Without formally requesting permission from the court, the Department of Justice has gone ahead and helped themselves to a response to friend of the court briefs from the Authors Guild and Bob Kohn. Needless to say, they find those briefs without merit. To the Guild they say that “just as fear of competition is not a defense to price fixing, it also has no place in determining whether a government consent decree is in the ‘public interest'” (thereby not addressing the thing that the Guild “fears”/warns against). To Kohn they reply his “assertion that ‘if the government’s conclusions are not […]