The U.S. files anti-trust lawsuit against Apple

Yes that is right. Apple are getting used by the U.S. Hatchette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan Penguin and Simon & Schuster are also getting sued.


The reason for this? They have apparently been having a collude to fix eBook prices. Apple and Macmillan are both refusing to talk with the Justice Department because they say they are not guilty, and are even going as far as to say that they are helping the world of eBooks because Amazon have been dominating the market so far.

Not sure if they are guilty or not, but I actually doubt they (at least Apple) are.
Okay scratch that. Apparently (according to the lawsuit), the publishers were scared that Amazon would become a publisher for eBooks, and making regular publishers (such as themselves) less powerful. Ebook sales have risen a lot in the last year, and eBooks might even make regular books completely obsolete in the near future.

The publishers wanted to raise the price on eBooks but Amazon refused, so the publishers started to team up to force Amazon to raise prices (if only one of them asked for the prices raise they would lose customers themselves). It didn't work so what the publishers did was to work with Apple which gave the publishers control of the prices of the eBooks sold.

If this is true (sounds very reasonable) then the publishers are obviously guilty, and Apple are helping them commit the crime.

Source: Civil Cover sheet JS-44C/SDNY 12CV 2826