“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
Neatly ignoring the fact that, as a direct result of Steve Jobs’ vision for the music industry:-
#1) The cost of recorded music has gone down, which is rarely the case of a market being influence by an antagonist that is determined to distort the market.
#2) The consumer has the opportunity to but the music they want (e.g. the tracks they like) on a piece-by-piece basis as opposed to the tracks that don’t appeal to them; I don’t use the term ‘filler material’ because different songs speak to different people.
#3) Artists are now genuinely able to record and release their own music without an intermediary who takes 80-90% of the revenue, but doesn’t pay for the costs of studio time or marketing (video production, album sleeve design, etc.) or the artist’s costs for promoting the work on the road.
Is it wrong to come to a gentlemen’s agreement regarding the cross-recruitment of personnel? Maybe? However, the option to an employee affected by such an agreement would be to simply resign their post (terminating their contract) at which they would be a free agent that would be looking for new opportunities and then they wouldn’t fall under the aegis of such a system.
If they’re in demand, they’d get snapped up – but maybe without the premium that comes from trying to seduce a key employee from one’s competitors. So – in effect – the cartel were protecting themselves from being gouged by a marketplace with a limited amount of truly stellar talent and the parties that benefit from that constraint, which is largely recruitment agencies and consultants.