This angle of "why prosecute Apple when Amazon has the monopoly" is just lazy. Monopolies, which Amazon does not even have and is unlikely to gain, aren't illegal. Conspiring to raise prices is illegal. Amazon just has the potential to abuse consumers (maybe, possibly, in the future) due to their entirely legal success. Apple already did abuse consumers.
To be fair, any book a publisher wants sold DRM-free, Amazon sells DRM-free. Many publishers insist on DRM as a condition of sale. Your beef is with them, not Amazon.
And by the way, DRM is at the heart of this ebook conspiracy. One of the publishers' fears was that too many readers would be trapped in Amazon's ecosystem by DRM, giving Amazon too much leverage. The correct response to that problem is to drop the pointless, self-inflicted DRM (as some have started doing in response to the antitrust cases). Instead, the publishers chose to work with Apple to try and limit Amazon's power...
"Nous avons rencontré [Amazon] recemment pour comprendre cet ajout de DRM sur nos titres et en quoi consitait cette DRM un peu spéciale. [...Elle] embarque également une couche software qui active les fonctionnalités de l’ecosystème Amazon. La liste est variée mais passe du “Text to Speech” au “Facebook Connect” et toutes les prochaines évolutions d’Amazon. Et croyez moi, elle vont être nombreuses dans les mois à venir."
Quick translation: we (the publisher bragelonne) have met with amazon to understand why they added DRM to our books without our consent and what purpose this DRM served. [...] It contains a software part that enables various amazon features such as Text-to-speech or facebook connect as well as the many future evolutions.
Well, if the government will predictably use legal methods to prevent and even break up monopolies, that's indistinguishable from "monopolies being illegal" even if there is no explicit law that says that.
> Well, if the government will predictably use legal methods to prevent and even break up monopolies, that's indistinguishable from "monopolies being illegal" even if there is no explicit law that says that.
It is illegal to take certain acts that would form a monopoly (which is why the government blocks or puts terms on, e.g., some mergers) and it is illegal to use monopolies in certain ways to advance market power in other markets (one of the remedies for which may be breaking up the monopoly which was illegal leveraged.)
But simply gaining and maintaining a monopoly is not illegal, so long as you don't gain it by illegal methods or do illegal things with it.
A naturally earned monopoly is perfectly acceptable, because it is the result of market forces.
The DOJ only opposes mergers and acquisitions which would substantially alter market conditions to increase prices faced by consumers in a way that market forces would not normally support. For example--Verizon and AT&T could never merge, because their combined market power would effectively let them set whatever price they wanted for nationwide cell+data plans. On the other hand--Sprint and TMobile could merge, because without the merger both companies are in danger of failing but as a result of a merger could theoretically compete with Verizon and AT&T.
I'm not seeing the distinction between "market forces" and whatever other forces you're talking about. If Verizon and AT&T merged, how would that not be the result of market forces? Of course, that's a bad example, because there's already not a whole lot of market forces in telecoms since the government controls access to the airwaves.
