iBooks Settlement -- I Win!

I am happy to report that I am in for some money that I never expected to see.

Yes, it's true; I'm a beneficiary of the big iBooks settlement.  It had been appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused in March to reconsider the case, and now Apple is distributing $450 million in proceeds.


The Issue

The hoo-haw is about a single charge:  that Apple conspired with several major publishing houses to try to force Amazon to raise its prices for Kindle books between 2010 and 2012.   During that effort, Apple raised prices on its iBooks.

This was during a period when books were sold by stores, by Apple, by Nook and by Amazon, which sounds to me like  a good range of competition.  Apple execs and publishers seemed to believe that Amazon was selling books at less than cost on Kindle in order to gain market share.

(One good question is what the market cost is for a digitally transmitted book.  The marginal cost would be pennies at most.  It appears that authors collected about 15 percent of the price paid by consumers.  This would seem to leave a fair amount to be divided between marketers like iBook/Kindle and publishing houses, whatever the price.  Another question is what the heck publishing houses DO these days.)

Anyway, the whole anti-trust effort was aimed at destroying Amazon's flat $9.99 price per book on Kindle.

Interestingly, if the collusion failed, it certainly seems to have had the desired result.

Now all e-books are MUCH more expensive.  A Wall Street Journal article last year reported an 11-cent price differential between paper and digital copies of one best seller.  Certainly I've observed a rise in e-book prices.

So Apple is being punished for trying to raise digital book prices, but book prices are much higher anyway.  Strange how these things work.


Our Protectors

The heroes of this story -- 33 state attorneys general and wonderful, high-minded trial lawyers -- stepped up to stick it to Apple and the publishers and to protect us little people.

Here's how one of the lawyers, Steve Berman from a self-described "national class action law firm," Hagens Berman, described the triumph in a release last week:

"Apple was caught red-handed orchestrating this scheme to inflate the prices of e-books, and we believe this case is a true testament to the tangible benefits the law can bring consumers."


The Spoils

I'm happy to be collecting from this lawsuit because before it was filed and settled, I hadn't realized that I had been a victim of the Apple "scheme."

The compensation for my suffering is $1.57.

Others in the aggrieved class will receive the rest of the $400 million -- some in increments as high as $20.

As for the rest of the money, $20 million will go to the 33 states whose attorneys joined the lawsuit.

The final amount -- $30 million, the biggest chunk by far -- will go to the aforementioned lawyer's law firm.  Remember he's the one who called the settlement "a true testament to the tangible benefits the law can bring consumers."

Let's review:

1.  Apple was sued for colluding to increase digital book prices.

2.  Digital book prices went up anyway.

3.  A bunch of time was wasted negotiating a "deal" that included a fine that amounted to spare change for Apple.

4.  Ostensible victims will collect de minimis awards.

5.  Trial lawyers get $30 million.

Sometimes I wonder whether number 5 wasn't the point of the entire exercise.


Next Up

Last month came news that may turn into more money for me.  Starbucks is being sued for giving customers smaller than advertised lattes.

I drink lattes occasionally at Starbucks.  If this new action swings my way, I'm thinking I could collect in the settlement.  Maybe $2.50.

It's only fair given the suffering I have endured, even if I was unaware of it.

Cleveland

The younger person was about two years old when a preschool friend of his, a little older, came over to play.

     "Let's go get bad guys!" the other boy shouted.

This, I learned, is what boys do.  Boys fantasize about performing acts of derring do.

-----

In the early autumn of the younger person's seventh year, I asked the mother of one of his friends what Halloween costume her son planned to wear that year.  I was looking for ideas.

      "No no no," she said.  "First you decide on the weapon.  THEN you get the costume."

-----

Several years later, the younger person and I joined other families as the children walked from house to house, trick-or-treating.  The younger person was dressed in a military costume and carrying a realistic looking plastic gun with an orange bulb on its tip.

The orange bulb FELL OFF the plastic gun as he walked.

I'm just grateful we weren't living in Cleveland at the time.

-----

The younger person since has grown into an honorable young man.  All the bad-guy-hunting, fake-gun playing and video-game shoot-em-ups of his early years have had no negative effect on his personality or character.  The same is true of his friends.

-----

I wish Tamir Rice had had the opportunity to grow up as well.




Police

I found this comment, posted yesterday, on a Cleveland newspaper's website.

     I am a white male and have tended to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt
     in most cases throughout my life where police have been accused of excessive force
     and/or wrong doing.  My brother has been a career law enforcement officer in Colorado,
     as a police officer, SWAT team member, anti-gang unit officer, etc.   I don't have a
     distrust of police and believe 90% of them are good people doing the best they can in a
     sometimes harsh environment.

     Having said that, I would seriously question anyone trying to defend these two officers'
     handling of this incident.  We all know Tamir had a toy gun that looked real (just like
     most toy guns used to look when I was a child playing with them 30-40 years ago).  If
     Tamir had a chance to point the gun at the officers - and done so, I believe these officers
     would have been justified in believing their lives were in jeopardy and using deadly force.
     But that was not the case here.  According to the police statements, the officers drove up
     on the scene and told Tamir to drop the weapon.  If that is true, then Tamir would have
     been following police orders in reaching into his waste band to grab the "weapon" - as it's
     difficult to "drop" a weapon that you don't first have in your hand!   The video shows the
     boy being shot by the cops within a second or two of them pulling up on him.  I understand
     cops have to make split second (sometimes life/death) decisions, but in this case, they
     brought that upon themselves by driving up on the "suspect" when there was clearly no
     need.  The boy was alone and nobody's life was in danger when these cops showed up.
     They should have approached from a distance and assessed the situation before putting
     themselves in a situation of having to make a split second fire/don't fire decision.  The
     tactics of these two officers put both themselves and Tamir's life in unnecessary danger.
     The fact is, this kid was just being a kid.  Probably not a wise move in today's world to
     play with a gun that looks real out in public.  When I was 12 I did many things that my
     adult self look back upon as being less than wise.  No reasonable person looks at the actions
     of this boy (or at least what we know of his actions) and thinks he deserved to be shot.

     When assessing the actions of these 2 officers, ask yourself this one question.  Did their
     tactics put the public, the officers and the suspect in the least amount of danger?  I have
     a very difficult time answering "yes"  with what is known about this case and what has
     been shown on video...

-----

Police departments, like all the institutions of man, are flawed.

Police officers deal with people at their worst moments, and we can understand if not sympathize when they develop an "us against them" attitude toward their fellow citizens.

Still, we need police departments.

Saying that most police officers -- 90 percent or even 95 percent -- are measured and careful is not enough.  That majority has to assert itself against the weaker links.  It has to force them out of their jobs before they undermine public trust, before they needlessly escalate situations and kill people, and long before their actions are presented before grand juries.

Otherwise you end up with what happened in Cleveland.

Two Years in Prison

I have been reading recently about a couple of criminal prosecutions in the New York area.  The nature and severity of the offenses were very different -- a career of political corruption versus a stupid decision to carry a handgun that resulted in an injury to the man who carried it -- but the punishments were almost exactly the same.

Spicuzzo 

Joseph Spicuzzo

Spicuzzo was for many years the sheriff and Democratic political boss in Middlesex County, the second largest county in New Jersey.

According to people in the county, he took care of himself very well.  There were reports that he raffled off good-paying jobs -- $10,000 in 1994 would get you hired as a sheriff's investigator; the rate had risen to $20,000 by 2007.  Promotions cost extra, and there of course were requirements to support party favorites with campaign lawn signs and contributions, and to do yard word at leaders' homes.

In 1997, a Jersey paper published an extensive report concluding that Spicuzzo "manipulated his office into a self-serving domain."

Fourteen years later, a state grand jury indicted Spicuzzo on charges that he accepted $112,000 in bribes over 12 years.  (Remember, Spicuzzo had been at it for many years longer than that.)

Spicuzzo pleaded guilty to accepting $25,000 in bribes.  He gave up his pension and was sentenced to nine years in prison.  Many in Middlesex believe that there are still sheriff's officials in Middlesex who got their jobs by paying off Spicuzzo; they refused to acknowledge this in the state's investigation.

Now, after two years spent not in the general prison population but an Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center, Spicuzzo is being let out -- not paroled but allowed to go home and submit to regular supervision.  (Earlier, he was denied parole because he still blamed his crimes on others.)

His lawyer said the man is in bad shape.  He is legally blind and has had a stroke.  Now 70 years old, all Spicuzzo wants is "to see his grandchildren," according to the lawyer.

A nine-year sentence for 20-plus years of government corruption by a public official seems light to me.  To cut it down to two years is hard to understand, whatever his health.  I am not aware of similar compassionate treatment offered to other people in the general prison population.

I have no sympathy for Spicuzzo

Burress

Plaxico Burress

Plaxico Burress is -- or at least was -- a talented NFL player credited with catching the winning touchdown pass in the New York Giants' Super Bowl defeat of the New England Patriots in 2008.

That fall, Burress and his wife spent an evening at a club in New York City.  Burress made two stupid mistakes that night.  He unwisely carried a loaded gun tucked into the waistband of his pants, and he accidentally shot himself in the thigh.

He was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon; a recently enacted New York law had set the penalty for such an offense at 3.5 years in prison.

As the case dragged on, Burress was released by the Giants.

Like Spicuzzo in Jersey, Burress accepted a plea deal -- two years of prison in his case -- and started his sentence as the 2009-10 football season was getting started.

Unlike Spicuzzo, Burress served all but three months of his prison term, during which period his wife gave birth to their second child and he missed two more football seasons.   One assumes that, like Spicuzzo who wanted to see his grandchildren, Burress would have preferred to be home with his children.  But no such luck.

The New York prosecutor said Burress' sentence was in line with all prosecutions of people carrying illegal guns in the city, but there is reason to believe the claim was plain false.

Two years later, in 2011, fewer than half the defendants who had been arrested for illegal possession of a loaded gun in New York City received a state prison sentence, according to an analysis of criminal justice statistics by the mayor’s office.

I will concede that Burress made mistakes, but I think his prison term was excessive under the circumstances.

Disproportion

New York and New Jersey are different states, of course, and their justice systems are different.  But even so, it is difficult to compare an effective two-year sentence for decades of public corruption with a two-year sentence for stupidly carrying a gun and injuring only yourself.

One offender was a white crook, and the other was a black celebrity.  I don't know if race made the difference or if prosecutors have way more latitude than they should.

When you get right down to the facts, Plaxico Burress has done far less harm in his life than Joseph Spicuzzo has done in his.  You wouldn't know it, though, from the treatment they received.

Magna Carta

Magna Carta Memorial at Runnymede

Tomorrow is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.  On June 15, 1215, King John acceded to the demands of a group of English barons and gave them a say in how their country was run. 

John had not been a popular king.  His subjects were tired of fighting his wars and paying his increasing taxes.  A group of nobles pressured him into a meeting on a field called Runnymede and presented him there with a document laying out a number of clauses.  The most important of these established a committee of 25 barons who could overrule any action taken by the king.

It was a fait accompli.  King John had no option but to affix his seal to the document, which he did. 

John immediately asked the Pope to annul the document, and the Pope obliged.  The king rewrote some of the clauses and there was a little war over the matter, but after John's death in 1216 his successor and other English kings affirmed the original agreement. 

The Magna Carta had altered the nature of English government.  Its influence was durable and, over time, broad. 

More than 400 years later, the Magna Carta was pressed into service as justification for the English Revolution of the 1640s.  At the time, people had had enough of King Charles I, who believed he was the country's divinely appointed and sole ruler. (His reputation as high taxer and his wife's Catholicism in the now-Protestant country did not help.)  Parliament and the people rebelled.

In due course, Charles was convicted of treason and executed.  England rechristened itself a Commonwealth, ruled jointly by a lord protector (Oliver Cromwell) and Parliament. This lasted until the Restoration in 1660, when Parliament invited Charles II to assume the role of monarch. 

In 1685 another king, James II, took the throne and threw down the cudgel.  In his first message to Parliament, he warned that "The best way to engage me to meet you is always to use me well."  

James, a Catholic, then proceeded to promote full religious tolerance; leaders feared he was setting up a return to state Catholicism.  This led to what is called the Glorious Revolution in 1688.  Citing the Magna Carta, Parliament rejected James, who was removed from the throne and exiled to Catholic France.  

The next year, England adopted a Bill of Rights with elements that foreshadowed the United States' document of the same name.  

When 1776 rolled around, American leaders were familiar with the Magna Carta. They also had read English philosopher John Locke's theory of the social contract, which amplified the Magna Carta theme of the rights of barons to include all men. 

Here is how Thomas Jefferson phrased it in the Declaration of Independence: 

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers 

from the consent of the governed.” 

Some people now believe that the Magna Carta was just a ripple in England's messy history -- that kings always had been required to negotiate with nobles in order to hold power -- but I believe it is important for at least two reasons.

First, it was, or at least became over time, a binding contract written on paper. The Magna Carta put a ceiling on the king's rights; when he violated one of its terms, subjects could point to the document and object without the need to wheedle or capitulate.

Second, as the rights of citizenship were extended over centuries, foundational documents came to embrace more people -- landholders, then tradesmen, then all men, then people of color and then women.  The Magna Carta, the first of these documents, started the ball rolling.  It was a very good idea indeed.

Notes

The memorial pictured above is one of three at Runnymede.  It was funded by donations from members of the American Bar Association in 1957.

Monday is probably not the exact 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.  Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, and this altered the calendar year a bit to conform more precisely to the time it takes the earth to circle the sun.  I think June 15th is close enough for the purpose of historical commemoration, however.

While Americans call the document "the Magna Carta," the English refer to it as "Magna Carta."  Americans also used to speak of students attending "the university" or "a university" but now have followed the British and say students "go to university."   Given time, I fully expect that when we are sick, we will be taken "to hospital."  We speak less often of the Magna Carta, and so our American characterization may persist a bit longer.