The European Commission (EC) has launched a probe on several European publishing houses, suspected of fixing the price of e-books, media reports said, quoting Amelia Torres, spokeswoman for Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia. According to Torres, the competition services conducted inspections in publishing houses in several EU countries on March 1, 2011, due to suspicion of anti-competition practices in the pricing of e-books.
Digital or e-books are a growing sector in publishing, with the sale of e-books on the Internet already exceeding that of traditional books. Several French publishing houses, including Albin Michel, Hachette, Flammarion and Gallimard, received visits from officials of the EC and the competition services, 01net.com, a high-tech computer portal, has reported.
The Commission's inquiry follows one opened last month in the UK over alleged e-book price-fixing there.
In the 1980s, the Commission had said that governments could fix the price of books on condition that it did not affect exchanges between member states. But e-books did not exist then. However, an agreement among editors to fix the price of books is prohibited by European regulations and, if proven to be true, could result in heavy fines.
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