“If Apple was hoping for leniency from the judge ruling on potential remedies in its e-book price-fixing case, it’s looking increasingly likely that it may get some,” John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD.
“During a hearing in a New York federal court on Tuesday, Judge Denise Cote narrowed the scope of the penalties the Department of Justice wants leveled upon Apple, saying she doesn’t want them to intrude too much into the company’s business operations,” Paczkowski reports. “‘I want this injunction to rest as lightly as possible on how Apple runs its business,’ Cote said. ‘I want Apple to have the flexibility to innovate.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, that’s great, because nobody has proven Apple’s done anything wrong. There should be zero penalty for Apple.
Paczkowski reports, “But on another sanction, an external monitor charged with evaluating Apple’s internal antitrust policies, Cote took a harder line, saying she’s skeptical of the company’s commitment to changing its behavior… Caveat: The monitor would have a far more limited mandate than the one proposed by the government. It would simply oversee Apple’s internal antitrust compliance policies and employee training on them, and only on a limited basis. Hardly the sort of empowered, roving monitor the DOJ requested. So it looks like Apple may have won itself a fair bit relief from the proposed sanctions it has described as ‘wildly out of proportion to the issues and evidence in the case.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
U.S.A. v. Apple: Judge Denise Cote says Apple needs third-party supervision after ‘blatant’ ebook price fixing – August 28, 2013
And the lawyers they just a keep on gittin’ richer & richer.
Actually the US Government stands to make quite a bit of money off this if I’m not mistaken.
How exactly does the US government make money on this enforcement?
Fines.
In the process they destroy this country and all that my ancestors fought and risked their lives for. May the current administration and the DOJ and NSA and IRS all rot in the pits of hell.
Because we want our country to fail, go bankrupt, and offer no stability or personal liberty protections. Let anarchy rein.
Even an Apple invented dildo wouldn’t help this judge – she is so fscked up.
Now turns out a judge is giving a company flexibility to innovate!
How’s that??
Really, what is she thinking she is or she does??
A week ago she blinked…now she can’t stop.
The DOJ proposals just got sliced and diced.
She doesn’t get it… Apple is not going to give this up until Apple is found to have done NO WRONG. If the penalty is reduced to paying 10 cents, Apple probably will not accept it.
Shouldn’t she make a beeping noise, when she decides to backtrack this much…?
OMG, that was fscking hilarious!!! Not many things make me actually LOL, but that did. I’m definitely going to have to borrow that one sometime! 😀
Help yourself!
In all fairness, I heard a version of it in an old TV show called “Frasier”, some fifteen years ago.
Frasier is old?!?!? Oh my god.. What is “The Brady Bunch”? Ancient? (I admit I watched the Brady Bunch in reruns, though I remember The Mary Tyler Moore show on Saturday nights, new, as a kid.)
Just like the USSR, have a political commissar ( AKA a Google or Amazon spy) assigned inside your company to monitor and report on your compliance with the KGB head Holder..
Like Lucy Koh, Denise enjoys being a “star.”
The judge knows she will be overturned on appeal and is just trying to get Apple to say yes to something to avoid the embarrassment of having gotten this case entirely wrong.
This. Very misguided, though. If Apple was fined just $1, they would still appeal, based solely on principle.