Apple's Violation of Antitrust Law, Explained in 6 Bullet Points
To understand today's ruling against Apple, we have to take a
look at Amazon. A commuter reads on his Kindle e-reader as a
subway train arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 18,
2011. (Reuters)  In a major rebuke, a federal judge has ruled
that Apple violated antitrust laws when it conspired with book
publishers to raise the price of ebooks. The 160-page opinion,
delivered by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, finds that Apple
"brilliantly played its hand" as the ringleader of an attempt to
re-engineer the entire ebook industry.  Had Apple gotten away
with it, the plan could have resulted in the rest of us paying
significantly more for electronic literature. But the case was
never really about Apple. To understand how and why this played
out like it did, we need to start with Amazon. Here goes, in six
bullet points:     • At the turn of the decade, Amazon was
selling ebooks for as low as $9.99 a pop -- a fantastic deal for
consumers, but not