Two weeks before Apple’s date with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Fortune’s Roger Parloff has capped a first-rate summary of the case with a scoop: The first press interview with Eddy Cue, the Apple operative at the center of what a district judge ruled was an illegal conspiracy to fix the price of e-books.
Although Fortune’s antitrust expert characterizes Apple’s appeal as an uphill fight, Cue is unrepentant.
“If I had it to do all over again, I’d do it again,” he tells Parloff. “I’d just take better notes.”
Parloff, who covered the e-book antitrust trial with me in June 2013, is Fortune’s top legal writer.
The elephant in the courtroom on Dec. 15, he writes, will be Amazon — “the much admired and greatly feared discounter, which is not a party in the case. Yet the unposed question hovering over the proceedings will be: Did the regulators target the right bully?”
Parloff’s story for the Dec. 22 issue of Fortune was posted online Monday morning.
For students of the case, it’s a must read.
Link: Second Bite: Can Apple clear its name in the ebooks drama?
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.