Macmillan books to go back up soon? Apple DRM - Update

I'm fascinated by what I see in a spin around the forums.

Those fearful that Amazon will have a monopoly and then raise e-book prices are thrilled Macmillan is forcing them to raise them now. :-).


NEWS
Apple and Amazon's Stanza
Amazon’s Stanza Bows To Apple’s E-book Sharing Request

Does Apple’s iBooks ambition mean a new DRM regime for existing
e-book app makers? Less than a week after the new iBooks store was
announced alongside the iPad, the Amazon-owned Stanza iPhone e-books
app has released an upgrade, the version notes for which read:

“Removed ability to share books via USB as required by Apple.”

Oddly, the WiFi sync feature remains.

    Macmillan books status
TheBookseller reports that

' As one editor at a London publishing house put it: "Whatever happens in the US will dictate what happens elsewhere in the world." Some publishers sensed Amazon was gearing up for a legal fight with its use of the word "monopoly" in its response, posted on a Kindle forum.

But the suggestion that Amazon.com has been defeated has been rejected by some. Forrester's James McQuivey notes on Paid Content that Amazon "wins in the short run and the long run", given that it will now make money from sales of Macmillan's books on the Kindle, while Macmillan may lose sales, forcing it to bring prices down again.
  "In that future, Amazon will make more money than it does now. At that point, even if prices come back down to $9.99, Amazon will be making $3.30 from each book sold. . . And publishers will make less money than before on each book sold."

Meanwhile, despite Amazon.com's public climbdown, there is still no firm indication when it will begin selling Macmillan US' titles again. As Publishers Lunch reported: " They only said they would do so 'ultimately'. Does that really mean 'in early March' when Macmillan's new terms become effective, or slightly thereafter when the iPad launches, or sometime far sooner?"

On the other hand, Pub Rants writes

' Talking with Macmillan editors, I hear that John Sargent has a meeting this afternoon with Amazon and that the company is “optimistic” that links will be back up by tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ve been assured that the conversation is continuing. '