DOJ Investigates Google, Apple, and Others For 'No Poaching' Agreement 360
CSHARP123 writes "The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the 'No Poaching' agreement between Apple and Google in 2010, but details of the case were only made public for the first time yesterday. TechCrunch was the first to sift through the documents, and has uncovered some ostensibly incriminating evidence against not only Google and Apple, but Pixar, Lucasfilm, Adobe, Intel, and Intuit, as well. According to the filings from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, these companies did indeed enter 'no poach' agreements with each other, and agreed to refrain from soliciting employees. The documents also indicate they collectively sought to limit their employees' power to negotiate for higher salaries."
Re:Cartels fall apart (Score:2, Informative)
The reason why diamonds are so expensive isn't the result of De Beers, but rather the governments of the western world refusing to sell diamonds unless they are certified as "conflict free" and the government of many diamond producing nations having laws in place to limit the harvesting and exporting of diamonds.
Most of the evil that De Beers does isn't done by De Beers but rather by willing governments. Take the government out of the equation and corporations become a whole lot less menacing.
Re:This is why we don't need regulation (Score:5, Informative)
This represents a non-free job market. That's the problem and why it's apprpriate for government to step in.
No one is arguing for no regulation. But there is such a thing as over regulation.
Re:Cartels fall apart (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is why we don't need regulation (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you come up with your claim to the contrary?
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
That's a bald assertion there. By the very nature of a union, it must be public in order to gain members and perform actions like strikes. It's impossible to do that privately. Moreover it's against the (U.S) law to make a secret union. Now, from what reasoning could you possibly conclude they aren't public?
Bald assertions like this make you look bad, and harm your argument.
Re:This is why we don't need regulation (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cartels fall apart (Score:5, Informative)
There are two unusual reasons that worked out in Dow's favor: 1) He was in a different country where he could start his company without interference from the German cartel; and 2) The German government neglected the important step of adding tariffs to his imported bromine.
The reason anti-trust laws are so important is because these circumstances are rare. If Dow had lived in Germany at the time, they would have taken an immediate interest in his start-up and likely either stolen his process or squashed his company before he became a threat. This is precisely what is happening in the U.S. with the entertainment industry: government-supported cartels are forcing all the (media distribution) innovation overseas, and now they want SOPA to quash even that.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
I can't resist submitting these Adam Smith (the idol of free market advocates) lines copied from Wikipedia:
"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate [...] Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people". In contrast, when workers combine, "the masters [...] never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen."
Smith, of source, said it much better than the clowns who opine here.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
"If they want to make these "corporate unions" public they're welcome to have them. "
No they aren't. It's called collusion. Unions do not form an effective monopoly but corporate competitors colluding DO form such a monopoly and the law must prevent this. Not only for the anti-competitive aspects but because it tosses the HUMANS right to pursue happiness out the window.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
"The largest and most powerful unions existed before 1935, when the government started getting intimately involved. "
There were also several massacres at corporate request during those times too.