Justice Department glares at Sony
Anti-competitive disk practices? Good lord!
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A Sony subsidiary has fallen under the beady eye of the US Department of Justice which is looking at competition in the optical disk drive industry.
The DoJ has issued a subpoena to Sony Optiarc America (SOA), which supplies CD, DVD and Blu-ray-based products to North American customers, as it looks into possible anti-trust regulation violations. The general situation in such cases is that a group of suppliers co-operate to artificially drive up prices for a product.
SOA was a joint-venture owned by Sony and NEC, and called Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. In September last year NEC's 45 per cent holding was sold to Sony, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary and causing the name change.
SOA has two subsidiaries, a US one with San Jose headquarters, and a European one based in Ismaning, Germany.
Sony lost over $1bn in its financial 2008, its first annual loss for 14 years. Another loss is expected this year.
Sony has not said if Blu-ray or DVD or both formats are the focus of the DOJ investigation. It is co-operating with the DoJ. If the DoJ finds that Sony is involved in price-fixing then a fine and product price cuts will surely follow. ®
COMMENTS
@David W.
America with a k, perfectly valid in Dutch, Swedish, Hungarian, and probably several other languages even if Goat Jam is ranting at MickeySoft, but he/she is spot on regarding the ‘merkins DOJ (do you object to ‘merkins as well David?).
"Justice Department" is "glaring" at Sony, what are they going to do to punish them, make them sit on the naughty step for half an hour? Not let them watch pokemon for a week?
Paris, she knows how to be naughty
@Goat Jam
Spelling America with a k is the crowning achievement of a royally idiotic post. Well done, sire.
A Title Is Born
Why is it that the so called U.S. "Justice Department" is able to "glare" at Sony over what is most likely mildly uncompetitive behaviour causing relatively low levels of damage while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room that is Microsoft?
If there is one company today that behaves in a more uncompetitive manner than Microsoft then I don't know what it is.
The damage that MS cause to business and industry across the entire planet is immense. The source of their obscenely huge annual profits is essentially a tax on individuals and business across the globe and the U.S. "Justice Department" completely ignores it.
Microsoft: US Corp raping the world = GOOD
Sony : Japanese Corp raping Amerikans = BAD
Fucking hypocrites
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