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Apple Agrees To $450 Million Ebook Antitrust Settlement
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, a U.S. District Judge ruled that Apple conspired with publishers to control ebook prices in violation of antitrust laws. Apple launched an appeal which has yet to conclude, but they've now agreed to a settlement. If the appeal verdict goes against Apple, they will be on the hook for $450 million, most of which will go to consumers. If they win the appeal, they'll still have to pay $70 million. $450 million is much more than the other publishers had to pay, but much less than the expected penalty from a damages trial set for August (and still only about one percent of Apple's annual profit).
I'll bite... this whole ebook antitrust issue is a joke. the whole point of Apple's ebook efforts was to provide a bulwark against the Amazon Ultron-like eater-of-worlds mopolistic behavior. It was a last ditch effort from apple and the publishers to try and prevent Amazon from eating and owning the entire author and book industry, from writing books to editing them to printing them to selling them.
the irony of course is that Amazon is the one that pushed the DOJ in the first place, and that an "independent" lawyer involved on the plaintiff's side does a lot of work for amazon and even works out of Amazon's building.
this whole ebooks trial is like DOJ partnering with M$ to crush OS/2. Welome to the monoculture, I hope your book industry shaped exclusively on five star reviews.
I read the Isaacson biography, and it was pretty clear that money was NOT Job's main motivator; it was a means to an end to him. He really wanted to build "insanely great" things and see his ideas transform the future.
He almost went broke in some cases by funneling his own money into projects. Somebody who values money wouldn't part with it that long for a gamble.
He was driven to see his concepts turn into products people wanted badly. In his mind, the future was his orchestra to conduct his way.
One can arguably compare him to great movie directors who drive those around them insane trying to put their vision on screen in careful detail. It gave us masterpieces like 'Odyssey 2001, but many of the project "minions" used up their Excedrin (or 60's equiv).
"Greed" is not quite the right word. "Obsession" is more like it. Maybe there is a word or phrase that means "obsession to the point of harming others"?
Perhaps in his mind, progress is more important than comfort, a kind of social darwinism where struggle for survival is a "necessary evil" to be a viable species. Or it may merely be narcissism, or a combo: those who don't aggressively scrape to be at the very top spot "deserve" to be stepped on: A+ or death.
Table-ized A.I.