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Ethics issue in "Pirates of Silicon Valley"

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Ethics Issues in “Pirates of Silicon Valley”

The film, “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” is a review of the building of both Apple Computer and Microsoft as told through the lens of people that worked with both Steve Jobs at Apple and Bill Gates at Microsoft. The film addresses both the inner working of the two companies and the ethical issues that arise from their leaders, Jobs and Gates, desire to be the most important person in their chosen industry. While the film primarily focuses on Jobs and Gates, the workings of their respective companies and their rivalry play an integral role. Due to the fact that the film was produced in 1999, many issues have arisen in both companies in the years since that have changed …show more content…

While Gates makes a statement to this effect in the film, the United States actually sued Microsoft for Monopoly practices two years after this film was released, and much of the system (Windows) that Gates produced was based on information obtained from Apple, thus creating the odd dichotomy which proceeded between Microsoft and Apple in the years since this film was produced.
The largest ethical issue presented in the film deals with the fact that both Apple and Microsoft used unethical behavior to gain information from other companies which the then used to further their agendas. In the case of Apple, the used information obtained from Xerox to help create their graphic interface on their LISA system, while Microsoft used information from the LISA system to help create Windows. While Jobs was decidedly anti IBM, Gates used IBM to further his software business. While both Jobs and Gates lead the computer revolution, I venture that it can be agreed that both took steps along the way which would be seen as less than ethical.
As I watched this film on my Windows based laptop using my Google account, and then typed this paper Microsoft Office 2010, it became more painfully obvious that both Apple and Microsoft own large portions of our lives. Almost everyone own a product made by one if not both companies. Does this mean that the unethical

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