This is actually absurdly simple. If you don’t have an actual monopoly, you aren’t breaking any anti-trust laws.
In the case of the iBooks store, not only does Apple not have a monopoly, but people actively choose other book stores even on Apple’s own devices1. So if Apple wants to say “You need to make your content the same price across all stores in order to be in ours” they are perfectly legally free to do so because any publishers that joined them are free to say “Nope, we don’t want to” and choose one of several competing (and even larger) alternatives.
If Apple actually controlled the eBook market in such a way that the iBook store was the only way to get media, then there would be a problem. That’s not even close to happening right now.
So if Apple finally gets a monopoly in anything, then it might finally be time to finally investigate anti-trust laws.
I haven’t opened the iBook store more than 3-4 times when it first came out, after being disappointed by the selection. ↩
