Apple to pay e-book buyers $450 million

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO

Apple will pay a $450 million settlement to e-book purchasers after the Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the company’s case against allegations it colluded with publishers to fix prices.

The antitrust case was filed by the Justice Department in 2012 and charged Apple with conspiring alongside five major publishers to raise the price of e-books months before the release of the iPad tablet in 2010. In order to beat Amazon, prosecutors argued that Apple and publishers agreed to raise e-book prices from $9.99 to as much as $14.99.

The case, which poured over evidence implicating the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, ended after the Court declined to hear the company’s challenge to a 2015 federal court decision siding with the government.

Apple declined to comment on the case.

“Apple’s liability for knowingly conspiring with book publishers to raise the prices of e-books is settled once and for all,” said Bill Baer, head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “And consumers will be made whole.”

Security experts also announced Monday that Apple has shut down a malicious software campaign targeting its Macintosh computers where hackers lock a user’s computer and then demand payment for the device’s release.

Cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks claim it is the first of its kind to successfully penetrate the Mac system using what is known as ransomware.

The ransomware spread through a popular peer-to-peer file sharing network called Transmission.

Transmission spokesman John Clay noted that the organization estimates only 6,500 computers were infected. Apple confirmed Monday that it had taken steps to eliminate the threat.

Computers running on the Microsoft-built Windows operating system have often fallen prey to hackers using ransomware, who usually demand payment through hard-to-trace digital currencies such as Bitcoin.

Last month, a hospital in Los Angeles paid hackers $17,000 to unfreeze its computer systems.