I don't really understand the details of the law either but the FTC went though the deal between Quidsi and Amazon very closely and took over 4 months to approve the deal. They decided it was okay because it wasn't creating a monopolistic environment because places like Cosco, Target and Walmart were similarly selling diapers - online and off.

IMO, this shows how far behind the FTC and all government is with dealing with internet things. The way I see it, it absolutely created a monopoly in the world on online retail. Target and Walmart and Cosco aren't even close - especially when you consider the automatic / monthly repeating nature of what Diapers.com and Amazon Mom were doing.

However, because the government was/is so far behind is why we have such huge innovations and pretty amazing online companies today. This is in part to the lack of regulations I think: Amazon avoided paying sales tax for 10+ years which allowed it to lower prices, grow faster and compete toe to toe with established retail spaces even though, when Amazon started, people had never put their CC information into a computer before.

The reason Apple got hit with it is also explained in detail in the book. Here's a short version:

Amazon decided independently to price their ebooks for Kindle at $9.99 (following Apple's success with the 99 cent song - remember this was only a couple years after itunes/ipod masterpiece happened.)

Apple got together WITH THE BIG 6 PUBLISHERS and decided TOGETHER that they would all raise the prices. It had less to do with pricing and more to do with collusion. Jobs further dug himself a bit of a hole because he bragged about this move to press and it was published in his biography, which made them an easy target.

If you want to read more in depth about it, I'll pm you the 5 page excerpt from the book about the whole mess. It's pretty interesting.