The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good article by Thomas Catan entitled Critics of E-Books Lawsuit Miss the Mark, Experts Say (link may expire). In it, Catan gives a pretty good overview of the Ebook “collusion” lawsuit and has some outstanding points about those who think the Department of Justice “got it wrong” (i.e. they went after the wrong company) and are really just puppets of Amazon:

U.S. antitrust law doesn’t seek to protect little companies against big ones, or even struggling ones against successful ones. Companies can grow as large as they want, as long as they do it through lower prices, better service or niftier innovations. Companies can even become monopolies, as long as they don’t get there illegally or try to extend their power by unlawfully stifling competition.

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“Price fixing is kind of the first-degree murder of antitrust violations,” Prof. Hovenkamp says. “They don’t have discretion to just walk away from what appears to be a strong set of facts that, if true, are one of the most central of antitrust violations.”

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The government might already have shown some leniency. For one, the Justice Department brought a civil, rather than a criminal, case, so no executives will go to prison.