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The NYT reports that recent revelations that Steve Jobs was the driving force in a conspiracy to prevent competitors from poaching employees raises the question: If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail? Jobs "was a walking antitrust violation. I'm simply astounded by the risks he seemed willing to take," says Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an expert in antitrust law. "Didn't he have lawyers advising him? You see this kind of behavior sometimes in small, private or family-run companies, but almost never in large public companies like Apple." In 2007, Jobs threatened Palm with patent litigation unless Palm agreed not to recruit Apple employees, even though Palm's then-chief executive, Edward Colligan, told him that such a plan was "likely illegal." That same year, Jobs wrote Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google at the time, "I would be extremely pleased if Google would stop doing this," referring to its efforts to recruit an Apple engineer. When Jobs learned that the Google recruiter who contacted the Apple employee would be "fired within the hour," he responded with a smiley face. "How could anyone have approved that?" says Hovenkamp. "Any competent antitrust counsel would know that's illegal. And they had to know they'd get caught eventually."
But the anti-poaching pact was hardly Jobs's only brush with the law. Jobs behavior was at the center of an e-book price-fixing conspiracy with major publishers where a federal judge ruled that "Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy." (Apple has appealed the decision. The publishers all settled the case.) Jobs also figured prominently in the options backdating scandal that rocked Silicon Valley eight years ago. An investigation by Apple's lawyers cleared Jobs of wrongdoing, saying he didn't understand the accounting implications but five executives of other companies went to prison for backdating options, while Jobs was never charged.
There's no way of knowing whether Jobs, had he lived and been healthy, would have faced charges, especially since he was a recidivist. Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial, says Hovenkamp. Jobs probably came closest to being prosecuted in the backdating scandal, but by then he was already known to have pancreatic cancer. Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson notes that "over and over, people referred to his reality distortion field." Isaacson added, "The rules just didn't apply to him, whether he was getting a license plate that let him use handicapped parking or building products that people said weren't possible. Most of the time he was right, and he got away with it."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday May 04 2014, @08:45PM
Funny you mention that. I just submitted a story.
We should be far less concerned about what Slashdot does. I know there are stories there, and they may be dupes from here or not. I don't care.
I come here, and this where I saw the story. Is this such a big deal that it overshadows the fact that Jobs would have made Kettering proud with his ability to create a caste system?
Jobs never actually killed people though, Kettering most certainly did and he damn well knew how dangerous TEL was and that the workers were never told just how dangerous it was. Kettering hid like a coward behind Kehoe, and Kehoe quite frankly has a lot in common with Nazi scientists with his blame the victim attitude. Yes, the "boys" were just being stupid with the TEL, even though Kehoe never told them just how toxic it was and these "boys" were not well educated either. Some may say he deserves some redemption by creating industrial safety standards and methods, but that was all purchased science from Kettering to make sure TEL could be pushed everywhere without resistance.
There is a lot in common between the stories because even today there are people that look at Kettering like he was a benevolent God and genius. Kettering was untouchable, and it's not taught in schools that Kettering and his ilk were directly responsible for treason by disclosing valuable technology to the Nazi's. We may never know how crippled the Nazi military would have been without the fuel technologies (among others) that were disclosed to them willingly by American traitors headquartered in Detroit.
Jobs is not the inventor of the reality distortion field, and he got away with everything he did precisely because he learned it directly/indirectly from people like Kettering. Jobs was just very good at it, and for that matter, we don't know if Gates isn't the absolute master at it either. Gates faded away in the most intelligent way possible and probably knew when to leave the stage. Jobs was simply too in love with himself to do that.
While Jobs was a complete and utter cunt to employees industry wide and a general asshole to the world, he was just playing a game that other men created. It does not surprise me in the least that prosecutors decided to give him a pass because the trial would have been "hard", success wasn't certain, and they could never know if Jobs could get them fired within the hour.
The biggest question is not about some dead sociopathic asshole like Jobs, but how many people are in the industry now doing their best to imitate Jobs and harming people every single day?
Madoff went to prison, but nobody from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, etc. went to prison. Nobody in Big Pharma goes to prison. The most dangerous people that cause the greatest harm to us never feel the force of law. In fact, they get custom representation and benefits instead of jail time.
What makes it worse is how many Apple fanbois there are out there, how many corporate apologists, and how many people blinded by the shiny that Apple makes that all work together to create an environment that doesn't strongly condemn Jobs and what he did.
If you think Jobs was good at it, then why is it that some of the greatest exploitation against the American public and the world in general go undiscussed, unwritten, and denied? Some of the nastier things that have happened seem to get swept up under the rug.
Jobs is the example for today of somebody that needed to be stopped a long time ago with his bullshit, but he's dead. The others are still alive today.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.