The publishers named in the suit insisted on agency pricing, which did in fact allow them to control the price of their own ebooks. What got them in trouble was all of them doing that at the same time.

eBook prices are fluid in that there is no price stamped on a physical cover, so they can be changed as often as whoever is setting the price likes. That doesn’t mean they can’t be controlled.

Words fail when I try to express my contempt for Obama’s DOJ. It’s classic Chicago Machine politics. The current DOJ is using the power of the federal government to reward political friends (here Amazon) and destroy their competitors (Apple). The losers are the book buying public, along with authors and publishers of all sizes.

And as for that ‘most favored nation’ pricing, Amazon has set precisely the same ‘no lower price than our’s’ conditions along with something far more chilling, rewarding those who sell their ebooks only through Amazon. Apple does not try to get authors to publish only through the iBookstore. Amazon does (Amazon Select). The latter sounds remarkably like restraint of trade.

Apple also actively supports Smashwords, which distributes ebooks to multiple retail outlets (B&N, Sony, Kobo, as well as Apple), while Amazon is hostile toward Smashwords authors, only grudgingly accepting a few of the bestselling ebooks from it.

Like I said, words fail me when I try to express my loathing for the current DOJ. That loathing is only exceeded by my contempt for a news media that refuses to expose its corruption.