E-book overkill

[Commentary] What the Department of Justice’s e-book lawsuit probably will do instead of restoring pricing competition is return to Amazon the power to monopolize the e-book market through predatory pricing to the detriment of publishers, authors and, ultimately, readers.

Who will really benefit from the Justice Department's lawsuit? Amazon, of course. As a company spokesman said in a statement about the case, "This is a big win for Kindle owners, and we look forward to being allowed to lower prices on more Kindle books." Amazon will gain a government-aided advantage over the competition. As Macmillan's Sargent said in a statement: "After careful consideration, we came to the conclusion that the terms [of the proposed settlement with Justice] could have allowed Amazon to recover the monopoly position it had been building before our switch to the agency model.” The Justice Department should have left things alone. Essentially, two titans — Apple and Amazon — clashed, and competition was working.

[Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University, and the author of "The Believing Brain" and other science books.]