That's a job for a few faculty members or consultants maintaining school's own site with those courses, not a business.
For one school. Of course, each school has a few courses, making the offerings fairly limited. Coursera can provide a more attractive destination for students with a wider variety of courses from different schools, which in turn draws more eyes to each school's courses. And, it lets the faculty members focus on the teaching part, and the business specialized in the delivery end (which can do the delivery more efficiently) do the delivery. (They can effectively be the consultants you describe, but instead of doing separate sites for each school, they are realizing efficiencies and reaching a broader audience with a consolidated site.)
Which likely means it would also work well as an outsourced operation serving the various schools whose courses are provided. Which may be the eventual revenue model, especially if one views free courses as a form of marketing for the schools.
The only time I've ever heard of IQ tests being used for scholastic purposes (other than students doing research) is determining the type and degree of learning disabilities.
Even if that is the only use for scholastic purposes, it is a use for scholastic purposes, and so refutes the blanket claim that tests used for scholastic purposes do not measure how "smart" people are.
I don't know about Google Music, though. Maybe it is actually built on top of GDrive?
Its more likely that Google Music and the forthcoming Drive are built on the same low-level cloud storage layer that underlies many of Google's cloud offerings -- like Docs, the Cloud Storage API, and many others.
Its unlikely that Music or any of the others are built on Drive.
You may think that nobody is using it, but it is actually quite widespread service. Of course, Microsoft also offers it for Office and other business users with actual SLA, unlike Google.
Well, Google doesn't offer Google Drive at all yet. I don't know what the basis is for assuming that when they do, they won't offer it to to paid users with an SLA as they already do for similar services (notably including the Cloud Storage API.)
SkyDrive will also be directly integrated into Windows 8, which will most likely bring them millions of users.
Yeah, if only Google had a widely used consumer operating system with which they could bundle Google Drive.
Everybody gets this confused. All standardized tests for scholastic purposes measure achievement or potential achievement, not how "smart" someone is.
IQ tests are used for scholastic purposes. They pretty expressly are intended to measure how "smart" someone is.
(Plus, a number of tests that are intended to measure potential acheivement have results that correlate very strongly with IQ, which suggests that, intentionally or not, they also measure how smart you are. Which shouldn't be surprising, since "potential acheivement" and "being smart" are very closely linked concepts -- even if actual acheivement and being smart are more distantly related concepts.)
The NET in Net Neutrality implies Internet. When comcast is delivering you a Netflix/Hulu/Vudu etc. stream, they're pulling it from the open Internet to deliver it to you. When you're using their app, the can deliver the same content completely over their own network.
Which is part of the internet, which is a network of networks. More importantly, favoring their own services over competing services is one the things that is specifically addressed by the FCC's rules commonly referred to as "net neutrality" rules (FCC 10-201, Report and Order "In the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industry Practices", Adopted December 21, 2010), e.g., at paragraph 75: "In evaluating unreasonable discrimination, the types of practices we would be concerned about include, but are not limited to, discrimination that harms an actual or potential competitor to the broadband provider [...]".
There are two large, very real problems with Google Drive. For starters Google has a long history of abandoning projects after they fail to gain users on them. This would be a huge problem with cloud storage like Google Drive.
Insofar as that is true, that history includes doing so with a long warning before cutting off access and with quite good support for outbound migration, so I don't see why it would be much of a rational concern. Further, the kind of cloud storage user interface being provided is a pretty trivial layer on top of the cloud storage backend that underlies many other Google services that its a pretty low risk of it being discontinued.
I also fail to see why this would get any good amount of users even if Google did advertise it correctly - unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new.
Neither web search engines, web-based email, or web-based video hosting were anything new when Google's search engine, Gmail, or YouTube (which wasn't Google's when it was introduced) were introduced. Nevertheless, each managed to do quite well.
Free-to-start, generous quota, and zero-effort (or close to it) signup if you already have a Google Account, by themselves, will get them some users. Actually having some interesting distinguishing features compared to other cloud storage providers would obviously be important to getting substantially more users. The most obvious opportunity I see for Google here is integration with Google Docs.
Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid.
How?
They already know so much - hell, they track Slashdot too.
Tracking slashdot may be evidence of inefficient use of resources, but its hardly an argument in support of "they know too much!" scaremongering.
On top of that Google has serious problem with anti-competition regulators and this is just going to make those issues worse when Dropbox and other companies will demand Google to stop leveraging their search engine against them.
Well, it might cause problems in that regard, if there was evidence that Google was illegally leveraging anything against competitors in the cloud storage space. Then again, as I discuss below, it probably wouldn't even then.
They already have this problem in other markets.
Winning in two different markets to the extent where established players in one feel that its worth their effort to complain that you are leveraging your market position in one to dominate the other is the exact opposite of a "problem" for the firm that is in that position.
It might lead to a problem if you actually were doing something that was likely to produce a signficant restraining action from some government, but as many other firms have demonstrated (notably Microsoft in the software market), even actually illegally leveraging a monopoly in one market to monopolize another rarely results in any remedy that is either timely enough to make any substantial impact on the utility of the action, or significant enough to outweigh the benefits you gain from doing it.
While you're 100% correct about copyright being automatic (at least in the US) with respect to the implementation of the language, the question here is if that also applies to the language itself.
Copyright is automatic in US law for anything that is a copyrightable work in US law. The only question is whether a programming language, as such, is a copyrightable work -- if it is, every programming language is copyrighted at the instant it is first created (a work being "created", in US copyright law, "when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time" -- 17 USC Sec. 101.)
Of course, the fact that the language -- as opposed to a description or implementation of the language -- is an abstraction that cannot be set in a fixed form makes it impossible for it to be "created" as defined in copyright law, but also makes it outside the scope of what is subject to copyright in the first place.
This would be a fairly new thing. Langauges like C and Pascal, for example, had zillions of different implementations each the copyright of their respective creators, but no one "owned" the language itself. (i.e. UCSD didn't pay Wirth for Pascal, Borland didn't pay Ritchie for C)
If programming languages were copyrightable works, then somebody has owned each of those languages from the moment they were created, even if, to date, they've been fairly lax in enforcing their rights against others who use the languages without permission, either directly or by creating derivative languages of their own.
(If the courts were to accept Oracle's position, I suspect that a lot of that laxness would end swiftly.)
Why didn't Oracle sue over trademarks? It worked well for Sun v Microsoft.
Yes, it did. Which is why Google's work that doesn't meet the standards for using Java trademarks didn't use Java trademarks.
Which would make it hard for Oracle to sue over trademarks. Although, I suppose, not all that much harder than trying to sell their idea of copyrightability of programming languages.
Copyright is not something that you "do". Copyright is something that you "have." You own the full right to copy any works which you create. There is no process to be granted copy right, it is a natural artifact of the creation process.
True, but, OTOH, most legal remedies for copyright violations are not available (except in the case of live broadcasts, which have slightly different rules) unless the owner has registered the copyright before the lawsuit is initiated (or attempted to register the copyright and had the Copyright Office refuse the registration.) One of the requirements for a registration is deposit of one (or more, depending on the kind of work) copies of the copyrighted work with the copyright office.
Now, certainly, Oracle has no doubt registered the copyright on the Java language specification (which is a well-defined fixed-from expression in language of what Java does) and their Java language implementation (which again is a well-defined fixed-form expression.) But I'd like to see evidence that prior to filing suit against Google, they registered copyright on the Java language, as such. Particularly, I'd like to see the desposited copy of the language.
(Of course, no such thing exists, because a language is an abstraction and not something which could be set in fixed form and deposited; of course, the fact it is an abstraction that can't be set in fixed form is also among the reasons its outside the scope of copyright in the first place.)
As I said in another post Java is not a derived work of either C or C++.
Its not, because computer programming languages are clearly outside of the scope of copyrightable works, and derivative works are a subset of copyrightable works. But, if Oracle's argument that computer programs was correct, and no other change was made to the law as it exists, its pretty hard to see how Java could be anything but a derivative work of C++ (and possibly other pre-existing programming languages.) The same is even more clearly true (and potentially even more problematically true for Oracle) of Oracle's particular variant of SQL.
To be a derived work, simply speaking, the original still needs to be a part of it.
This is, Simply speaking, baloney. The original work does not need to be "part of" a derivative work. The definition fo a "derivative work" in US Copyright law is (17 USC Sec. 101):
A âoederivative workâ is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a âoederivative workâ.
A transformation of an existing work -- or more than one, together -- is a derived work, and adding elaborations to that transformation doesn't stop it from being a derived work; if languages were copyrightable works, that taking pieces of languages A, B, C, and D, (say, C, C++, Smalltalk, and Mesa, for example), combining and transforming them, and adding elaborations to them, would be a derived work of all four predecessors.
This is, of course, not the case, because programming languages aren't copyrightable works.
Would a clean room implementation of a published API be considered copyright infringement? First of all: APIs are not copyrightable.
Neither are programming languages. In fact, the entire reason for Oracle's claim about copyrightability of programming languages is directly and intimately tied to their claim about copyrightability of APIs.
Of course Java can't be copyrighted, but Go, Renderscript and the Android library interface can be copyrighted?
Actually, Google's brief on the copyrightability of programmingly languages notes that Google created Go and several other languages, that it claims copyright on the implementation of those languages (and makes them available under open-source licenses), but that it does not purport to license the languages themselves because the languages are not subject to copyright.
IANAL, but on the other hand, if no computer language or library API can enjoy copyright protection, then it appears to me that it doesn't have GPL or Creative Commons protection either
Since all those are just copyright licenses, why would it need "protection" if it wasn't subject to copyright in the first place?
since being required to follow these licences follows from the copyright holder's discretion)...
Yes, Google's position is that you can use the English-language description of what Go does and create your own Go implementation and not be bound by the license on Google's Go implementation.
Google isn't particularly worried about this cutting into the revenue they derive from distribute their Go implementation at no charge under an open-source license, for reasons that should be painfully obvious.
Be careful what you wish for google...
I think Google understands what they are asking for here and its implications quite well. Oracle, on the other hand...well, let's just say an inquiry into the derivation of Oracle's implementation of SQL in their flagship database product, or the derivation of Java, might not be pleasant for Oracle if programming languages were held to be copyrightable.
Uhhh well, they should. I mean Oracle's PL/SQL is an extension of SQL which, would be copyrighted by someone from the long long ago.
More importantly than PL/SQL, Oracle's SQL is an implementation of SQL, a language they didn't invent (PL/SQL is a procedural languages -- hence the PL -- used for stored procedures, triggers, etc., not the main DDL/DML/query language of the DB.)
In the end, that later kind of sensor isn't pedestrian friendly either (pedestrians too have to cross streets) thus they aren't used around here anymore.
Frequently, intersections also have a push-button pedestrian crossing input so that they respond to the presence of pedestrian traffic as well as vehicle traffic.
Those can be a kind of fallback for those on bikes, though they are pretty inconvenient in that role (especially, e.g., in a multilane intersection where you intend to make a left turn.)
Sure, but you could more say that Borders killed Borders by a series of short-sighted business moves, starting by outsourcing their online sales to Amazon, their online competition, and by failing to effectively compete with their competition in the brick and mortar book retailing market.
My take is that they seem to be a stalking horse for whoever has the most influence in government.
I think it is almost a tautology to say that the government represents the interests of whoever has the most influence in government (a more precise statement might be that government represents the combined interests of all people, weighted by each person's degree of influence over government.)
Apple provided a competing service that included letting the publishers set the final price because Apple was just running the service, not setting any prices. So the only real collusion possible would be if publishers agreed together to set a certain minimum price for ebooks in general (something not shown yet).
That's exactly what is alleged in the complaint. Its "not shown" in the sense that this is usually the case when a lawsuit is filed, since you tend to have the trial and presentation of the detailed evidence after the lawsuit is filed rather than before, but the complaint is pretty specific on the acts and communications involved in the collusion among the publishers to raise prices and Apple's active role once it became involved in that effort.
No, the DOJ action is not about ebooks costing more than paper books, or even that the cost of ebooks is 'too high'. The DOJ action is about Apple conspiring with the publishers to ensure that Apple does not have to compete with anyone on price. That is illegal.
That would be illegal, but that's not at all what the case is about. The cases is a number of large publishers colluding to jointly raise prices on ebooks by coordinated application of market power. Apple is involved because they allegedly became involved as something of a co-conspirator after the collusion began (and their involvement became a key factor in the collusion actually working, though without them its quite likely that the publishers would have found or formed another retail outlet to fill the same role.)
If Amazon wants to charge the consumer less than what they have to pay the publisher for each copy sold then I'm pretty sure they can.
No, they can't (well, they'll soon be able to for books from the three publishers that settled, but only as a result of the settlement), since the whole point of the collusion charged here was for the involved publishers to cooperate together and use some other retail outlet (which turned out to be Apple, but the collusion and plan existed between the publishers before Apple's bookstore existed) to provide leverage to force Amazon to accept the agency model in which the publishers, not the retailer (Amazon), set the price for sale to consumers, and that this effort was successful immediately after the iBooks store opened.
The question is whether or not Apple participated in the price fixing.
Assuming the specific allegations (including the direct quotes from e-mails and other documents) in the complaint are true, they were deeply and actively involved in the collusion to raise prices, and actively pushed the usefulness to the publishers or entering into an agreement with Apple to advance there existing collusion in that regard as a selling point to get the publishers signed up.
Given those facts, it seems odd to be suing Apple.
Well, yes, if the things you cited were the only relevant facts, it would be odd.
Apple isn't the focus of the case. The key illegal behavior and basis of the suit is the action of the five colluding publishers that began before Apple entered the ebook game. Apple is charged, too, but they are involved as a collaborator in an illegal scheme hatched by the charged publishers, not as the instigator.
They are asking why prices went up from $9.99 to $14.99 uniformly for ebooks sold by publishers after Apple entered the market. New competition is supposed to drive prices down not up. Costs didn't go up. Demand didn't go up. Supply did not go down. Ebooks didn't suddely become longer or increase in quality. The only thing that changed was that the publishers met with Apple and set prices.
No, they aren't asking a question about why it happened, nor are they inferring a conspiracy merely from the absence of some other explanation.
They are alleging a very specific conspiracy with the intent of jointly raising prices by implementing the agency model as a universal norm that was agreed to by publishers before Apple tried to enter the market, that Apple was brought into and actively participated in for its own gain, and that the publishers worked together to protect when Amazon pushed back after Apple entered the market.
Specific communications between the colluding publishers and specific actions in furtherance of the conspiracy are alleged.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when are teachers with any relationship to the students involved in standardized tests, except as proctors?
No.
Facilitating online course delivery is not just hosting content on a web page.
Software isn't the only component here
For one school. Of course, each school has a few courses, making the offerings fairly limited. Coursera can provide a more attractive destination for students with a wider variety of courses from different schools, which in turn draws more eyes to each school's courses. And, it lets the faculty members focus on the teaching part, and the business specialized in the delivery end (which can do the delivery more efficiently) do the delivery. (They can effectively be the consultants you describe, but instead of doing separate sites for each school, they are realizing efficiencies and reaching a broader audience with a consolidated site.)
Which likely means it would also work well as an outsourced operation serving the various schools whose courses are provided. Which may be the eventual revenue model, especially if one views free courses as a form of marketing for the schools.
In fact, none of the patents were invalidated by the Copyright Office (which, as the name suggests, is concerned with copyrights rather than patents.)
Several were, however, invalidated by the Patent and Trademark Office.
Even if that is the only use for scholastic purposes, it is a use for scholastic purposes, and so refutes the blanket claim that tests used for scholastic purposes do not measure how "smart" people are.
Its more likely that Google Music and the forthcoming Drive are built on the same low-level cloud storage layer that underlies many of Google's cloud offerings -- like Docs, the Cloud Storage API, and many others.
Its unlikely that Music or any of the others are built on Drive.
Well, Google doesn't offer Google Drive at all yet. I don't know what the basis is for assuming that when they do, they won't offer it to to paid users with an SLA as they already do for similar services (notably including the Cloud Storage API.)
Yeah, if only Google had a widely used consumer operating system with which they could bundle Google Drive.
IQ tests are used for scholastic purposes. They pretty expressly are intended to measure how "smart" someone is.
(Plus, a number of tests that are intended to measure potential acheivement have results that correlate very strongly with IQ, which suggests that, intentionally or not, they also measure how smart you are. Which shouldn't be surprising, since "potential acheivement" and "being smart" are very closely linked concepts -- even if actual acheivement and being smart are more distantly related concepts.)
Which is part of the internet, which is a network of networks. More importantly, favoring their own services over competing services is one the things that is specifically addressed by the FCC's rules commonly referred to as "net neutrality" rules (FCC 10-201, Report and Order "In the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet
Broadband Industry Practices", Adopted December 21, 2010), e.g., at paragraph 75: "In evaluating unreasonable discrimination, the types of practices we would be concerned about include, but are not limited to, discrimination that harms an actual or potential competitor to the broadband provider [...]".
Insofar as that is true, that history includes doing so with a long warning before cutting off access and with quite good support for outbound migration, so I don't see why it would be much of a rational concern. Further, the kind of cloud storage user interface being provided is a pretty trivial layer on top of the cloud storage backend that underlies many other Google services that its a pretty low risk of it being discontinued.
Neither web search engines, web-based email, or web-based video hosting were anything new when Google's search engine, Gmail, or YouTube (which wasn't Google's when it was introduced) were introduced. Nevertheless, each managed to do quite well.
Free-to-start, generous quota, and zero-effort (or close to it) signup if you already have a Google Account, by themselves, will get them some users. Actually having some interesting distinguishing features compared to other cloud storage providers would obviously be important to getting substantially more users. The most obvious opportunity I see for Google here is integration with Google Docs.
How?
Tracking slashdot may be evidence of inefficient use of resources, but its hardly an argument in support of "they know too much!" scaremongering.
Well, it might cause problems in that regard, if there was evidence that Google was illegally leveraging anything against competitors in the cloud storage space. Then again, as I discuss below, it probably wouldn't even then.
Winning in two different markets to the extent where established players in one feel that its worth their effort to complain that you are leveraging your market position in one to dominate the other is the exact opposite of a "problem" for the firm that is in that position.
It might lead to a problem if you actually were doing something that was likely to produce a signficant restraining action from some government, but as many other firms have demonstrated (notably Microsoft in the software market), even actually illegally leveraging a monopoly in one market to monopolize another rarely results in any remedy that is either timely enough to make any substantial impact on the utility of the action, or significant enough to outweigh the benefits you gain from doing it.
Copyright is automatic in US law for anything that is a copyrightable work in US law. The only question is whether a programming language, as such, is a copyrightable work -- if it is, every programming language is copyrighted at the instant it is first created (a work being "created", in US copyright law, "when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time" -- 17 USC Sec. 101.)
Of course, the fact that the language -- as opposed to a description or implementation of the language -- is an abstraction that cannot be set in a fixed form makes it impossible for it to be "created" as defined in copyright law, but also makes it outside the scope of what is subject to copyright in the first place.
If programming languages were copyrightable works, then somebody has owned each of those languages from the moment they were created, even if, to date, they've been fairly lax in enforcing their rights against others who use the languages without permission, either directly or by creating derivative languages of their own.
(If the courts were to accept Oracle's position, I suspect that a lot of that laxness would end swiftly.)
Yes, it did. Which is why Google's work that doesn't meet the standards for using Java trademarks didn't use Java trademarks.
Which would make it hard for Oracle to sue over trademarks. Although, I suppose, not all that much harder than trying to sell their idea of copyrightability of programming languages.
True, but, OTOH, most legal remedies for copyright violations are not available (except in the case of live broadcasts, which have slightly different rules) unless the owner has registered the copyright before the lawsuit is initiated (or attempted to register the copyright and had the Copyright Office refuse the registration.) One of the requirements for a registration is deposit of one (or more, depending on the kind of work) copies of the copyrighted work with the copyright office.
Now, certainly, Oracle has no doubt registered the copyright on the Java language specification (which is a well-defined fixed-from expression in language of what Java does) and their Java language implementation (which again is a well-defined fixed-form expression.) But I'd like to see evidence that prior to filing suit against Google, they registered copyright on the Java language, as such. Particularly, I'd like to see the desposited copy of the language.
(Of course, no such thing exists, because a language is an abstraction and not something which could be set in fixed form and deposited; of course, the fact it is an abstraction that can't be set in fixed form is also among the reasons its outside the scope of copyright in the first place.)
Its not, because computer programming languages are clearly outside of the scope of copyrightable works, and derivative works are a subset of copyrightable works. But, if Oracle's argument that computer programs was correct, and no other change was made to the law as it exists, its pretty hard to see how Java could be anything but a derivative work of C++ (and possibly other pre-existing programming languages.) The same is even more clearly true (and potentially even more problematically true for Oracle) of Oracle's particular variant of SQL.
This is, Simply speaking, baloney. The original work does not need to be "part of" a derivative work. The definition fo a "derivative work" in US Copyright law is (17 USC Sec. 101):
A transformation of an existing work -- or more than one, together -- is a derived work, and adding elaborations to that transformation doesn't stop it from being a derived work; if languages were copyrightable works, that taking pieces of languages A, B, C, and D, (say, C, C++, Smalltalk, and Mesa, for example), combining and transforming them, and adding elaborations to them, would be a derived work of all four predecessors.
This is, of course, not the case, because programming languages aren't copyrightable works.
Neither are programming languages. In fact, the entire reason for Oracle's claim about copyrightability of programming languages is directly and intimately tied to their claim about copyrightability of APIs.
Actually, Google's brief on the copyrightability of programmingly languages notes that Google created Go and several other languages, that it claims copyright on the implementation of those languages (and makes them available under open-source licenses), but that it does not purport to license the languages themselves because the languages are not subject to copyright.
Since all those are just copyright licenses, why would it need "protection" if it wasn't subject to copyright in the first place?
Yes, Google's position is that you can use the English-language description of what Go does and create your own Go implementation and not be bound by the license on Google's Go implementation.
Google isn't particularly worried about this cutting into the revenue they derive from distribute their Go implementation at no charge under an open-source license, for reasons that should be painfully obvious.
I think Google understands what they are asking for here and its implications quite well. Oracle, on the other hand...well, let's just say an inquiry into the derivation of Oracle's implementation of SQL in their flagship database product, or the derivation of Java, might not be pleasant for Oracle if programming languages were held to be copyrightable.
More importantly than PL/SQL, Oracle's SQL is an implementation of SQL, a language they didn't invent (PL/SQL is a procedural languages -- hence the PL -- used for stored procedures, triggers, etc., not the main DDL/DML/query language of the DB.)
Frequently, intersections also have a push-button pedestrian crossing input so that they respond to the presence of pedestrian traffic as well as vehicle traffic.
Those can be a kind of fallback for those on bikes, though they are pretty inconvenient in that role (especially, e.g., in a multilane intersection where you intend to make a left turn.)
Sure, but you could more say that Borders killed Borders by a series of short-sighted business moves, starting by outsourcing their online sales to Amazon, their online competition, and by failing to effectively compete with their competition in the brick and mortar book retailing market.
I think it is almost a tautology to say that the government represents the interests of whoever has the most influence in government (a more precise statement might be that government represents the combined interests of all people, weighted by each person's degree of influence over government.)
That's exactly what is alleged in the complaint. Its "not shown" in the sense that this is usually the case when a lawsuit is filed, since you tend to have the trial and presentation of the detailed evidence after the lawsuit is filed rather than before, but the complaint is pretty specific on the acts and communications involved in the collusion among the publishers to raise prices and Apple's active role once it became involved in that effort.
That would be illegal, but that's not at all what the case is about. The cases is a number of large publishers colluding to jointly raise prices on ebooks by coordinated application of market power. Apple is involved because they allegedly became involved as something of a co-conspirator after the collusion began (and their involvement became a key factor in the collusion actually working, though without them its quite likely that the publishers would have found or formed another retail outlet to fill the same role.)
No, they can't (well, they'll soon be able to for books from the three publishers that settled, but only as a result of the settlement), since the whole point of the collusion charged here was for the involved publishers to cooperate together and use some other retail outlet (which turned out to be Apple, but the collusion and plan existed between the publishers before Apple's bookstore existed) to provide leverage to force Amazon to accept the agency model in which the publishers, not the retailer (Amazon), set the price for sale to consumers, and that this effort was successful immediately after the iBooks store opened.
Assuming the specific allegations (including the direct quotes from e-mails and other documents) in the complaint are true, they were deeply and actively involved in the collusion to raise prices, and actively pushed the usefulness to the publishers or entering into an agreement with Apple to advance there existing collusion in that regard as a selling point to get the publishers signed up.
Well, yes, if the things you cited were the only relevant facts, it would be odd.
Apple isn't the focus of the case. The key illegal behavior and basis of the suit is the action of the five colluding publishers that began before Apple entered the ebook game. Apple is charged, too, but they are involved as a collaborator in an illegal scheme hatched by the charged publishers, not as the instigator.
No, they aren't asking a question about why it happened, nor are they inferring a conspiracy merely from the absence of some other explanation.
They are alleging a very specific conspiracy with the intent of jointly raising prices by implementing the agency model as a universal norm that was agreed to by publishers before Apple tried to enter the market, that Apple was brought into and actively participated in for its own gain, and that the publishers worked together to protect when Amazon pushed back after Apple entered the market.
Specific communications between the colluding publishers and specific actions in furtherance of the conspiracy are alleged.
This is all laid out in the complaint.