Amazon in France
Defiant, Jeff Bezos says that Amazon is not going to comply with a French law that limits book discounts to 5%. He’s bound and determined to ship books for free. (IHT story here.) Bezos is paying the daily $1500 fine imposed by the Court of Bankruptcy of Versailles, which (prompted by trade unions) decided that free delivery was the same thing as a discount in disguise. And Amazon is collecting signatures on a petition to change the law.
Bezos has been planning this for years. When Amazon went into France in 2000, Newsweek reported:
Back in 1981 Minister of Culture Jack Lang, a voluble critic of American cultural imperialism, pushed through a law designed to protect small booksellers and publishers. It prohibits book discounts of more than 5 percent, and to this day the French still take the time to buy their books from local brick-and-mortar stores. Lang’s law will also impede Amazon, which wields deep discounts as its competitive edge. Says Gartner Group analyst Alexander Drobik, ‘I have to assume that Amazon people are betting that Lang’s law won’t last.’
Bezos is styling the law as “une tentative cynique d’éliminer la concurrence d’Amazon.fr,” which Babelfish tells me is a “cynical attempt to eliminate competition from Amazon.fr,” and asserts that if the law stays in place “France would be the only country in the world where the free delivery practiced by Amazon would be declared illegal.” Apparently comments accompanying the Amazon petition are not unanimous in support of Amazon - there is cynicism on all sides.
But here’s a blog post praising Amazon’s service: “I find this decision to be very important and very courageous because the Lang Law is anti-competitive.”
Perhaps instead of discussing the “Yahoo! France” case again this term, we’ll turn to the “Amazon France” case - market pressuring law.