[raino]

Apple found to have conspired to raise e-book prices - Jul. 10, 2013

The e-book publishers at issue -- CBS's (CBS, Fortune 500) Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Pearson's (PSO) Penguin Group, Macmillan and News Corp.'s (NWS) HarperCollins -- settled and didn't go to trial. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) held out, and the U.S. Department of Justice brought a civil antitrust suit against the company in 2012.

Well that hubris got smacked down...

[SCrid2000]

Um, yeah. I'd argue they did the same with music and movies.
The cost of distribution for digital goods is essentially nothing in comparison with costs of older mediums like books and VHS.

[raino]

I find it especially interesting that the other potential defendants (mind you, not mom-and-pop "publishers" who couldn't defend themselves due to a lack of legal funding) chose to settle, while one company chose to take it to trial...and got the verdict. Even Google has settled before, while not admitting guilt. I wonder if such an arrangement (including a hefty fine, of course) was made available to Apple, and who (Jobs/Cook) chose to still go to trial.

[SCrid2000]

I'm sure they got offered a similar deal, can't confirm it of course.
And they took it to trial cuz they thought they'd get a better deal. They probably counted on a biased jury.

[xandermac]

It won't make any difference. Publishers will continue to price their products the way they want and so they should, Amazon will continue to force competition, as they should. If it was a conspiracy to "raise" prices it was a remarkable failure tbh.

[raino]

If it was a conspiracy to "raise" prices it was a remarkable failure tbh.

The "raising prices" was done by the publishers (the ones that settled.) Apple didn't necessarily want prices raised as much as it wanted the model tilted in their favor so that they wouldn't lose out to Amazon's cutthroat competition. From Digital Trends' excellent recap,

The big publishers made a side deal with Apple to ensure that books in iBooks would always have the lowest price. If publishers adjusted a price lower for one bookstore, they had to adjust the iBooks price, too. Other bookstores didn't get that same deal. This kind of Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause isn't a new thing with the agency model. But, according to the DOJ, the way it "protect[ed] Apple from having to compete on price at all, while still maintaining Apple's 30 percent margin."

Is Apple the ultimate villain in e-book price fixing? | Digital Trends