I can well believe, and I agree with your assessment of the problem. Publishers hamstring Kindle, and the "studios" dictate what happens with audio and video digital media.

It looks to me like Amazon's contracts all fix the single-unit prices rigidly, but they have flexibility with bulk pricing--seasons' worth of TV shows are sometimes heavily discounted. It's clear that the "studios" are protecting their bluray market by prohibiting online streaming or downloading of true HD: 1080. The best you can get anywhere is 1280x720p in TV shows, and never better than DVD grade in cinematic movies.

It's the contractual single-unit pricing that is so stubbornly arbitrary. For TV shows, it's $1.99 in low-def(480), $2.99 in medium-def (720)...for 20 minutes of a failed sitcom, or a two-hour pilot of a successful series that would qualify as a movie based on runtime. Same price on Amazon and iTunes.

They have a name for a situation like that...what's it called again? Mono...mononucleosis? Monogamy? No, that's not right.

It's a funny business. On the surface you can say that competition is fierce in the entertainment business. But because of copyright laws, the prize is a monopoly on a given work. If you own "Gone With the Wind", you own the only GWTW, and everybody pays your price or they can't have it. So entertainment is really a finely-sliced monopoly business, and a successful business strategy isn't directly the creation of good productions, it's the accumulation of a high-quality portfolio of copyrights.

Don't worry, Tom, I don't think that all monopolies need regulatin, only those that control a genuine necessity of life. You'll know we've become the land of bread and circuses if it can ever be sucessfully argued that entertainment is a necessity of life in America.