So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…

Arrington tried to manufacture a happy medium between not saying anything and outing every person at the meeting. Not outing everyone implies you're not entirely sure. Not being entirely sure, yet talking about it anyway is a cheap way to get a story.

Waiting until things are more clear cut would have earned him points in my book- I suppose it's not worth it when the alternative is having everyone follow the story on TC from now until its conclusion.

"Price fixing is an agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand. The group of market makers involved in price fixing is sometimes referred to as a cartel.

The intent of price fixing may be to push the price of a product as high as possible, leading to profits for all sellers, but it may also have the goal to fix, peg, discount, or stabilize prices. The defining characteristic of price fixing is any agreement regarding price, whether expressed or implied.

...

Colluding on price amongst competitors is viewed as a per se violation of the Sherman Act regardless of the market impact."

I don't know how the antitrust laws apply, not even if what they are doing collude with any law at all, despite preventing healthy competition, but your questions come from the wrong premises.

Collusion is to be expected in all industries, but something of this scale — if true — just blows the mind.

Given Arrington's allegations, why would someone in the group or at the dinner admit to the collusion? These are smart guys talking to a prolific, ballsy blogger--what do they expect will happen? What's in it for them?

At least two people attending were extremely uneasy about the meetings, and have said that they are only there to gather information, not participate.

It also strikes me as odd how specific he is when mentioning figures. Why not simply say, "Several people who attended the meeting..."? By specifically saying that there were two, he will have everybody who was there guessing who those two are. Also, if there was just one person, it would make sense for him to specify that there were two to throw off the rest of the group, no?