doj

The American Civil Liberties Union today sued the U.S. government to get access to information about how authorities are using automated license plate readers to track people's movements and location.

The ACLU filed Freedom of Information Act requests on July 30 with the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Transportation to try to find out how much officials use the technology and how much it is paying to expand the program. Agencies are required by law to respond to FOIA requests within 20 working days, but more than a month later, only one DOJ office and a few … Read more

It's not wrong for retailers to discount books, and losing market share to a competitor is no excuse to fix prices or cheat consumers.

That's the message U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote sent yesterday to Apple and the country's top book publishers, as well as e-book retailers.

In April, the Department of Justice filed suit and accused five of the country's largest book publishers of conspiring with Apple to raise e-book prices. Soon after, the DOJ reached a settlement agreement with three of the accused publishers. For months, the book industry attacked the settlement, … Read more

A federal court has approved a settlement agreement reached between the U.S. Department of Justice and three book publishers accused of conspiring with Apple to fix e-book prices.

The DOJ filed suit against Apple and five of the country's largest book publishers in April and accused the group of antitrust violations. Immediately after filing the complaint, the government announced that it had reached a settlement with three of the five accused publishers: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, parent company of CNET).

As part of that settlement, the three e-book publishers agreed … Read more

Verizon and a consortium of cable companies have struck a deal with regulators to scale back their joint marketing arrangement to gain approval for their $3.9 billion wireless-spectrum deal, according to sources in a Wall Street Journal report.

Verizon and the cable consortium -- which includes Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Communications -- have supposedly agreed to terms put forth by the Department of Justice that will limit the joint marketing agreement to five years and will prevent Verizon and cable operators from reselling each other's services in markets where their broadband, television, and phone services … Read more

A federal district judge has ruled that Steve Jobs biographer doesn't have to comply with a subpoena served on by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of its antitrust suit against Apple and some of the country's largest book publishers.

Publishers Weekly, a trade publication, reported last week that the DOJ in May served a subpoena on Walter Isaacson, a former editor of Time Magazine and the author of the best-selling biography on the late Apple co-founder. The book, which was published by Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, parent company of CNET), is a vital … Read more

Not surprisingly, bookstore owners and authors make up a large number of the people who filed comments with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the government's antitrust case against Apple and e-book publishers.

The DOJ posted copies of the more than 800 comments on its Web site today. In April, the agency announced that it had filed an antitrust suit against Apple and five of the nation's largest book publishers. The government accuses Apple and of conspiring to raise prices and forcing Amazon and other retailers to follow suit.

The government reached a settlement with three of … Read more

It's time to drop dime, says the U.S. government.

The U.S. Department of Justice want three of the five book-publishing houses accused of participating in a price-fixing scheme with Apple to start turning over evidence against their alleged co-conspirators, court documents show.

In April, the U.S. Department of Justice accused five of the country's six largest book publishers of conspiring with Apple to raise prices on e-books. The government alleges that the co-conspirators forced e-book retailers, such as Amazon, to adopt a new business model, one that would enable the publishers to snatch control of … Read more

Apple this week once again took aim at the antitrust lawsuit filed against it by the Department of Justice, arguing that its entry into the e-book market improved competition.

That argument -- which the company included in a statement last month -- was outlined further in a court document filed yesterday.

In it, Apple claims its e-book business strategy, which employs the agency model, is "well-recognized as perfectly proper," and that it had not conspired with other companies to set prices or limit competition.

"The Government's Complaint against Apple is fundamentally flawed as a matter of … Read more

commentary Amazon.com has outmaneuvered Apple in the e-books sector. Nowhere was this made more apparent than in court documents released last week.

In antitrust lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and others, Apple stands accused of conspiring with five of the six largest U.S. book publishers to raise the price consumers paid for e-books and stifle competition in an attempt to snatch control of the e-book market away from Amazon, the sector's dominant player.

Soon after the Justice Department filed its complaint last month, Apple and two of the five publishers filed motions with … Read more