CNN Business: An Antitrust Earthquake

Stacy Mitchell, co-director of ILSR, discusses the blocked Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster merger on CNN Business’s Nightcap. An excerpt from the interview, which originally aired on November 3, 2022, follows:

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What was really significant about this decision was the argument that the Justice Department made in this case, which the judge accepted and concluded was true, which was: instead of focusing on whether this deal would impact consumer prices, instead the justice department said this consolidation among publishers is going to harm authors. We’re going to go from 5 to 4 major publishers, and that’s going to reduce the competition for books, and therefore authors are going to be paid less.

 

That’s really a different kind of argument than we’ve heard in antitrust cases for about 40 years now.

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Watch the full interview here.