But they value your support so please don't lose faith in them...

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Matt Sherwood, 3 Mar 2006 @ 3:45am

    Bush and the DOJ

    Under Bush, the DOJ has been effectively neutured, essnetially been rendered irrelevant.

    The current DOJ "never met a merger it didn't like".

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Andrew Strasser, 3 Mar 2006 @ 6:46am

    Re: meh...

    hehe Actually I think it's more their databases of IP addy's that get used is what the people want. They usually get what they want though. They've had the search results for years it's just how you release that to the public without the public killing you that matters to these people. You can't hide anything from law enforcement if they want to find it.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Andrew Strasser, 3 Mar 2006 @ 6:50am

    Re: meh...

    Although it is nice to see 'ole George trying to make sure everything he does is legal after the fact.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    George Smith, 4 Mar 2006 @ 8:50pm

    Re: Bush and the DOJ

    I'm really getting sick of people who bash Bush for something he really has no control over. Look at wat happend when an UAE Co was going to potenially take over some US ports. I'm not going along with bashing BUsh but it just seems that he has too much on his plate to be concerned about Apple fixing prices on crappy iTunes music downloads. If you care so much just "steal" the music.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Heratiki, 5 Mar 2006 @ 7:15am

    Actually if you think about it...

    The DOJ was just worried about their Blackberry's... Once they figured out that they weren't going to lose connectivity they figure well hell, now we can continue with business as usual now that or stuff is still in our hands...

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Manuel Ribbeck, 8 Mar 2006 @ 1:09pm

    What's up with the music business?

    I think the big players in the music business are doing what anyone in their shoes would do. Times are desperate for these guys and they're doing whatever they can to stay afloat. I don't blame them necessarily unless of course they are breaking the law.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]


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