Publishers Weekly reports that as of June 12th, the Department of Justice had received over 150 letters relating to the proposed price-fixing charges filed against Apple and the Agency Five publishers, totaling over 200 pages of material. In a filing, the DoJ said it expected “a similar or greater” amount of additional letters by the time the comment period ends on June 25th, and asked Judge Denise Cote to allow it to forego the usual print publication of the letters in the Federal Register. The DoJ would instead post the letters to the antitrust division website and post the address in the Register, and would save over $100,000 in printing and distribution costs. Both sides in the case have reportedly agreed to this measure.
As some of the commenters on Publishers Weekly point out, there might be a bit of irony here given that the case is about prices for e-books and their effect on print publication. If it’s so much cheaper only to publish electronically, why should e-book prices remain so high?
As a reminder, if you want to send your own letters in before June 25th, you can send them to:
John Read, Chief, Litigation III Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 5th Street, NW, Suite 4000, Washington, DC 20530
