Steve Jobs vs. Journalism & Free Speech

The BBQ Pit
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Many of you have probably heard of the spate of lawsuits filed against Apple-centric bloggers forcing them, if upheld, to reveal sources of product leaks.

Now Jobs apparently has decided to boycot Wiley & Son’s entire line of tech. handbooks, (including the über-famous “For Dummies” series) from its stores because they’re publishing a biography calling Jobs what he is: One of America’s most brilliant, visionary executives, who happens to also be a fiercely combattive, relentlessly vindictive, egomaniacal prick.

I mean, come on: Banning the “For Dummies” books out of spite? As Apple is hardly the worlds biggest seller of computer-related literature (even of the Mac-centric variety), such a gesture might hurt Apple more than W&S, and at the very least confirms Jobs is a big of a fucker as the unauthorized biography asserts.

What truly sucks about this, in my mind, is it’s nothing less than an attack on free speech. Execs get hatcheted all the time, and the more prominant they are, the more likely they’ll be the subject of an unflattering portrait, deserved or not. That’s what living in a free society is all about, and while it’s an executive’s prerogative to choose whomever he wishes to do business with, when the decision is being made in an effort to punish an entire company for saying something he personally doesn’t like, I feel the executive has overstepped the bounds of his reasonable discretion, and entered into the realm of censorship. If the book is slanderous, take them to court. Otherwise, suck it up and deal with people voicing their oppinion like an American fucking-well should.

There’s certainly legal shades of grey in terms of the blogger issue, though I think using the “bloggers aren’t journalists” technicality to out ThinkSecret, et al.'s sources is about as shitty a way of exploiting those grey areas as I could imagine one doing in a land where freedom of the press should be sacred. Add to that a revenge-driven punishment for not publically stroking Steve’s dick in the appropriate fashion, a punishment with real financial implications for Wiley & Son’s and the author, and I cry major fucking foul on Apple Computer, Inc.

What does “Think Different” mean, you idiots in Cupertino? Think like a petty, vain tyrant with a chip (no pun intended) on his shoulder? Has the adulation so gotten to Steve’s head he can’t abide the thought his own shit stinks less than Bill Gates’? Fuck that.

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Gah! Should be “shit stinks no less than”

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:::buzzer::: Wrong!

Steve Jobs doesn’t make the law. Steve Jobs doesn’t impose governmental restrictions on the distribution of Dummies books. Steve Jobs isn’t obligated to sell anyone’s books, or have that TNT “biopic” that painted an unfavorable picture of him on the video screens in every Apple store. No person or non-governmental entity is under any obligation to sell or show or promote anything that they don’t want to, for any reason at all. Hell, Apple isn’t even the largest outlet of Dummies books, by a long shot.

Next you’re going to be saying that Jobs is stifling capitalism by not selling Dells and copies of Windows XP in Apple stores!

When these “journalists” post this stuff that either violates non-disclosure agreements, or violates company/employee contracts, then they are the ones who are acting unethically. You have a right to know what your government is doing. You do not have an unalienable right to know what proprietary technology a company is working on.

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Sure. So it’s up to Apple to find the leakers on its own. I don’t see suing bloggers and forcing them to reveal sources as a legitimate means of keeping their own lid tight. Were it a “legitimate” news source like the NYT, they’d be outta luck.

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…And that’s just a fucking stupid analogy. No vender should be forced to sell a competitor’s product as a means of protecting free markets. That’s a completely different issue than free press and expression issues, you twit. They’re not excluding a product because it’s a competative market decision that only a sane proprietor would make. They’re excluding a product because they wish to do what they can to stifle someone expressing an oppinion.

Now that I think about it, Apple does sell WinXP in their store as part of the VirtualPC package. They rather tout the Mac’s “Window’s compatibility” in that regard. Doubly a twit.

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You’re wrong. It is precisely the same issue. Apple’s right to sell or not sell whatever they want is the exact same right that allows you to say Steve Jobs is a turd burglar.

Does a newspaper have an obligation to print an editorial if the owners don’t agree with it? Do they have to print your editorial even if it’s not your newspaper? Does a television station have to air your movie, even if it depicts the owner as a child-molesting puppy eater? Of course not. That would be stupid.

If Steve Jobs wants to be a vindictive schmuck and refuse to sell a whole line of books in his stores, then that’s his right. It may be a poor business decision that comes back to kick him in the nuts, but those are his consequences to suffer. You’re not entitled to shelf-space by virtue of being in the market.

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I agree with the folks who say that thinking this is a free-speech issue is silly. Apple can sell or not sell anything they want in their store. They’re under no obligation to the OP to present positions they don’t agree with.

The only people Apple and Steve Jobs have to satisfy are the Apple stockholders. Don’t like what Jobs is doing? Then buy Apple stock and vote him out of the CEO position. Otherwise, you pretty much don’t have a say in how they run the company.

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Frankly, I didn’t even know the new Steve Jobs biography even existed until I first heard the news about the (still not entirely confirmed at this point, AFAIK) ban of Wiley & Sons. I promptly put “iCon” on my books-to-buy-soon list. :cool:

That said, as others have noted, it may be a childish move, but it’s hardly illegal or unethical. As the San Jose Mercury News points out, IBM staged a six-year advertising boycott of Fortune magazine after an unflattering 1997 cover story, and GM recently withdrew its ads from the Los Angeles Times in protest of a review of the Pontiac G6.

As for the blogger case, I’ll just quote from the judge’s ruling – “interest by the public does not constitute public interest.”

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If you spit in my face, I’m not obliged to continue to do business with you. Well, unless not doing business hurts the shareholders, then I still have an obligation.

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A legitimate news source like the NYT isn’t going to run into that problem in the first place, because their legitimacy is based on the fact that their writers truly understand the concepts of journalistic integrity and ethics, instead of posting whatever they want to get the scoop and then relying on morons with a fuzzy understanding of the first amendment to defend them. Barring cases where a company is genuinely secretly harming the public, a responsible journalist isn’t going to be violating signed contracts and agreements in order to leak information. And if they do, they can’t then go back and whine about how they’re protected by Freedom of Speech, because they would realize that that “argument” is complete bullshit.

So there’s a good example. Let’s say, purely hypothetically of course, that there’s some dumb-ass out there who’s so eager to vilify the head of a corporation and defend some sleazy websites that are engaging in corporate espionage, that he goes on the internet, demonstrates a complete inability to grasp the first amendment to the constitution. And during the course of his grasping at straws in order to defend his completely meritless “argument,” he decides to call me a twit.

Now, apparently, I’m under some kind of obligation to print his opinion on my personal website, and required to promote his products via my retail chain. Because doing otherwise would be stifling free speech.

Yeah, that makes sense. If you’re a moron.

Well, keep thinking about it, because eventually you might realize how stupid a “counter-point” that is. They choose to sell VirtualPC in their store because it runs on a Mac and helps them take market share away from their primary competitor. They’re not required to, neither by law nor by ethics. If they were to stop selling it, no one would have any grounds to complain that they’re stifling free speech or free enterprise or anything else; their only complaint would be that they have to make a separate trip to any retail outlet that is still perfectly legally free to sell the product. Apparently, you’re a double-plus moron.

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Actually, I think the blog issue might (maybe) be a legit complaint, but the book thing is absolutely nothing. He’s perfectly entitled to sell whatever he wants to at his stores and not sell what he doesn’t want to, for any reason, just like anyone else.

And the idea that banning the Dummy books in the Apple Stores will hurt Apple’s sales is just outrageously stupid. I mean, come on, get a grip.

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Oh give me a break. It is not complete bullshit, and it is a First Amendment issue, or the putative journalists in question would have no representation, and no support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The employees, at worst, violated NDAs. In this case the journalists cannot violate an NDA because they are not bound by it. That isn’t even relevant in this case. If the bloggers in question obtained the information illegally, then they wouldn’t have a case. But they didn’t. The issue Apple is currently arguing is that the bloggers are not journalists. Have you read any of the press on this, for Christ’s sake? The ruling, if it stands, is a threat to the entire blogosphere. There is potentially a First Amendment argument that could be made at a future juncture (should it be possible to demonstrate the leaks acted maliciously), and probably more imediately a CA Constitutional argument before somebody appeals it to the SCOTUS, but that’s apparently not even germane to the ruling, and not what is presently being appealed.

I find it difficult to see how you could make a difinitive argument about the ethics of this case, as it is highly arguable whether or not trade secrets, where the secretive nature of the information is meant to be short-lived, deserve exemption from First Amendment protection. It’s a serious debate at this point, and there most definitely is a real, honest-to-goodness first Amendment, free speech concern that could be the issue here, but that’s not even what’s happening, more’s the pity. Instead, Apple has chosen to pursue a legal route that catagorically denies First Amendment protections to all web journalists known as “bloggers” (which is meaningless in this context, as ThinkSecret is by any reasonable standard a legitimate “news source”) by denying they are journalists at all. The repurcussions of such a ruling go WAY beyond trade-secret protections. That’s not unethical? And as for the ethical concerns of major news source (since you are clearly arguing out of your ass), if they wouldn’t dream of publishing such info., why are so many of them coming out squarely behind the bloggers, and not Apple? If there’s clearly no argument to be made here, why are they making it? If the ethics issues are so clear, why do even “legitimate” sources like the Associated Press obviously feel threatened?

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Having a blog makes a person a journalist about as much as wearing green makes me a leprechaun.

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Well, not it’s not illegal, and said as much in the OP. But not unethical? The move is meant to punish, and punishes not only the author of the book and the publisher, but all the other authors who do business with the publisher. Obviously Apple lacks the kind of clout to do dire harm to any of the above, but I don’t think that entirely mitigates the issue. I think, ethically, Jobs is free to call the author a jerk and what-have-you, maybe even to refuse to carry that book (which the wouldn’t anyway, giving Jobs not recourse but to sputter) but to retaliate financially in such a scattershot way? You say bad things about me, and I take it out on you and anyone who works with you by hurting you however I can financially? Because that’s all this is. It’s not really a business issue; it’s a personal insult issue that has been ratcheted up into the realm of financials, and it’s all because someone expressed an oppinion. Everyone connected with the author of iCon takes the hit. It absolutely is a business issue for them, as Andy Ihnatko knows. So how much money does he have to lose before it’s wrong? I know Jobs’ isn’t doing anything illegal, but that simply doesn’t automatically make it right, does it? I think there’s more nuance to life than that, and more in this instance.

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Any reasonable assessment of the sources in question will reveal that operate at a level of far greater merit than some teenager bitching about his homework online. They report real news relevant to Apple and other suppliers who provide products for Apple, just like many, many other trade mags. And just like many of these trade mags, they deal in rumors and speculation about business that involves educated speculation, and occasionally leaks. They’re not doing anyting new. It’s just the format that’s new, and they’re being lumped in with pimply web diaries as a legal tactic.

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Of course, the bigger issue is why the OP thinks that Apple should now be forced to purchase “Dummy” books?

I mean, it’s not as if the publisher just gives them to Apple so they can be sold. Apple has to buy them first.

Now, because Steve Jobs doesn’t like what an author is saying, he’s violating the First Amendment by not buying the publishers’ other works?

That argument doesn’t wash at all. Logically, it compels one to buy what is most offensive to them. :confused:

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Apple isn’t purchasing the books, they’re not allowing the books to be sold in their store. And you apparently have mixed up the blog issue with the iCon issue, as far as me ranting about the First Amendment. Of course he’s not violating the letter of the law in that sense. But all the same, he’s doing whatever he can to financially punish an entire company for publishing a book, which, to me, certainly violates the spirit of the law. It’s a rather thuggish “don’t fuck with me” gesture, plain and simple, meant to hurt and probably intimidate, to the extent that Jobs can (which, admittedly, isn’t all that much in this case).

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Apple purchases the books from the publisher to sell, at a profit, to its own customers. It’s how retail works - manufacturers just don’t give you the stuff to sell! :rolleyes:

You’re arguing that people and companies must be compelled to purchase that which they disagree with. Period. You might not want to believe that Apple has to purchase those books before receiving them, but your wanting doesn’t change the way the real world, this world works.

As far as this quote is concerned:

Here’s what your OP says:

Italics mine.

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But they allow other stores to sell them, right? Amazon? Barnes and Noble? Walden Books? The publishers of these books can still print them, right? Sell them to whomever, or even give them away?

This is not a FA issue. It’s a business issue. An incredibly stupid business issue, I grant you.

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I don’t think so at all. There have been a number of periods in Apple’s history when hype and cachet are about all they had going for them. Much of that cachet stems from the largely falacious notion of Apple as some sort of David fighting the Evil PC Goliaths (vs. doing themselves in with their own stupidity in business matters), a moral struggle for the soul of technology. It’s nutty sounding to anyone who hasn’t spent an inordinate amount of time around the Mac religionists, but it’s a real phenomenon. Jobs as St. Steve the Avenger has real maketing value. Apple loses that image, they lose some of their cachet, and that’s money in real terms.

Apple stores are about one-stop shopping for all your Mac needs, not just Macs. They’re a compelling business in no small part because virtually no one else treats Mac users like first-class citizens. We can’t walk into a CompUSA and be bowled over with boundless choices and knowledgeable sales reps. Far from it. So what is Apple doing to itself when it clears its own shelves of some of the most popular tech books that cater to their customer base? Well, they’re giving plenty of sales away, and eroding some of that convenience that makes the Store so wonderful. And all for spite.

There’s just two things I can think offhand that leads me to believe this is not at all good business. Everybody who hasn’t got their head too far up his ass to see the light already knows Jobs is a prick. Finding all about how he’s a brilliant prick who staged one of the most impressive comebacks in American business history and revived a moribund Apple will hardly hurt him or his company. Engaging in stupid vendettas certainly could.