Ebook price-fix saga: Official Apple peeler says probe is fruitless A US court-appointed watchdog tasked with ensuring Apple sticks to its e-book price-fixing settlement promises says the iThing giant is not playing ball. In a report [PDF] submitted to the New York Southern District Court, external compliance monitor Michael Bromwich claims Apple has not cooperated with his efforts to examine …
According to Hillary, Lerner, Obama and the IRS; it is no longer neccessary to obey the law and cooperate with a government inquiry and provide the info requested in senate subcomitee subpoenae (like to turn over the emails from Lerners IRS scandal or Hillary's wiped personal email server.)
You don't have to obey the lawful commands of a police officer or any authority figure, it's okay to loot, commit arson, flip over police cars, vandalize property, shoot or murder police officers, punch out innocent civilians and teachers.
What great role models we have chosen!
So why in the world would Apple ever follow the agreed upon court dictates of a price fixing agreement
My observation from a distance of this and several other monitors, special masters, and the like suggests that these positions generally are quasi-political plums and tend to result in billing junior associate and ordinary admin expenses at top-tier legal rates, often while accomplishing little. The high billing rate, however, may be fully justified in the court's view because it makes the day to day whining (mostly) someone else's problem.
However the judge may take a dim view of Apples behaviour and unlike the judges in the UK find them something to make them wonder if this is the right thing to do. Whilst sometimes judges in the US are as dim witted as ours, they sometimes take a strong view on things and could find Apple, say $1B, a week until they do take notice.
Since nobody ever seems to go to jail unless you're poor, the only legal remedy is financial. Make it $1B a day and let them argue it in the high courts. That will get Tim Cooks attention, as whilst it'll probably get overturned higher up, it *might* just not. Then again since Apple hobnobs with the great and good, its all rather pointless.
You're assuming that any fine imposed will be treated as anything other than a minor addition to overheads.
Big businesses routinely break the law, and treat the fines thus incurred as just another operational expense (paying no mind to the bit about not being supposed to do it again).
On the other hand, there is the possiblity that Apple will convince the next judge that handing a monopoly to Amazon is not really what this should be about, and that Judge Judy or what her name is really got things totally wrong.
Apple can easily say bye-bye to the whole eBook business. That will work wonders for Amazon's profitability when their only serious competitor is finally gone and they can raise prices as much as they can.
If Fingers' minder could just convince The Authorities that Fingers Malone was a rich corporation as opposed to a poor individual, then the scenario you describe would be All Fine And Dandy. And he probably doesn't even need to cut down; they will try to lobby for safecracking, when done by corporations for the express purpose of making a profit for shareholders, to be legalised instead.
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