Pundits wondered why Apple went to trial at all in the price-fixing case brought by the U.S. Justice Department. The publishers settled out of court in an admisison of guilt, didn't they? So that means the case has merit and Apple is going to lose?
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Price fixing implies an intent to artificially raise prices and gouge the consumer, but Apple plans to demonstrate that its "agency model" for e-book pricing actually resulted in lower prices.
The Justice Department wants to prove that Apple got together with the publishers who were being battered by Amazon's attempt to create a monopoly (once Amazon succeeds, Justice will be all over it, but until then, it's all about Apple) and set the price of e-books.
That, the law says, is non-competitive and it's competition that forces prices lower and benefits the consumer. It benefits book sellers as well, assuming that readers buy books within the context of a book-buying budget and will buy until it is all spent.
Apple has claimed that the publishers came to them to work out some sort of deal that would rein in Amazon, which had already set a price on e-books at $9.99 whether the publishers liked that price or not. Because Amazon was the biggest seller of e-books at the time, the publishers felt helpless and so they turned to Apple to ride in on a competitive horse and save digital publishing.
Why is Apple tackling this trial rather than settling?
Could it be that they want to expose Amazon's business practices as monopolistic and more worthy of government intervention than the "agency model"?
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