This new "agency" model let the publishers price their books at $12, $13, or $14 a pop, perhaps more. Some books saw their prices jump over 50 percent, Judge Cote wrote in her opinion.

But Apple went even further. Selling ebooks at $14 might be nice for the publishers, but bad for Apple's business if Amazon were still selling the same titles for $9.99. So Apple proposed what's called a "most-favored nation" clause that made the new, higher prices conditional on there not being any other retailers selling the same books for less. The clause forced publishers to set the price at whatever the lowest price on the market was -- in this case, the same old $9.99 that, ahem, certain other companies were charging.

The publishers obviously weren't happy about this, because it put a great deal of pressure on them to end their wholesale agreement with Amazon.

"As Apple made clear to the publishers," Cote wrote, "'there is no one outside of us that can do this for you."

You can see where this is going. Not only was Apple's plan to raise ebook prices overall; its idea was to break Amazon's stranglehold over e-book pricing without getting its own hands dirty. In the words of Apple, the idea was to "move the whole market off [of] $9.99" simply by getting the publishers to act in their financial interest.

Apple maintains that it was never engaged in a conspiracy.

"We've done nothing wrong and we will appeal the decision," the company said Wednesday in a statement.

It's still unclear what the penalty will be for Apple; that's be the subject of another proceeding to follow. But if Apple and the publishers were the losers in this debate, individual consumers won big. And so did Amazon, which still holds an estimated 60 percent of the ebook market despite being at 90 percent in 2009.

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Brian Fung is a former technology writer at National Journal. Connect Twitter