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Since it was first accused of conspiring to raise the prices of e-books, Apple has maintained it didn’t care what sort of deals publishers arranged with other retailers, as long as they honored the terms of their agreement to sell books on its iTunes store. Apple’s lead counsel Orin Snyder claimed as much in his opening arguments in the Department of Justice’s e-book antitrust case against the company last week. “The negotiations make clear that the interests of the publishers and Apple were not aligned,” Snyder said. “Apple wanted lower prices on its own book store, and was indifferent to prices throughout the rest of the industry.”

But a new document entered into evidence June 12 by the DOJ suggests that Apple may not have been quite as indifferent to publishers’ deals with Amazon as it professes to be. It’s a Jan. 14, 2010, message from Steve Jobs to Eddy Cue, his point man for e-book negotiations, and in it he says he wants publishers to push Amazon to an agency pricing model where publishers, not retailers, set prices. “I can live with this as long as they move Amazon to the agent model too for new releases for the first year,” Jobs wrote. “If not, I’m not sure we can be competitive …” A smoking gun?

In the 60 years that television watching has dominated Americans' leisurely pursuits, the picture has twice been transformed: first from black and white to color; then from dull resolution to high definition.

Significantly, the change from conventional to HD resolution was accompanied by the switch from analog to digital delivery. On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the demise of analog TV broadcasting, it's fitting to compare how we responded to these key transitions. According to the Consumer Electronics Association, the first year that household penetration rates reached more than 50% was 1973 for color television and 2009 for HDTV. If you consider that color standards were agreed to and limited color broadcasting began in the mid-1950s and HDTV standards and limited broadcasts began in the late 1990s, it appears that Americans' embrace of color was a slow dance that took roughly two decades vs. just one for HDTV.

The major difference between the two transitions is that the shift to HDTV was mandated by the government and backed by a deadline, which though twice postponed, culminated in most television stations turning off their analog transmitters on June 12, 2009. Color broadcasting, on the other hand, was downwardly compatible. There was no need to get rid of your black and white TV or, as in the case decades later of owners of analog TV sets who wanted to receive over-the-air programs, buy a converter box.

[Commentary] I was disappointed to see that former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt has joined forces with opponents of the Commission's longstanding cross-ownership rules.

Hundt argues that greater media consolidation, including common ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market, should be permitted "in celebration of our commitment to freedom." Our commitment to freedom rests on informed citizens and a vibrant media. The "freedom to own the means of speech" that Hundt celebrates misses the entire point and purpose of the First Amendment. In my experience, freedom flourishes best when citizens have ready access to multiple sources of news and information, something they'd lose in many areas if Hundt gets his way on the cross-ownership rule.

Allowing ever-more monopolization of our media ecosystem will not celebrate "our commitment to freedom" - it will undermine liberty's staunchest sentinel, a vibrant press. Hundt may want to debate whether it is better to have the Koch Brothers or Rupert Murdoch owning the Tribune newspaper chain. I say neither.

[Commentary] It's puzzling to many observers why so many programmers don't make their content more widely available online. It seems like programmers are leaving money on the table. Shows that are available online are talked about more, watched more, and pirated less. Viewers are demanding easier access to shows that is not tethered to their home and does not require a cable subscription, yet the market is not delivering it. Why is this?

There are two big reasons. The giant content companies have a symbiotic relationship with cable. They sell programming exclusively to cable (and satellite) and charge a lot for it. This forces cable companies to raise their bills but, since they're the only source of programming people want, they're able to. There's nowhere to switch to. Only now, as cable bills are reaching unsustainable levels and cable companies are seeing that online video has the technological potential to become a competitor to cable, are some cable companies finally objecting publicly. The second reason is more subtle. Smaller programmers don't have the ability to dictate terms to cable companies the way some large ones do. But cable is their largest customer. If a large cable company tells an independent programmer that it can't distribute its content online, then the programmer has little choice but to comply. These issues highlight how concentrated markets prevent companies from responding to customer's needs. Concentration in the programming market leads to absurd situations like every cable subscriber, even non-sports fans, paying about $5 per month for ESPN. Concentration in the distribution market allows existing distributors to use threats and incentives to hold back the development of alternative distribution channels.