A federal judge has approved an e-book settlement between publishers and the Department of Justice over alleged price fixing, reports the WSJ. Lagardère SCA's Hachette Book Group, CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster Inc. and News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers LLC all agreed in April as part of the settlement to terminate their agreements with Apple and refrain from limiting any retailer's ability to set e-book prices for two years. (News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.) Apple had hoped to stave off final approval, and termination of the agreements, until after next year's trial, saying their contracts with the publishers couldn't simply be reinstated in the future if they were to ultimately prevail. The approval opens the door for Amazon and other retailers to steeply discount e-book titles.