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Well if Apple felt that Amazon was acting as a monopoly, and unfairly blocking them from entering the market with low prices why did they not request an investi

• tyre 11y ago
  For the same reason Uber did not try to fight taxi regulation in every local municipality instead of doing what they knew to be illegal. Litigation takes a really long time. By the time you win, you've lost. Jobs wanted to launch iBooks right now and was willing to cut corners to get what he wanted.
  • johnloeber 11y ago
    By the time you win, you've lost. Nicely put. I'll note that phrase down for future use.
  • sangnoir 11y ago
    I wish we could create a "Galt's Gulch" and quarantine all the toxic individuals/entities who believe that the rules don't apply to them. They would be free to "cut corners" and "win" to their hearts content only amongst themselves.
    • andyfleming 11y ago
      Sometimes innovation requires breaking rules. Uber wouldn't have had the success it's had if it had gone through "proper" channels. While it made them successful, I'd argue that it also benefited consumers.
      • saalweachter 11y ago
        "It also benefited consumers" is not a get out of jail free card. If I break into warehouses, steal merchandise by the truckload, and sell it at a tenth the price, that also benefits my consumers.
        • icebraining 11y ago
          Who says it should be a "get out of jail free card"? I think that's a good approach: someone openly breaks a rule that they think is unfair and/or outdated, and then society can decide whether to re-evaluate the rule or fine them (even into bankruptcy, if they're a company).
    • dizzy3gg 11y ago
      "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." - Grace Hopper
      • towlejunior 11y ago
        I find it unlikely the first person to express that concept was born in the 20th century. Some places say Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe). If I had to guess, though, it's hundreds or thousands of years old.
        • DanBC 11y ago
          It's attributed to Hopper. If you can find it anywhere before July 1986 we can change the wikiquote page. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper Disney used it in a slightly modified form: "Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."
          • towlejunior 11y ago
            That's the thing. There's no particular flourish that makes her version remarkable. It's just a sentence.
            • DanBC 11y ago
              Except she said it first, and versions of it have appeared since she said it, but not before she said it. Telling me that it's just a sentence isn't persuasive in any way. Showing me something mostly similar from before 1986 would do a lot more to persuade me.
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    • seanp2k2 11y ago
      It depends a lot on the political clout of the incumbents being disrupted. Aereo got shut down in a pretty short time considering it went to Supreme Court: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
    • prawn 11y ago
      Haven't we already done that to some extent? The members of the public who wish to buy regardless have placed themselves in the Gulch when they download Uber or book through Airbnb, etc.
    • whitegrape 11y ago
      It was once called America. I guess the next one will be the EMC, Elon's Mars Colony...
    • allwein 11y ago
      This comment is the most ironically ignorant thing I've seen in a long while. The first issue is that it was the best individuals that went to Galt's Gulch. The second issue is that the reason they went was to escape all the unjust rules and regulations that society was laying upon them. So the fact that you're suggesting sequestering these "toxic" individuals for trying to bypass the same thing that the Gulchers did is laughable.
      • sangnoir 11y ago
        Just because you disagree with a comment does not make it ignorant. I deliberately invoked Galt because the book is appeals to the same group that thinks the law doesn't apply to them (when convenient),and they also believe they own/are themselves "the engine of the world". See BioShock for an equally fictional critique of what happens when the "best individuals" are left to their devices, without pesky laws.
  • ludamad 11y ago
    Sad then that fines like this could totally be calculated into the cost of business
    • intopieces 11y ago
      Why is it sad? Doesn't that mean that the company's ability to circumvent regulations is proportional to the consumer's lack of value for those regulations + willingness to purchase the product at the cost and rate necessary? Otherwise, the underlying assumption is that regulations on industries are always in the best interest of the market, even when the industry changes OR that regulations change fast enough to adapt to the market. Both of these, I think, are demonstrably false.
      • vertex-four 11y ago
        I'd argue that whether the majority of participants would happily be involved in a transaction is irrelevant to whether that transaction is good - often, either that transaction has externalities or the result of nearly everyone agreeing to a certain type of transaction is that a minority is left out of something important. For example, for the moment, Uber are running a version of their service for people with physical disabilities - this is probably solely in response to the argument that lack of regulation would result in no such service existing. If there were no threat of regulation, would they run it? Probably not, it's probably not very cost-effective. The majority would probably happily use cheap, dirty energy for as long as they can, but what externalities does that have? If it were possible, would it be OK to run such a power station against the law?
        • intopieces 11y ago
          Working backwards: I agree with you that the free-market circumvention of regulation is bad in certain areas, like medical testing and utilities. For Uber, the threat of regulation (and the ensuing bad publicity - a market force) did inspire it's adaptation for the disabled. That's why I'm not in favor of eliminating any regulation in industries. But anti-trust is (and correct me if I'm wrong) concerned with keeping the market open for the benefit of consumers. If customers choose to buy ebooks for a significant mark-up because they like the way Apple delivers them, I don't see how the price fixing harms the market, especially considering the users were not limited to Apple's service on their own device. (Were there Apple iBooks exclusives at the marked up rate? Is that the problem?) I understand that Apple violated the letter of the law with the price fixing. But I'm having trouble seeing the actual harm it did to the market. And I'm especially having difficulty feeling "sad" that Apple was able to bundle, into the cost of the ebooks, the potential fines for violating it. Consumers were given a product for a price they deemed fair in a market more competitive than before Apple entered it.
  • fpgeek 11y ago
    > Jobs wanted to launch iBooks right now and was willing to cut corners to get what he wanted. We should be precise here. Jobs preferred to cut legal corners with respect to the antitrust laws instead of cutting financial corners by directly competing with Amazon on price. To me, this is exactly the sort of choice the legal system should punish, even if Jobs had been right about the merits of his hypothetical antitrust complaint against Amazon (which he almost certainly wasn't - Amazon has testified that the Kindle store was a sustainable business on its own, i.e. that the headline new bestseller discounts were more than covered by profits on backlist titles). The antitrust laws, like other laws, shouldn't have exceptions for "justified" vigilantes. That way lies chaos.
  • lmm 11y ago
    I think a criminal conspiracy like this qualifies as more than "cutting corners".