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Except that isn't what happened.

Apple wanted to ensure its customers wouldn't be abused by premium prices and subsidizing Amazon or other devices. They insisted on best pricing in exchange for access to their customers. Apple didn't care what the pricing was, that was for publishers to determine for their books, it only wanted to make sure its customers got the best deal.

We see this all the time with Walmart and others commanding best prices from suppliers, for example. We even see it with nations' trading, Canada has been selling the US its oil at a substantial discount--something Obama's Keystone XL mess has jeopardized.

According to figures from last year, Amazon has 52-67% of the ebook market, Barnes & Noble has 20-22%. Apple operates out of that last piece of the ebook market.

What's really happening here is Democrats see a wildly successful capitalist venture, one which until recently has been hoarding billions in cash and they're looking for creative ways to get at those dollars and interfere in the emerging marketplace.

Amazon's monopoly position in ebooks and Godzilla position for bookselling generally meant fresh competition could only thrive if the rules changed and publishers had more control. Apple's platform offered publishers a bit of leverage to change their pricing model.

Price fixing depends on participants on the same side of the market to agree. However, in this case Apple is just an ebook reseller, not a publisher. Publishers set the pricing; Apple wasn't setting prices with Amazon & BN. It makes little sense to drag Apple into this case other than for notoriety and access to its deep pockets.

the problem is the publishes and apple all conspired in a coordinated attack to fix the prices. No free market. The publishers wanted a guarantee set minimum price and apple colluded with them to create a anti-capitalist monopoly.

If Amazon and Barnes and Noble only had say 10% of the market and Apple had over 75%, I'd agree with you.

But Apple is nowhere near close to having a true monopoly.

This isn't a business like say internet service providers where they are able to keep competitors out and they are free to all have nearly the same prices and they have the local politicians endorsing said monopolies - now that's an anti-capitalist monopoly (no surprise that they own liberal networks like NBC and CNN).

Hell, Apple's iBooks store has been around just over two years. When Amazon starts losing entire publishing catalogs to Apple, then let's talk. But I'm not seeing any major players deciding to only go with Apple just yet.

Exactly what is “anti-trust” over a producer (or in this case, publisher) to set a minimum price they will accept for their product (physical or electronic)? Again - in a truly free market - consumers are free to not buy.

We don’t need the DOJ to “protect” us - we just need to choose wisely how we spend our income. Nobody is forcing consumers to purchase books at all - much less the much vaunted “eBooks”, Kindle or otherwise.

And back to truly free market - publisher X demands certain prices. Sales plummet. Publisher either goes out of business, or changes business model.