There's a new ad on TV from Ama - er, um SPECTRE - touting their newly updated reading gizmo. You see a carefully chosen variety of 'civilians' sitting in a 'pseudo-living space', with fake walls and big chairs and they're reading on this flat piece of techonology and are simply ecstatic about the experience.
No, they're not reading books. They're reading files on a computer...
The camera pulls back at the end to show this little staged area is right in front of one of New York City's icons, the Flatiron Building. You'll recognize it - it is triangular but seems to be pretty flat, leaving you wondering what the offices and hallways inside it are like. It sits on a wedge of land point north, where Broadway and 5th Avenue intersect. This is mid-way between Wall Street and Central Park, pretty much dead center of the publishing center of the United States.
Coincidence?
Now - think back to the big lawsuit where the US government sued Apple and a raft of major publishers for collusion in setting e-book prices in an attempt to stop Ama - er, SPECTRE - from completely monopolizing the e-book market. And here's an ad about the wonders and joys of e-reading staged in the heart of American publishing.
Coincidence?
One last bit of this that eliminates any question of coincidence: the Flatiron Building is the home of St. Martin's Press, one of those publishers charged of collusion and the one more vociferously resisting to settlement, and most adamant about the dangers of what Ama - er, um SPECTRE was doing to publishing.
No, no coindence.
Just a bully sticking a finger into the eye of a foe.
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