Apple to DOJ: Bite me | Hacker News Reader

Apple to DOJ: Bite me

tech.fortune.cnn.com

76 pointsmatan_a33 comments

This article is heavily biased and seems to have been published straight from Apple's PR department.

So, if there happened to be a really clear-cut, one-sided case out there, how would an unbiased news organization report on it?

"Apple filed response to DoJ." <Link to response.> Possibly a summary of claims.

Sorry, but if the situation is clear cut then a good news source should say exactly that.

Just publishing X did Y and alleges Z leads to the current situation where creationists, global warming deniers and so on are given space in news reporting as if these issues were to be decided by personal opinion and not by facts.

No, absolutely not. An awful news reporting agency would say "creationists think X, but evolutionists rip them to shreds." That is bad news reportage. Good news reportage would say "creationists say X, evolutionists say Y, the facts that are evident are Z." This is clearly not what CNN have done with this piece. It would be nice if they had.

The simple point is that engaging in inflationary and imprecise colloquial language like "totally rips it to shreds" renders the article pretty much useless for communicating clear facts, especially if there is one clear winner. Don't tell me who's right; that is pointless and communicates only opinion. Tell me the facts, and make them as stark and as clear as possible. "Totally rips it to shreds" is not a fact; it's vague cant wrapped up in metaphor. Bad reportage.

I think you're conflating style and substance a little too fully. I can appreciate your objection to "ripped it to shreds," but that's not a very substantive objection to the reporting/analysis.

Your desire not to be told who is right is problematic. Just because opinions on the shape of the earth differ doesn't mean the news media must refrain from telling it's readers the truth. If you want to compare press releases and come to your own conclusion you don't need a staff of reporters for that.

That would work well in situations involving facts—politics, for example. It's relatively easy to fact check a claim like, "since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history."

But creationists and evolutionists make claims about the distant past. There are no facts available, we have to evaluate evidence and reasoning. Even if, as in this example, the evidence strongly favours one side over the other, a journalist is ultimately conveying his own assessment of the "debate".

This court case is even less amenable to fact-checking. So far, the court hasn't made any findings of fact or legal rulings. All we've got is arguments from each side. About the only thing a journalist can do is evaluate them. So if you insist that reporters avoid inserting their opinions into the story, then duaneb is right - the only fact available is that Apple filed a response.

If the DOJ-Apple case were really important to me, then yeah, I'd read the filing myself and form my own opinion from the primary source. But to me, this case isn't that important. It's interesting, and I'll keep an eye on it as it progresses, but I don't want to invest a lot of time and energy in it.

That's why I prefer Philip Elmer-DeWitt's approach to duaneb's. It gives me the facts along with the reporter's experienced if not expert opinion. It's clear which is which, contains enough argument in support of the opinion that I can evaluate DeWitt's reasoning. It's a bit snarky for my taste, and I view that as a weakness in DeWitt's argument, but ultimately it doesn't matter whether I agree with him. I've learn something without having to become a reporter myself.

> Sorry, but if the situation is clear cut then a good news source should say exactly that.

I'm open to this on a case-by-case basis, but "Apple tore DoJ to shreds" is most certainly not one of these.

That said, this was opinion, so I wouldn't expect it to be anything near news.

As noted elsewhere, this is aopinion piece and thefore is entitled to present one side of the story without attempting to summarize the entire situation. It's like the difference between a political editorial and political coverage in a newspaper.

The important question is whether the one side it presents is presented coherently and without fallacy.

And, has been noted elsewhere as well, where on the page does it say the piece is just an opinion piece?

I'll save you the trouble: it doesn't.

So, while you maybe right, CNN doesn't indicate in any way that this is the case.

The header: "Apple 2.0 - Covering the business that Steve Jobs built" shows the category that this blog post is in.

While it doesn't point out in big letters that this is an opinion piece, this article is in the category of a well established Apple opinion blog in their tech blogs category.

It's also pretty clear from the writing style that this is an opinion piece.

Sure, it's probably easy to tell for someone who's a regular reader of CNN. However, I believe that most people - even several (if not many) from HN - will see the CNN header, then read the article and assume it's CNN. They should be A LOT clearer about it being an opinion piece.

Get the reply here: http://ia701206.us.archive.org/6/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.394...

The reply is persuasive in sections as to present Apple fostering competition in the eBooks market. (Lots of comparisons to Amazon's dominant position, indeed it does appear that the iBookStore is aimed at disrupting Amazon's stranglehold.) Which is not unusual, since competition would lead to Apple's gain.

However what is clear is that Apple do have something to answer for, albeit a far less serious offence rather than Anti-trust/collusion.

I suspect this came about so quickly as a result of Amazon lobbyists, rather than a legitimate concern of the government against Apple and the eBook market for the benefit of consumers. I'm of this thinking because the government is typically slow to act and rarely do so preemptive as they have done here. (That and Amazon owning nearly the entire eBook market, stands the most to lose.)

Note, lobbying does not imply that Amazon forced the government, rather they could have simply alerted them to the situation.

As for throwing publishers under the bus, that's a claim that lacks understanding of what a reply should entail. (I.E. you answer the case as it applies to you.)

The DOJ antitrust dept has been so emasculated from doing it's actual job that just about the only thing it acts on are open and shut cases with hard evidence like the price fixing here. So some careerist at DoJ had a chance to buff his resume up with a high profile case, got some open and shut evidence and boom here we are. Apple may or may not have been party to this but no one cares and this will die a quiet death later on.

Apple and a number of publishers have already settled with the EU Commission [1], which began an investigation before even the DOJ. From a legal standpoint this is not an admission of guilt. Apple believed that either a) the legal costs of mounting a defense were about the same as the potential damages, b) they could not win in the European Courts (this could be because of the interpretation of their anti-trust laws), or c) the PR debacle would harm their brand and reputation too much. I would pick a combination of B and C in this case, though mostly B.

As far as the DOJ anti-trust division is concerned, their job is to investigate and prosecute companies that allegedly partake in anti-competitive behavior that adversely affect consumer prices. They saw a rise in prices as competition increased, which is contrary to how price dynamics are supposed to work in an increasingly competitive market. Given that the source of this rise in prices was due to simultaneous pressure from publishers on Amazon to switch to an agency pricing model from a wholesale pricing model, it makes sense that the DOJ would investigate. This suit will likely take a few years to come to a conclusion.

[1] http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3353332&#...

It looks to me like whoever wrote this article has never seen an initial legal statement like this before. It's very common for lawyers to make these sorts of claims early on in an investigation or case.

For example in a drunk driving suit, a good lawyer would immediately claim his clients rights were violated and this or that procedure wasn't followed properly. It usually gets you nowhere and is just legal posturing.

Can any lawyers here give a more technical explanation of this happening?

"[AAPL] cuts the government's case to shreds"

Wow, is CNN a news organization or a press release promotion mill?

CNN's one-sidedness made me uneasy enough to research the contrarian opinion, this is the best summary I found:

http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/14/e-book-class-action-new-de...

Effectively the evidence in the govt's case shows that:

a) AAPL recognized that they required the collusion of the top 5 publishers to set market pricing, and actively solicited them.

b) AAPL suggested pricing to the top 5 publishers.

I believe in due process, just pointing out that there is clearly more here than CNN's summary allows.

It's a CNN-branded opinion blog covering Apple, not a CNN news report.

I searched the page for the words blog, opinion, and editorial => zero matches. It does look like an opinion piece, but they should at least label it as such.

When I saw the words "Bite Me" in the title, it set certain expectations for what was to follow. I would have been surprised had it been anything but an opinion piece.

How is it price fixing when it's in your own store only?

The "most-favored nation" clause makes it so that it applies to all stores, not just yours.

In theory a news article is finished when all facts have been stated.

In practice a news article is finished when all facts have been spun.

Given a choice between AAPL and AMZN as a source for purchasing "ebooks", which would you prefer?

Given those two options, I would choose... the Pirate Bay.

this

"It's a no-brainer"

'No brains' is about right given the way you've arranged this straw man.

Fact of the day: Apple doesn't set prices under the agency model.

I pick Amazon most of the time simply because I can read Kindle books on more devices. This isn't because of any good thing Amazon has done but rather its successful pursuit of snticompeititive policies:

1. Kindles won't read non kindle ebooks. (The kindle fire might if you know how, but it's not easy)

2. iPad will read all competiting ebooks.

3. Amazon's policies coerce publishers to keep prices low, in particular generating a revenue poverty trap for publishing books at prices between $10 and $20.

>1. Kindles won't read non kindle ebooks.

Every Kindle ever sold will read PDFs, and with software like Calibre, you can convert every modern ebook format to it.

Actually the practical format you want is MOBI, which Calibre will also convert to. It's a little annoying that everyone else has settled on EPUB, and Kindle doesn't read EPUB. But Calibre will seamlessly convert EPUBs to MOBIs and MOBIs to EPUBs, so the end result is all non-DRMed books can be read on all devices with almost no effort.

Not DRMed epubs.

Given the ability for different resellers to compete on price, which Apple's anti-competitive rules have effectively taken away, we might not be stuck with a choice between AAPL and AMZN as a source for purchasing "ebooks".

Maybe price won't be the most important factor, as some commenters have pointed out. Maybe the more important issue is the use of an "open format".

I'd like to see "ebooks" that can be converted to plain text (and hence other typesetting formats). What are the chances of that?

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