The LA Times says Apple has slowly begun hiring more lobbyists in Washington, D.C. to protect its interests as it has grown from a niche player to one of the tech sector's biggest powerhouses. Apple has traditionally placed little reliance on lobbyists, but in February of this year, Apple contracted the services of the high-powered Washington lobbying firm of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock.

The move comes as Apple has grown from a company worth $2.5 billion in 2003 to a behemoth with $300 billion in market capitalization, and from $37.5 billion in sales in FY2008 to $65.2 billion in FY2010. Accordingly, the company has tripled its lobbying expenses in that time to $1.6 million. The move for more pull in Washington comes as Apple is increasingly coming under the microscope of antitrust issues, primarily regarding the iTunes Music Store, the App Store, and the iBooks Store. [Apple's lobbying expenditures are quite small in comparison to US cell carrier partners AT&T and Verizon; each telco spent more than $15 million on lobbying in 2010. The highest lobbying bill for an individual corporation belonged to Pacific Gas & Electric last year, which spent more than $45 million. -Ed.]

Last year a clause in Apple's iOS SDK spurred an an antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice over anticompetitive measures regarding the banning of the porting of software originally written for Adobe's Flash, Sun's Java or Microsoft's Silverlight/Mono to the iPhone OS. Also just last month Steve Jobs was ordered to give a deposition relating to monopolistic behavior over the iPod and the iTunes Store back in 2004.

Besides Apple, Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock represents other powerful companies, including the NFL Players Association, BP America, UnitedHealth Group, and the Recording Industry Association of America.
Apple hired lobbying firm in February originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Most terrorism is a social phenomenon rather than a political movement.

"We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses," the official, James Carabelli, told the Michigan Messenger.

last paragraph ^_^ 1994 HIGHLIGHT: Commentator Barack Obama finds that Charles Murray, author of the controversial "The Bell Curve," demonstrates not scientific expertise but spurious political motivation in his conclusions about race and IQ.

In the Queen's speech this autumn Gordon Brown's government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and "made accessible" to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and "other public bodies".

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"How black Baltimore drug dealers are using white supremacist legal theories to confound the Feds."

AMFV was not a conventional Infocom adventure, having only a single puzzle near the end of the game.

How will a county vote?

"Elitism" is thus a crime not of society's actual elite, but of its intellectuals.

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To think straight about gun control and the Constitution, we need to move past the Second Amendment and pay more heed to the Ninth and 14th Amendments.

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We need Pennsylvania.

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New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg yesterday alleged "fraud" in the unofficial count of New York City's votes, which left Obama with zero votes in 80 election districts.

UH "And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually

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"If you try to come into my state and steal my water you will pay dearly. This is Tennessee, not South Carolina, Alabama, or Florida. We will react in a manner that will send chills down every Georgian's spine."

Despite a lack of military, executive or foreign policy experience,[1] he is currently a liberal favorite for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election. He has no clear personal achievement that cannot be explained

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The image of HRC and Bald Watermelon Britney at the top of this "gonzo conspiracy blog" is soooo rad!

"using hyperbole instead of fact-based logic in an attempt to tug at people's emotions rather than appealing to their sense of reason."

The State Board of Elections on Monday approved a state Republican Party request to require all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing that they'll vote for the party's presidential nominee next fall.

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What sort of strange emotional disorder is it that war cleanses, liberates and saves people from? And how can killing, raping and torturing people be acts that purify and restore hope in life?

When we try to untangle this web of accusation and innuendo, Giuliani appears to be suggesting that it is unacceptable for a Senator to express skepticism about anything said by a general in uniform. If he believes that, he does not understand democracy.

Bush was an articulate speaker in 1994. No gaffes, sounds like dad!

This website hopes to serve as a tongue-in-cheek look at a media phenomenon which has redefined what qualifies as news.

"ICED!" gamers can become a Mexican high school graduate whose family overstayed its visa, or a Haitian war veteran who faces deportation when he turns to alcohol and crime after returning from Iraq.

The Napkin over the head is part of eating ortolan, and there are several reasons reported. While most claim that it allows you to fully appreciate the aroma and depth of taste of the bird, there are others who claim that it is done in symbolic shame

If you recently used Google to search for the word "Jew," you may have seen results that were very disturbing.

Welcome to Hannidate 2005, where you may find your perfect match through Hannity style romance. Be sure to click on each icon to see a full size picture and full description:

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

part of my motivation was to make visible some of the differences in rhetoric between the candidates in the American election. Most of these texts are carefully crafted, so the insight is not into the psyche but into their organizations' tactics.

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No one present at that protest has reported seeing him or hearing from him since he was bundled into a police van and taken away. Police now claim to have no knowledge or record of this man, or of his arrest.

While papers are free to edit AP copy, this complete makeover is nonetheless extraordinary -- and extraordinarily revealing.

Using the free site TagCrowd, she created a set of "tag clouds" that provides a visual depiction of the words used most often last night by each of the candidates.

reduce overall tax distortions and increase women’s participation in the labour force. It would achieve similar goals to affirmative action policies, quotas or subsidised childcare and could substitute for those policies

In Newsweek’s January 8th issue, however, BeliefWatch went all the way to hell. The column featured a Web site called BlasphemyChallenge.com, which dares people to condemn themselves to hell by committing the unforgivable sin.

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50 Sets of Complete Arthur Magazine Collection are now available. Each order comes with Fest (by Arik Roper, full color) and Nights Maya Hayuk, posters includes special out–of–print back issues not available until

Enter Edwards, whom you perceive to be as untested as Obama but even more likely to pursue a traditionally liberal agenda. Clinton now looks better than Edwards on both counts.

Hate groups have also voiced concerns that the music is fostering pacisfism in America's youth and many concerned Republican parents of teenagers who listen to LDBM have spoken about how their child's character and beliefs changed after the listening to t

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“Either Elston did not scroll down on his BlackBerry to read the last section [of the e-mail] or it made no impression on him, because he knew that it did not reflect the department’s plan for replacing the U.S. attorneys who would be asked to resign,

Only amateur fascists admire Sparta guys; they're still pissed off because people like me dared to warn them the Iraq war was going to be a disaster. Now the neocons have gone so over the deep end of delusional thinking that they've resorted to fantasizin