29 July 2013
By the time a federal judge ruled last week that Apple had illegally colluded with five of the so-called Big Six publishers to raise e-book prices, just about no one in the book business was surprised. All the publishers named in the lawsuit had already taken a long look at the uphill battle and the crippling legal bills and decided to settle. (Unlike Apple, book publishers have less cash than the United States Treasury.) The ruling seemed to be just the latest uplifting story for Amazon, whose dominance Apple and the publishers had been trying to curtail until the Department of Justice stepped in.