If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail?

[Shane R]

Every coin has two sides. A genius on one hand, a law-breaker on the other.

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. Thousands of options were backdated at both Apple and the computer animation studio Pixar, where Mr. Jobs was also chief executive, to increase the value of option grants to senior employees.

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/bu...aries-too.html

[SteveEisenberg]

Others will disagree, but I don't see anything morally wrong with agency pricing, or with conspiring to charge customers of copyrighted books high prices.

However, I do think preventing your employees from bettering themselves by seeking other employment is wrong. So that law should be enforced.

As for jail, it probably would not take much to stop the behavior. A week or two of nights and weekends in jail might work. Not because he was Steve Jobs, but because taking anyone off the tax rolls should be a last resort.

[fjtorres]

...only if his name weren't Steve Jobs.

Apple admitted that the minutes of the October board meeting where the grant was supposedly approved were fabricated, that no such meeting had occurred and that the options were actually granted in December.

Five executives of other companies went to prison for backdating options, but Mr. Jobs was never charged. (Other Apple executives eventually settled Securities and Exchange Commission charges and left the company.

This was a "special" man.
And his acolytes will never admit he was a white collar criminal and a likely sociopath. And, boy, are *they* legion.
I'm guessing that if he had been sent to jail, we would have seen a storming of the jail tha would've made the Bastille incident look like a picnic.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

...only if his name weren't Steve Jobs.



This was a "special" man.
And his acolytes will never admit he was a white collar criminal and a likely sociopath.

Agreed!!!! However, justice was finally and PERMANANTLY served with his hopefully painful death so he can't break anymore laws. And justice has come and will continue to come to Apple, thanks to Judge Cote!

What goes up must come down, and Jobs can't get any lower, and Apple will get knocked down bit by bit as well.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

...only if his name weren't Steve Jobs.



This was a "special" man.
And his acolytes will never admit he was a white collar criminal and a likely sociopath. And, boy, are *they* legion.
I'm guessing that if he had been sent to jail, we would have seen a storming of the jail tha would've made the Bastille incident look like a picnic.

Nor will his haters, like you, ever admit they are jealous of his achievements. In America big corporations, the wealthy, and the powerful rule. It has always been that way. It will most likely always be that way. Many of us don't like it, but since we are not among the 2% there isn't a damn thing we can do to stop it. Compared to the likes of Henry Ford who sent Pinkerton Agency goons to shoot and kill striking workers, and Carnegie who did the same, Jobs seems like a saint. If you guys understood history, actually read it and studied it, you would be surprised at much of the crap that has taken place in corporate America. This stuff with Jobs is annoying and unethical as heck, but he wasn't a criminal. He was just greedy. I guarantee the goons running Big TeleComms, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and probably the worst of all, Big Military-Industrial-Complex, have all done things that will make you forget anything bad that Jobs or his kind have done. It is American business as usual. Get used it. And if you think it is bad here, well you have no idea how horrible it is in other countries. I suspect if we knew everything that goes on at Google and other companies, we would think Apple is pretty tame ethics-wise.

[pwalker8]

Wow. First, some of you have a very loose understanding of the law and how things work. For Jobs to have seen jail time, he would first have to be charged and convicted with something that has a legal penalty that involves jail time, i.e. criminal. Most of the laws that people claim that Jobs may have violated are civil, not criminal.

Second, I find it amazing that people have such hatred towards someone whose basic crime appears to be that he built a very successful company whose products some people don't like.

[Dr. Drib]

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[howyoudoin]

From all I've read about Steve Jobs over the years, I do believe he had tendencies towards screwing over others. The "anti-poaching" agreement he got the major companies to agree on is particularly abhorrent to me as an employee. I'm not in the tech field, but the general principle is nauseating. An employee should not be deprived of the right to seek better opportunities elsewhere.

However I do strongly admire his focus on producing quality hardware and refusing compromises on that front. I wish more manufacturers would take a leaf out of his book there.

I'm conflicted.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

However I do strongly admire his focus on producing quality hardware and refusing compromises on that front.

He refused to compromise on aesthetics, and, as a result, quality suffered. The well-known examples are:

-- Apple III

Steve Jobs, who supervised the project, gave ridiculous demands to the development team including dimensions that were too small to fit all the components, and no cooling fan, because they were 'too noisy and inelegant'.

The result was that the motherboard got hot and warped, eventually causing some chips to come loose in their sockets, which would cause system malfunctions.

-- NeXT:

I admired taking bold steps like not having a floppy or hard disk, but it's only worthwhile when it works out. The first NeXT Cube had too many problems.

Another Jobs-inflicted problem was that the NeXT had a very expensive die-cast magnesium case, even though it was a workstation for technical people who would have preferred a hard drive to a pretty case.

-- iPhone 4:

Apple Engineer Told Jobs IPhone Antenna Might Cut Calls . . . The latest model of the iPhone carries a metal antenna that surrounds the outside of the device -- a design chosen by Apple executives because it yielded a lighter, thinner handset.

It's true that many Apple products from the Jobs era were rated in Consumer Reports as having superior quality, but the same was true during the decade (1985-1995) when he did not work for Apple.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Agreed!!!! However, justice was finally and PERMANANTLY served with his hopefully painful death so he can't break anymore laws.

I wouldn't wish a long painful death upon the worst human and their relations, which he was very far from being.

I do believe his contributions to society exceeded his transgressions against it.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Wow. First, some of you have a very loose understanding of the law and how things work. For Jobs to have seen jail time, he would first have to be charged and convicted with something that has a legal penalty that involves jail time, i.e. criminal. Most of the laws that people claim that Jobs may have violated are civil, not criminal.

Second, I find it amazing that people have such hatred towards someone whose basic crime appears to be that he built a very successful company whose products some people don't like.

Did you read the article?
Or the quotes?
He falsified board meeting documents! That *is* a criminal offense and constitutes securities fraud.
Other people went to jail for doing exactly what he did.
Jeeze!

When does the RDF expire anyway?

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Did you read the article?
Or the quotes?
He falsified board meeting documents! That *is* a criminal offense and constitutes securities fraud.
Other people went to jail for doing exactly what he did.
Jeeze!

When does the RDF expire anyway?

There are some potentially mitigating factors in the article.

An investigation by Apple’s lawyers cleared Mr. Jobs of wrongdoing, saying he didn’t understand the accounting implications.

The commission did praise Apple itself for its “swift, extensive and extraordinary cooperation.”)

[CommonReader]

Didn't the companies that ran the employment cartel also "invite" other companies to join, otherwise they would face unrelated patent lawsuits? Wouldn't these kinds of threats violate some anti-racketeering laws or something of the kind? Apparently it doesn't matter that diplomatic relations with India go down the drain because their consul general supposedly fell foul of employment laws with regard to a single employee, but attorneys should better not indict tech billionaires who donate to election campaigns.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Did you read the article?
Or the quotes?
He falsified board meeting documents! That *is* a criminal offense and constitutes securities fraud.
Other people went to jail for doing exactly what he did.
Jeeze!

When does the RDF expire anyway?

Sure did. On the other hand, I also know that the case was investigated and Jobs was not charged. As far as I know, no new evidence has been unearthed since that time. So that tells me that either there wasn't enough evidence, or that there wasn't a chargeable crime. For those who do not remember, it was common practice to back date stock options back then. I'm sure that the nytimes wouldn't ever exaggerate or over dramatize the facts in order to drum up reader interest in their story.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Didn't the companies that ran the employment cartel also "invite" other companies to join, otherwise they would face unrelated patent lawsuits? Wouldn't these kinds of threats violate some anti-racketeering laws or something of the kind? Apparently it doesn't matter that diplomatic relations with India go down the drain because their consul general supposedly fell foul of employment laws with regard to a single employee, but attorneys should better not indict tech billionaires who donate to election campaigns.

As far as I know, no, there were no threats.