One company cannot "price fix" by itself unless it has a monopoly at some distribution level. If each publisher decided on its own whether to sell or not sell to Amazon based on Amazon's $9.99 maximum pricing model, there would be no problem. If enough of them did that independently and that limited Amazon's supply that would be legal too. The illegality happens when they colluded to lean on Amazon. That hasn't been legal for over a century. The question isn't whether everyone thinks Amazon or Apple has a better pricing model or which is fairer to buyers or even who makes money from it. The collusion was the illegal part.
Apple also stipulated that publishers couldn't let rival retailers sell the same book at a lower price.
Manufacturers setting a minimum retail price walks a very, very fine line based on recent court decisions about whether a manufacturer could limit what price a retailer can sell their product for. A lot of luxury goods manufacturers try to set minimum sale prices to keep the "riff-raff" from selling at a discount. But having one retailer insisting that the manufacturers set a minimum retail price to aim at another retailer's sales method looks pretty illegal to me.
Amazon played tough in the market. Apple and the publishers look like they colluded.
BUMP