GigaOM Pro

Apple and the publishers facing antitrust charges from the Department of Justice may not have conspired on their respective responses to the government’s allegations, but they’re certainly singing form the same choir book on the case. Both Penguin and Macmillan, the two publishers fighting the government in court, filed formal responses to the charges on Tuesday that are remarkably similar in tone and substance to Apple’s response filed late last week. Like Apple, the publishers ridicule the government’s case as circumstantial and absurd. They also go to great lengths to try to paint Amazon as the villain of the piece, calling ot a “monopolist” and accusing it of “predatory pricing” in the e-book market prior to the entry of Apple. Whether that will prove a winning legal strategy I can’t say, but it certainly highlights the degree of bad feeling between book publishers and their largest customer.