“If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail? That’s the provocative question being debated in antitrust circles in the wake of revelations that Mr. Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, who is deeply revered in Silicon Valley, was the driving force in a conspiracy to prevent competitors from poaching employees,” James B. Stewart writes for The New York Times. “Mr. Jobs seems never to have read, or may have chosen to ignore, the first paragraph of the Sherman Antitrust Act: Every ‘conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce’ is illegal, the act says. ‘Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine’ or ‘by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments.'”
“Mr. Jobs ‘was a walking antitrust violation,’ said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an expert in antitrust law. ‘I’m simply astounded by the risks he seemed willing to take,'” Stewart writes. “The anti-poaching pact was hardly Mr. Jobs’s only post-mortem brush with the law. His behavior was at the center of an e-book price-fixing conspiracy with major publishers. After a lengthy trial, a federal judge ruled last summer that ‘Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy.’ (Apple has appealed the decision. The publishers all settled the case.)”
“Mr. Jobs also figured prominently in the options backdating scandal that rocked Silicon Valley eight years ago,” Stewart writes. “Five executives of other companies went to prison for backdating options, but Mr. Jobs was never charged.”
Stewart writes, “Mr. Jobs ‘always believed that the rules that applied to ordinary people didn’t apply to him,’ Walter Isaacson, author of the best-selling biography ‘Steve Jobs,’ told me this week. ‘That was Steve’s genius but also his oddness. He believed he could bend the laws of physics and distort reality. That allowed him to do some amazing things, but also led him to push the envelope.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: First of all, The New York Times is populated by slime buckets.
Secondly, the rules, in general, didn’t apply to Steve Jobs. If they did, he wouldn’t have been Steve Jobs, he would have been some schmuck slaving away in a cubicle at Atari until it all went to shit. And, thirdly, the e-books “judgement” is a fiasco based on fantasy sans hard evidence that, if by some miracle justice prevails, will be overturned on appeal.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Joe Architect” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe settle antitrust hiring case for $324 million – April 24, 2014
Caltech, NYU economists file pro-Apple brief in e-book antitrust case, say Denise Cote doesn’t understand markets or antitrust law – March 5, 2014
U.S. Justice Department ends criminal probe of backdated stock options at Apple Inc. – July 10, 2008
I am tired of the sensational headlines on MDN re Apple and everyone else. No context. Modern day rag. Bye bye MDN. Thought I’d share my criticism for MDN’s sake.
boohoo see ya.
Don’t forget to close the door on your way out!
Buh-Bye
Yup I expect to wake up tomorrow to find a completely revamped MDN in light of that stinging rebuke.
That was the title of the article in NYT.
Can’t convict a dead man except in some dirt bag press article. Another hit piece probably paid for by Samesung. If Google were and Samsung were law abiding, Apple would have about 85 % of the smart phone market. So what is the point of such speculative articles.
By the way, even though several firms agreed not to poach, that did not preclude individuals applying for jobs at competitors on their on behalf, rather than being solicited, not did it prevent them from being recruited by non members of the alleged cabal.
You, sir, are a moron.
First sentence of the New York Times’ piece, and I do mean piece: “If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail?”
Bye! Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out! Since you’re leaving, that means you won’t see my response, so you won’t respond to it. If you do, that means you’re still coming to this site.
Ah. Discrediting time has begun already or what.
“Would he be in jail?”
Jeez, I don’t know, dipshit. Seeing as how all any of these events has ever resulted in is lawyer fees and fines with absolutely no one involved ever facing even one minute of jail time, what the fuck do you think?
… hardly EVER go to jail. Hadn’t you noticed? And Jobs was quite rich. Hadn’t you noticed? So … NO. He would not be in jail.
As for his “crime”, as put forth in this article, it’s a joke. Every job I’ve had in the past half century has insisted I sign non-competes and agree up-front that anything I might create while employed belongs to my employer. So … if Steve Jobs could get arrested for his similar activities, I have some damaging data on half a dozen (or more) past employers.
You clearly do not understand how the companies conspired, that is agreed not to HIRE each other’s employees. Had nothing to do wit what you are talking about. The companies considered us employees their chattel cost us a chance at better jobs in the valley, we were locked into our employers unless we left the area. Think about it, vert nearly slavery. Jobs was the one with the genius thought. He was not Jesus, he was out for himself. Get over it.
… have misunderstood my comment. I was not praising Jobs. Nor was I praising the system.
OK, Jobs had a plan. We saw it and concluded “it was Good”. For he was a genius!
mcdruid had it right – is it that obvious? – I don’t live in California. Where *I* live, we don’t have to import our water. Still, most non-compete agreements ARE illegal. Those that are not are for top-level executives. Except I was never even within shouting distance of a top-level executive. Or a creative engineer. So, why was I asked to sign a non-compete? I can’t think of a good reason that speaks well for the person who would impose it upon me.
My point, in case you missed it, was that rich businessmen, like Jobs, seldom get jail time. Even when a less wealthy man would get hard time – even before the trial. Poor people can get years for buying a joint, rich people get NOTHING for collapsing the nation’s economy.
You obviously don’t live in California, where most non-compete agreements are illegal. You know, California, where most of Apple is based.
How about… Shouldn’t Bill Gates be in jail for fscking over every friend and competitor to literally become the richest man in the world?
People who attack Jobs’ alleged misdoings always seem to say so out of the side of their mouth when they pause the fellating of Bill Gates.
Add Eric Schmidt as well.
What is the point of this article?
Page hits.
I worked for a relatively minor player in Silicon Valley and I can assure you that non-poaching pacts, mostly verbal, were the rule of the day even in the late 70s/early 80s. Wink and nod deals are constant. Steve Jobs and the rest just did what everyone did.
wins the dunce cap du jour
If his lawyerness is such an expert then why is he stuck on Central Iowa instead of Park Avenue?
This never would’ve happened if Tim Cook was CEO.
BING!
/s 😉
Antitrust violations result in jail time in the US? Yet when Wall Street tanks the entire economy no one goes to jail. Maybe it’s time for torches and pitchforks, you’re government has its priorities completely out of whack.
jeez, and I just had a wonderful dinner…I read this shit and now it’s on my lap.
Let me run and get you a napkin 🙂
Or a firehose.
MDN forgot to mention Google, Microsoft, EBay were all apart of the poaching of employees. So all of those CEO’s should also be in jail. The Ebooks frame up by the DOJ and that broad they call a judge is non- sense. Can’t wait for the appeals court to shoot that whole judgment down to pieces.
Most ridiculous headline I believe ever!
I’m really sick of all of the speculation around what Steve Jobs would have been doing if he were still alive today… what would happen to him… etc. This is all just link bait bullshit. No offense to Mac Daily News, but this doesn’t deserve to be posted here.
Guilty on all counts. SJ was a rebel and rode the edge of the cliff without a care in the world for safety and conventional thinking. As with all rebels who push the law the day would of come when he would have to defend his decisions.
If Jobs were alive, and he was in jail, it would be because he strangled Schmidt.
hahahaha
In some ways he was indeed the walking trust antitrust violation, yet at the same time he busted many trusts, or at least seriously cracked their plate glass windows:
The Music trust with it’s moribund methods/prices/distribution approach.
The Microsoft trust, with its moribund methods/prices/distribution approach.
The Browser trust (nee Microsoft Monopoly) that held back web development.
The Mobile telephone trust…
The Movie industry…
The CD/DVD/BLUERAY industry…
The ebook monopoly…
He was a walking antitrust violation yet he cut across the grain of many closed and quasi-monopolistic industries. A contradiction for sure.
The business world, indeed our society, has become oligarchic. Steve Job’s forceful embrace of innovation and change was anything but monopolistic in the bigger picture. The ends justify the means? Maybe, maybe not.
It is hard to champion change when industries scarcely compete. Instead they carved out and defended market niche’s. Job’s ran Apple as a pirate in a sea of merchant territories with their little navies of industry and regulation.
Sad that he stiffed his workers—yet even there the dialectic of his pirate blade has allowed countless people to earn a living as independent app developers and a more vibrant embrace of change we now term disruption.
Another NY Times hit piece. The anti poaching issue involved more than just Steve Jobs. Google execs and other companies were also part of that pact. That’s the definition of a pact… more than one party must be involved.
Typo: “Another NY Times hit piece.” should be
“Another NY Times $hit piece.”
A podunk professor and the Great Isaacson: I didn’t know you could pile manure that high. Isaacson is now making a career out of telling everyone what Steve Jobs thought and would have done. He’s a fscking parasite, and his understanding of Steve Jobs ran so shallow I couldn’t even finish his book.
As for the professor, if he thinks Judge Cote makes any sense at all, there’s no possibility that he’s got an IQ over 90.
Steve commissioned Isaacson personally
and approved of the book…
The book was published after Steve’s death. Perhaps he reviewed it before publication, but I doubt it. He didn’t have the time to micro-manage something that trivial. Steve hired who he thought was good and let him do his own work. To anyone who has followed Apple and Steve Jobs over the years, the book is a huge disappointment. I read the first half with steadily declining interest until I could go no further. Isaacson missed the essential Steve Jobs. The book is what Isaacson thought about Steve Jobs, not a portrait of Jobs himself. The vast majority of those who have tried to read the book agree.
To have someone with such a shallow, un-insightful view of Steve Jobs constantly quoted in the press as a surrogate for Jobs himself is disgusting.
Steve would never have approved the release of the turd-like iOS 7, the worst mobile OS on the planet by far. It’s so full of shit that you feel like puking when you have to look at the shitty icons.
I feel like puking every time I see one of your pathetic, whining, snivelling posts. You come across as nothing more than a petulant five year old having a tantrum because you can’t have your own way.
For the love of God, grow the fuck up.
Bizarre. Bizarre. Steve? Who Steve? Your Steve? Ewwww.
Amen, IOS 7 is a piece of shit. So is Tim Cook and Jony Ives. They are rotting Apple from the inside. Hopefully the board cleans house soon.
If you do not like iOS, fine! Move to Android or what ever else you desire…but please get your foul mouth out of this forum!
I don’t particularly like using MS Windows at work, but I don’t spend my entire life ranting about it on a Windows board.
I wouldn’t want to see him him jail but a meaningful fine would have been good thing, he tends to get too big for his britches.
We are living in a time when copycats are rewarded and innovators are attacked. It’s upside down, and any decent human being who was raised on the American dream should feel threatened.
Yes, he might very well be in jail. But the great thing about it is that it would only add to his character and Apple’s product offerings. Just as Apple’s foray into the medical field was likely sparked by Jobs’ experience with cancer. So too could his time in jail work to reform our penal system.
“”If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail?””
This has been contemplated in grammar schools since his departure. . I am guessing that now that this has been made manifest in the public arena, we can now lose our curiosity about “If Richard Nixon were alive today, should he be in jail?”
Was Chicken Little correct?