Top Apple exec: 'I knew [ebook] prices were going to go up – hell, the whole world knew'

Jail time.

This is precisely why making Executies/Directors personally liable for criminal acts is long overdue.

Evidence please

If Cue wants to accuse publishers, that is fine - if he provides sufficient evidence for a conviction. Without that, he shouldn't complain that Apple was u̲̲n̲̲f̲̲a̲̲i̲̲r̲̲l̲̲y̲̲ singled out. Nothing prevented Apple from going to authors directly and offering a deal that is fair to authors and customers, like Baen or they could have tried something really innovative like unglue.it.

The $450m penalty won't be a crippling financial blow for Apple

Well, multiply it by a few hundred and see if the buggers finally start taking the law seriously.

The COOL thing

The cool thing about real books is that families and other subsequent buyers get to keep the ones they like. Our children might just think of us when they see the notes we made in them, too.

"Cue freely admits Apple worked with publishers to fix the prices readers paid for ebooks, but argues Apple was being unfairly singled out when all it really wanted to do was bring electronic copies to the (paying) masses."

So by that reckoning Lee Harvey Oswalds lawyers could have said that, yes, he shot JFK but he was really doing us all a favour because JFK was a bit of a troublemaker\man whore and nearly caused WW3 over the Cuban missile crisis\drove Marilyn Monroe to suicide so by killing him, LHO was helping to secure world peace\chastity for movie starlets.

Seems airtight to me.

Breaking the law is breaking the law, fictional "good" (I use the world VERY loosely when in the same sentence as Apple) intentions mean nothing. How can you possibly expect to have a court decision overturned when you simply admit that your company commited a criminal act, "Cue freely admits Apple worked with publishers to fix the prices", and then try to justify it by saying it was for the altruistic\humanitarian reasons we all know Apple are famous for?

And I agree with Tromos. Give them a proper fine, $4.5 billion minimum, and 50% of their book sales profits for 5 years. Also go after the publishers and gift them with similar fines.

These bell ends only care about money so they need to be hit hard in the only place it hurts. Only when they are finally hit hard enough that it hurts will they start to change.

Real Printed Books

Screw ALL the ebook crap. This only serves to enrich those that provide them like Amazon or Apple, NOT the author or the bookstores.

A real book helps to support jobs in many markets including more renumeration for the authors than the skinflints at Amazon or Apple want to pay.

With a real book; you have the the author, the publisher, the retailer, the ink and paper manufacturers, the binders and printers, the shippers, etc, etc.

Manufacturers need to stop looking at employees like they are overhead, just because any "savings" from creating electronic media versus print media only go towards the big corporations pockets.

Real jobs that pay real wages are a boost to the economy and even the employers, not a drain.

If everyone is on welfare, they can't buy your product and there would be an increase in corporate taxes to help pay for the welfare.