After much back-and-forth, a verdict came down on Wednesday in the Apple (s aapl) ebooks case: a judge found the company guilty colluding with five of the big six major book publishers in a scheme designed to inflate prices. The publishers (all of whom settled with the government before the trial) have tried to argue in the past that they were forced to cut a deal with Apple because of Amazon’s (s amzn) monopoly — but when it gets right down to it, the real culprit is the DRM lock-in that the publishers themselves pushed for. In effect, they forged the chains that bound them to Amazon in the first place.

My GigaOM and paidContent colleagues Jeff Roberts and Laura Owen have written about the details of the judgement itself, and also about the potential impact on Apple and the ebook business as a whole, but what really interests…