[pwjone1]

The Agency pricing model, somewhat forced on Amazon by the major publishers in the U.S., definitely has aspects that are essentially price-fixing. If you tried to enforce the pricing on printed books, you'd put yourself in a somewhat "adverse legal environment", I'm not sure why that shouldn't also apply to eBooks. And the publishers pretty obviously acted in a collusive fashion, so Rico could probably come into play, monopoly laws, so the increased prices could be subject to treble damages (and not just on eBooks, but on physical books that were judged as sold because the eBook was priced too high). And the limitations on book resales, pretty much the same thing, since it's a further limitation beyond the physical model. It seeks to keep the backlist revenues higher, as via the Agency model, the eBook is still being priced higher than the paperbacks, although it's far cheaper to produce and distribute. Is this the next Tobacco or asbestos for U.S. lawyers, seeking to find a good case and a nice class action law-suit? Just might be. If they found a smoking gun in the form of some meetings of the book executives to discuss the Agency model and getting eBook pricing higher, and you know those went on privately and with Apple, you could pry those out as a lawyer with discovery and/or side-deals to admit it first and get a reduction of damages, then you would have all the elements. And you have the monopolistic act as each withdrew their eBooks from Amazon, until it caved. Just sue in a plaintiff friendly state, pick some kid or somebody trying to get through college by working, show how much they were damaged by the greedy publishers in NY and Boston, etc. Maybe some nice librarian saying how in tough times, they cannot afford to buy books, and eBooks would have been perfect, but the limitations just kept increasing the poor publicly funded libraries costs. You can almost see this one coming.