What Kind of Competition Has Retail Price Maintenance for Digital Books Fostered?

Last week, news came out that the Justice Department was readying a petition to sue five of the largest publishing houses in North America along with Apple for colluding together to maintain artificially high prices for digital books.

This was initially instituted in January 2010 after Macmillan pulled its entire digital catalog from Amazon unless Amazon concede to these new terms. Under the new terms, Macmillan would set the prices for digital books and Amazon and every other retailer would n...