French minister accuses Amazon of ‘dumping’

“Gravedigger
of book shops”

Filippetti
came down hard on the world’s largest internet department store: “Everyone is fed up with Amazon, who maintains dumping prices to conquer
a market and then raises those prices once it has achieved an almost-monopoly”,
she said. The minister of culture is even thinking about making free shipments
illegal and is threatening to suspend the current system, which allows
discounts of 5% on the fixed prices of books.

Aurélie
Filippetti made her speech in Bordeaux, where the French government unveiled a
support plan of nine million euro for publishers and book shops. “This is an unparalleled effort for books and reading, because without independent
book shops there will be fewer publishers and fewer authors, and thus less choice
for the reader and less social networks in cities”, said the minister.

Internet
(companies) as the public enemy?

The swipe
of Filippetti is not the first and probably not the last attack of Paris
towards internet companies. Recently there was also the contested plan toraise a tax on digital devices and services, to great displeasure of Apple and
Samsung.

Not a month
later minister of economy Montebourg used his veto when France Telecom wanted
to sell three quarters of its fast-growing French video website DailyMotion to
Yahoo, after he had earlier described Apple as “extremely brutal” and “unethical”,
because a French start-up was declined access to the App Store.

Even
president Hollande seems to be joining in: earlier this year he personally put
pressure on Google to invest sixty million euro in the ailing French press. Without that investment, Google would be forced to give up part of their income received
through links to French media.

Skype, the
phone service of Microsoft, is also the subject of an investigation, because
the Americans refuse to register as telecom operator.