by Maisie Allison
The DOJ is suing five major publishers and Apple for allegedly colluding to raise e-book prices "in order to retaliate against Amazon’s discounting." Yglesias isn't fazed by the charges:
[T]he only way for these firms to stay viable is to publish books people like and to sell them at a price readers want to pay. Whether they merge, collude, or simply find a convenient confluence of interests around Apple’s efforts to compete with Amazon, there’s no real threat to competition here. Literary culture, for better or for worse, is dealing with a radically transformed business landscape. The Justice Department is, at best, irrelevant to this process.
Three of the publishers have already settled with the DOJ. More on the case here and here.
The Dish 