The Financial Times reports that Aurélie Filippetti, France's minister of culture, has made attacking Amazon for being a "quasi-monopoly" part of her portfolio of complaints about internet-based companies.
According to the story, Filippetti calls Amazon a "destroyer of bookshops," and says, "Today, everyone has had enough of Amazon which, through dumping practices, smashes prices to penetrate markets to then raise prices again once they are in a situation of quasi-monopoly."
Filippetti reportedly has said that the French government may consider outlawing free shipping by internet companies and even the discounting of books by online retailers.
The story goes on to say that "Her attack on the US company followed a veto last month by Arnaud Montebourg, the leftwing industry minister, of a proposed acquisition by Yahoo, the web portal, of a 75 per cent stake in DailyMotion, a fast growing French video sharing site owned by France Telecom.
"In April, the digital industries minister labelled Apple "extremely brutal" for excluding a French start-up from its App Store, complaining that the US company had acted unethically."
According to the story, Filippetti calls Amazon a "destroyer of bookshops," and says, "Today, everyone has had enough of Amazon which, through dumping practices, smashes prices to penetrate markets to then raise prices again once they are in a situation of quasi-monopoly."
Filippetti reportedly has said that the French government may consider outlawing free shipping by internet companies and even the discounting of books by online retailers.
The story goes on to say that "Her attack on the US company followed a veto last month by Arnaud Montebourg, the leftwing industry minister, of a proposed acquisition by Yahoo, the web portal, of a 75 per cent stake in DailyMotion, a fast growing French video sharing site owned by France Telecom.
"In April, the digital industries minister labelled Apple "extremely brutal" for excluding a French start-up from its App Store, complaining that the US company had acted unethically."
- KC's View:
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Sacre bleu!
I get that the French may be experiencing some economic issues these days, but denying the allure of the internet economy doesn't seem like a very smart way to get things jump-started.
And if Apple decided not to deal with a French start-up company, maybe it has something to do with not wanting to deal with the imbécile running the French ministry of culture.
(Though the good news is that just writing that sentence made me go to YouTube to watch the Monty Python sketch about the Ministry of Silly Walks, which seems just about as reasonable as something that ought to be called the Ministry of Stopping the Internet.)
