IANAL: Love the comment, 'twas the (US) judges with the butterknife in the belfry that done the deed, it really was. And yes, in the Apple ebookprice case it wa

IANAL: Love the comment, 'twas the (US) judges with the butterknife in the belfry that done the deed, it really was. And yes, in the Apple ebookprice case it was firmly established that publishers with legit monopoly (copyright) rights could, nonetheless, not collude (cooperate) with a vendor re their individual rights, through a third party. I presume this also applies to collusion with each other, too. So, as a copyright holder you have the "right to exclude" granted by law - but not to coordinate with other rights holders to distort the market when exercising that right. "Blocking rights" or "negative options" would therefore seem to be illegal, in line with this decision. [Edit: no wait; there's no coordinate between more than two parties here, as there was with Apple negotiating with all copyright holders at once to coordinate a higher price. Changed my mind] The judicial idea that suddenly took hold forty years ago (after the xerox prosecution that killed xerox dead in the seventies) that consumers have to be harmed immediately not merely by reducing competition which would harm them in time, was very "motivated thinking" in my view. Japan was soaring, so suddenly our monopolists might be thugs but they were our thugs. BTW, the historical rubric for such law is "restraint of trade." This was common law in Britain and its colonies long before the Sherman Act (which reduced the penalies for it and at least reduced the chance of tort remedies. Sherman's brother - a general - was also a civic railway executive.)