Throwing the Book at Apple

[Commentary] Steve Jobs is remembered as the Thomas Edison of Silicon Valley, but Washington's trust busters would like to add one more legacy: That the Apple cofounder tried to suppress competition as the "ringmaster" of a conspiracy to fix digital book prices that nonetheless caused prices to fall.

At least that's the legal theory behind the federal show trial against Apple that got underway last week, which is incoherent even by the standards of modern antitrust. The Justice Department contends that Apple plotted with five publishers to artificially inflate the costs of books in 2009-2010. At the time, prior to the existence of the tablet device market that Jobs created with the iPad, Apple did not sell e-books. Amazon sold nine of every 10. Justice claims Jobs then forced Amazon and every other e-book distributor to adopt a new e-book pricing model that harmed consumers. Yet the average retail price for "trade" e-books has since dropped to $7.34 from $7.97, and Amazon's Kindle is still the industry leader with Apple trailing in third. Over the same period readers bought 447% more e-books, and they can choose from dozens of tablets for titles and other media content.