[pwalker8]

They are still trying to find the natural price points of ebooks. While it is true that ebooks are infinitely reproducible at trivial cost, the initial product, the book itself, is basically a one of a kind creation. Most people don't buy generic ebooks, they buy a specific book. So the question becomes what is the public willing to pay for that specific book? If you set it too high, then people decide it's not worth it and buy other ebooks by other authors/publishers. If you set it too low, then you don't make money and that publisher/author doesn't produce anymore books.

A concerted effort among parties involved to raise those prices doesn't imply an anti-trust situation. It's only anti-trust if the parties agree to a specific price point, or agree not to under sale each other. In addition those parties have to have a monopoly position. For example, it would not be an anti-trust situation if you and I got together and decided to only sale our self published ebooks for $10. If would be anti-trust if the major publishers did the same.

My understanding of the situation is that the publishers didn't get together as set a price, but rather they got together and forced Amazon to accept an agent pricing agreement, where the publishers set the price, not Amazon. Whether or not that is an anti-trust situation isn't really known.