US Supreme Court Rejects Fast Track MS Case

The submissions have begun to flood in with the news that the US Supreme Court has refused to listen to the DOJ-Microsoft case, saying that it should go to Appeals Court first. This, of course, means that the case will be dragged out for quite a while longer, something which Microsoft was hoping for, as Gates has stated that he hopes the upcoming Presidential elections will put someone in office more friendly to the company. As well, the Appeals court has ruled in MS's favor before. CNNfn has more coverage as well.

Comments

Rehnquist won't recuse himself either...

[fwr]

Reuters reports (via Yahoo!) that his son works for a Boston law firm and is actually working on a private antitrust case for Microsoft! Now, if that isn't a conflict of interest then I don't know what is...

Maybe this is good for Open Source?

[Paul Bristow]

OK everyone. Microsoft isn't going to get split up in a few weeks like everyone here seems to want. We have three possible scenarios:

1) MS is split. MS/OS runs like crazy to fix the stupid bugs and cuts much better deals with the PC makers. MS/Apps promises to release Office for Linux and Mac & Anything else, making corporate purchasers happy and destroying the chances of OSS office suites.

2) MS is stuck in court for years, distracting senior management and stopping .NET from being more than wishful thinking. All the productive people are seriously demotivated and start buying posters at ThinkGeek. Probably nothing serious will happen at the end but if they're tied up for long enough it won't matter. GNU/Linux, KDE & Gnome will take over the desktop by being nice to people and not trying to sue them.

3) The case is thrown out of the appeals court, the government doesn't appeal and corporations end up ruling the world. The internet becomes a kind of dumbed-down AOL with the wild old TCP/IP being removed as too open to abuse by terrorists, hackers and other undesirables.

My money is on scenario 2, option 3 is too dangerous even for the US government (I hope). Either way, lets keep on building OSS solutions and promoting the fact that companies don't have to spent large sums of money and sign dodgy EULAs to get the solutions they need.

Judicial Bypass

[Global-Lightning]

The Supreme Court made the right decision by not taking this case before it's heard by the Court of Appeals.

It allows more arguments to be made and heard, creating a larger body of knowledge surrounding the case before it goes to the SC. Very little new information or lines of reasoning are made when a case goes to the SC, rather the Court passes judgement on decisions and arguments made in the lower courts.

This decision preserves 200 or so years of judicial protocol where the SC is the *last* court of appeals, in which they hear only cases that merit there attention. They could very well decide *not* to hear this case if they believe the Court of Appeals came to the right decision. This is a process the entire Judicial system would be extremely reluctant to tinker with.

Finally, If the SC would bypass the Court of Appeals, then they would open themselves to a huge increase in their caseload and diminish the value and impact of the lower courts.

Just because the could take a case directly, doesn't mean they have to.

Due process.

[Bilestoad]

Hate Microsoft all you like. Don't deny them the same legal process anyone else is entitled to - no matter what you think you might know about what they did or how they did it.

And then if they wind up broken-up or subject to some other remedy, justice is seen to be done and they have nothing left to complain about. It should be obvious that this court case has been about PR as much as law. ("Freedom to Innovate" etc...)

Sure the lawyers get rich, but when hasn't this been the case?

Corporations and Due process

[Deskpoet]

WHY should an immortal paper entity be given due process? A corp is a thing, with less life than a slug (and even less benefits to the planet).

I wish you corp leeches would get a clue. This is MY world, too, and every time you equate a human being with a faux entity like a corporation, you steal a bit of our collective humanity, diminishing me and everyone else right along with your sorry selves.

If you want to be a lap dog, feel free. Just keep it away from the rest of us.

Due process INDEED.

Re:Call me crazy:

[OlympicSponsor]

"The government sticks it's nose too much into the economy as it is."

This is a great concept--but you are only applying it halfway. You've either got to do the whole thing, or none at all. For instance, how do you think MS got to the point it is? A lot of it was through patents (gov't intervention), copyrights (gov't intervention) and licensing (contract law is more gov't intervention).

Microsoft is benefitting from governmental (which is to say "societal") institutions such as the above, therefore it has to be good back to us. If it doesn't we retaliate (through anti-trust lawsuits, etc). You can't deplore anti-Microsoft action while ignoring pro-Microsoft action.
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