Free Shipping is a Crime, Amazon. Deal with It.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Amazon.com has run afoul of a French law that basically makes free shipping a crime. On Monday it said it will continue to ship books for free in France and take a €1000 (or nearly $1500 at the time of this writing) a day fine.

The Lang Law (81-766 August 10, 1981) says that the selling price of books must be indicated by the editor on the cover, and that any retailer is required to sell the work at a price ranging between 95% and 100% of that price. This system is designed to prevent independent booksellers from being forced out of business by large discounters (just look at how many independent booksellers have gone out of business in the United States).

Last month a union of French bookstores sued - and won - over the free shipping on orders over €20. The argument was the free shipping effectively lowered the price of books outside of the Lang Law limits. The union was awarded €100,000 and Amazon.com was ordered to start charging for shipping.

Amazon.com went so far as to post a petition, supposedly written by Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO, on their French website; naturally no one wants to give up free shipping so it has received tons of responses.

Amazingly, Google Translate did a decent job with the translation.

Incredible as it may seem, free delivery at Amazon.fr is threatened. Amazon.fr is indeed ordered to pay a fine of 1000 euros per day because it offers free delivery of books to its customers. This fine is the preliminary result of a lawsuit brought by a syndicate of booksellers. We chose to appeal against this decision and to pay the fine in order to continue to offer delivery to our customers.

The prosecution of the union are neither more or less than a cynical attempt to eliminate competition (from) Amazon. Com. The legal argument is based on the union Lang law, which restricts price cuts on the books offered by retailers. The irony of this tactic is that the law Lang aims to preserve the diversity of cultural creation and give booksellers ways to offer a wide selection of books, not just the best-sellers.

Bezos also indicated that France would be the only country in which free shipping would be illegal for Amazon.com.

As indicated, Amazon.com has appealed, but they must continue to pay the fine, and after 30 days the judge can choose to either extend, raise - or lower - the fine.