Amazon Dodges Lawsuit from Ill Prepared Indie Booksellers

You may or may not have heard about the lawsuit against Amazon and the big Publishing houses.  I'm leaning towards not but that's ok because I'm going to tell you a little about it right.

Some whack-a-doodle indie booksellers decided to right the good fight and sue Amazon and six big publishing companies alleging that " by signing agreements that call for the use of DRM on e-books sold through the Kindle, the online retailer and the publishers have combined to restrict the sale of e-books."  According to Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly the complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and stated that Amazon and the Publishers (Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan) signed contracts for the sale of ebooks with DRM that was,  "specifically designed to limit the use of digital content" to Kindle devices.

Makes sense right?  Looking at the ebook market and deals with publishers I could see how one would jump to that conclusion.  However, to go as far as to take the matter to court they must have had indisputable proof.  A Recording of a shady backroom conversation between the big guys making deals that would screw over the independents.  But apparently not.

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed the claim that the Big Six and Amazon conspired to keep independent competition from selling ebooks.  

As stated in his ruling via GalleyCat:

"The evasiveness of this allegation is remarkable.  Plaintiffs do not allege an unlawful agreement, only vague ‘oral discussions or agreements regarding the use of restrictive DRM.’  Plaintiffs do not even allege that any such discussions or agreements actually occurred, only that they may have occurred.  And plaintiffs do not specify who participated in these hypothetical discussions or agreements, only that they may have involved ‘one or more’ of the Publishers and Amazon."

That's right.  They went to court without a shred of evidence.  Nothing.  How did it even get this far with just accusations?  Seems the judge really had no choice but to dismiss.  As an independent I'd have liked to support their efforts but when you have no proof you lose a lot of credibility.  Maybe they had something that isn't being released or something that was buried by the publishers.  Or maybe the judge was paid off.  Probably not but might make for a decent story.