New York, NY: An antitrust class action lawsuit has been file by three independent bookstores against Amazon and the six major publishers, alleging they have created a monopoly in e-book sales.
The lawsuit, entitled The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza Inc., et al. v. Amazon.com, et al., Case No. 13-cv-1111, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York., centers around the digital rights management (DRM) of e-books. Essentially, once a person has purchased an e-book from Amazon for Kindle, that e-book cannot be transferred to another type of device, such as the Nook or Kobo, effectively placing DRM locks on the e-books.
The Plaintiffs in the class action are Fiction Addiction of Greenville, S.C., Albany N.Y.'s Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and Posman Books, which has three locations in New York City. In addition to Amazon, they' ve named Simon and Schuster, Penguin, Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan as defendants.
The class action goes on to claim that the Big Six publishers entered into secret agreements with Amazon to place these locks on their titles. However, no such similar arrangement has been made with US-based independent bookstores for their e-book titles. The lawsuit "claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the US, Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers."
Lead counsel for the bookstores, Alyson Decker of Blecher & Collins PC, told the Huffington Post, "We are seeking relief for independent brick-and-mortar bookstores so that they would be able to sell open-source and DRM-free books that could be used on the Kindle or other electronic ereaders."
The lawsuit cites the examples of DRM on iTunes, stating that DRM was once used for songs sold on iTunes until Apple abandoned the practice in 2009. The lawsuit contends that e-book sales and distribution should be managed similarly.
