Yesterday, the Department of Justice published its case against Apple for allegedly conspiring with publishers to raise the price of ebooks. Now, Apple’s responded, calling the DoJ’s case “bizarre” and saying that they are twisting the words of Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs.
Appearing in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday, Apple’s lawyer Orin Synder denied that Apple had conspired to do anything, and said that far from publishers colluding with Apple before the launch of iBooks, the opposite was true: “publishers fought us tooth-and-nail.”
Much of the DoJ’s case hinges upon a clause in Apple’s contract with publishers, saying that publishers can’t undercut iBooks’ price on other stores, like Amazon. According to Snyder, that was only done to ensure that Apple could sell e-books profitably, since Amazon was selling e-books at a loss in order to gain marketshare.
Snyder was also none too happy about the DoJ’s twisting of Steve Jobs’s words in quotes from the Walter Isaacson bio, saying that it was unfair for the case to rely upon “out-of-court statements of someone who’s not here to explain them or place them into context.”
We can’t read Mr. Jobs’s mind, but what we can do is look at the words he used, and they certainly aren’t unambiguous admissions of a conspiracy.
To believe that Jobs’s statements are direct, unambiguous evidence, admissions of a conspiracy, you have to credit the notion that he, in full public view and to his authorized biographer [whose book] he knew would be read by millions of people, made statements that can be interpreted in no other way than as unambiguous admissions of the price-fixing conspiracy charged in this case.
Put that way, it is a bit rich, isn’t it?
Source: Ars Technica
