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Microsoft Appeals Anti-Trust to Supreme Court
wicket2001 writes "The AP is reporting that Microsoft has appealed their anti-trust case to the Supreme Court.
Microsoft sent the petition to the high court two days before the case was to be sent to a new judge to decide what penalty the Redmond, Wash., firm should face."
"YEP, of course conversely, the current "liberal" Justices who have always been true blue on equal protection and Federal Control over the States also suddenly decided to vote against the positions that they've always taken before. "
..a proven anti-antitrust, pro business country club Republican. "
Well that just proves my point. If you go and re-read my post you will see that I said the supreme court acted in a irrational and partisan matter. Apparently you agree with me on this one.
"Judge Jackson who found that MS was a monopoly and ordred the MS Breakup is (drum roll, please)
OK. But last I checked he was not on the supreme court. What does this have to do with the supreme court?
"the CCA panel judges who upheld about 90-95% of Jackson's Findings are all.....conservative Republicans (all appointed by Ronnie RayGunz, BTW)..."
Well I don't think they are the supreme court either. Are they?
"educes real problems to "Us versus Them"...which is a big reason things don't change very quickly or very effectively here in the USA "
It is us vs them. If you want to roll over and play dead that's fine, it's your choice. But it's time we woke up to the fact that there is a civil war going on in this country. The rich against everybody else, whites against the blacks, the republicans against the democrats. Unfortunately I am on the losing side and the reason is that the we are wimps. You never hear of an abortion doctor killing a priest but republicans kill at least one or two doctors a year. It's about time we fought back. It's time to drag some republicans behind a truck till they get dismembered and put the fear of god into them the way they have been putting the fear of god on to us.
"BONUS ROUND: Guess what political party the Gates Family as a whole have been registered to for the last 3 or 4 decades???? Incl BOTH of Bill's parents..HINT, doesn't start with an "R" "
Well then he'll lose in the supreme court. If they have a chance to disrupt democratic fund raising they will do it.
War is necrophilia.
Obviously you have no clue about what happened then. The FSC passed down several decisions, some favoring Gore and some favoring Bush; they rejected Gore's motion to have Miami-Dade continue it's halted recount, which may have cost Gore the election.
The notion that they "rewrote" the law is idiocy; it's their job to interpret the law, and they did it to the best of their ability. If the US Supreme Court felt that the recount standards were unfair, the proper course would be to send a ruling back to the Florida Supreme Court ordering new standards.
They were given a choice; they could clinch a victory for their side by selling out their judicial integrity, and they decided that getting Bush into the White House was worth it.
It is certainly the Florida Supreme Court that showed disgusting partiality in our election, not SCOTUS
If the situation had been reversed, and Gore had the slight majority, the US Supreme Court would have ruled in Bush's favor. Whatever else people think about their decision (even people who agree with it), I think that's pretty clear. Whoever believes otherwise is so mind-numbingly stupid as to defy belief.
no, I like free stuff, but I also want CHOICE. MS has the ability to raise the bar for anyone wanting to enter the browser market. Or any other market for that matter by investing tons of cash and taking a loss which is how they destroy competition. The Browser is the least of my concerns, it's more the way that they design tools that will only work with other MS tools although standards they supposedly adhere to should make these tools work with any OS or Browser.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
What are we talkin here? 2-4 days or a whole weeks profit? Nope. No monoply here.
(btw...I agree with most of what you've said. Ignorance accounts for a few of them, but most are intentional acts.)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
The SCOUS has shown itself to be extremely irrational and partisan. When the election was on the line the same justices who had for years voted to further states rights went against states rights. The same justices who had rejected numerous equal protection arguments when it came to criminal punishment suddenly embraced equal protection. Not only that but they had the nerve to state that this ruling should not be ever used as a precedence in further equal protection cases because they knew that some democrat was going to make them look like idiots by immediately bringing an equal protection case up and watch them squirm like the snails that they are.
In short. Unless you can prove definatively that Bill Gates is a democrat or that he gives more money to democrats then republicans there is no way he will lose in the supreme court.
War is necrophilia.
Hey, if anyone gets to be considered 'longterm injured' by MS practices, it'd be me. I use a Mac and write GPLed open source software for it, so most of what they've taken from, or starved out of, the market has come from me and people like me. Have them give me, oh, $10,000 :)
Nice try with www.meigsaction.net.
How come you, with all this "Consumers First", anti-corporations and other bullshi,t are AGAINST people having access to one of the best places in Chicago simply because selected few can fly their asses out of there ( most of them are CEOs anyway..)
I could go on, but if you've visited http://www.meigsaction.net/ you know this already, and are just trolling.
Finally, as to the rediculous false dichotomy you have presented, being pro-consumer does not equal being anti-business, nor does being pro-business equal being pro-corporatism. Corporatism does not equal capitalism any more than monopolism equals business.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I think you are making his point. The judges should be impartial but the entire justice system is corrupt and partisan (not to mention racist) from the lowest level to the highest.
It bothers me equally that the FSC was voting alongside democrats and the SCOUS was voting with the republicans. I feel sorry for any republican whose case sits with the FSC and even worse for any poor democrat who has the misfortune to be heard by the SCOUS because they have no further appeals.
War is necrophilia.
You have no idea how bad off you are compared to if there was a functioning market happening there...
I think that Microsoft should be given a slap on the wrist. Not that I am for Microsoft but a seemingly light punishment would give them a huge degree of continuing liability at the hands of their competitors. The money fined, ideally, should go to those who can make cases against Microsoft. A "slap on the wrist" would make it too costly for Microsoft to continue its current plans.
This scenario is still far from perfect but it is preferable from having two monopolies (Office and Windows) in place of one. I think that Caldera is likely to run into continuing revenue problems and I think that part of this is due to the fact that their main revenue source so far has seemed to be their settlement with MSFT... I wonder if they would have had to develop a more profitable business model in the absense of that revenue.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"Judges are there to explain and clarify laws.
...
Every decision they make will be influenced consciously or NOT by their personal believes."
Once again the judge is supposed to be impartial. They are supposed to recuse themselves if they feel like they can't be impartial or if there is an appearance of improprietary (when is slashdot going to get a spell checker?).
"As far as SC ruling during last election
They did what they thought was right."
No they did not. The republican members of the court have been the champions of states rights for years. They had also rejected numerous equal protection arguments when it came to other other issues (death penalty for one). If they did what they thought was right they wouldn't have said in effect "don't ever come to us with another equal rights case and expect us to take you seriously we only did it in this one case". I guess equal protection is not important when a nigger is being killed but let a republican loose an election? never!
"Who is to say you are right and I am wrong ?"
Well I guess history will. Maybe some brave journalist will track down some of the favors done by the Bush administration to the members of the judges families and then the rest of the country will too. Of course with the media being so conservative these days I don't expect it anytime soon.
War is necrophilia.
You and I are no different in this respect - the machine I got for my wife for $650 would have cost me much more to build - it had quality components, the only thing I had to add was a DVD (it came with a burner) and the Sound Blaster 5.1 Platinum I had got her. The rest of it was all good components, like the Intel Management Pro/100 Adapter (eepro100) and a GeForce 256.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Especially with the imminent block against an XP release is everything. Make the government lose a couple of days, and XP will be out of the door...
This decision was upheld unanimously by a very conservative lower court, there is no way the Supreme Court would overturn that. There are no higher judges, but even Supreme Court Justices will respect a lower court's decision if made that emphatically. I expect this to be denied cert, which essentailly means that the Supreme Court has voice their agreement with the lower court's decision without actually hearing the appeal.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
use this.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
If MS is asking that the lower court ruling be completely vacated, does this mean that the SC can re-examine any remedies (ie: breakup)?
Of course I use Microsoft. Setting up a stable unix network is no challenge
Core to MS operating procedure is delay. This is simply yet another delay of the inevitable. But, it will give them time to come up with some other form of hukstery. The sad thing is, FUD works. As is being proven here.
The AP story can be found here.
Too bad Congress borked Bork, they'd have an airtight decision against Microsoft. As it is, MS has got some pretty heavy sway with the pro-capitalism (not necessarily pro-competition) majority of the Supreme Court.
Dancin Santa
Prediction: The court will provide a temporary injunction allowing XP to be put on the market until they make a decision. Then they won't make a decision until Bush is crowned President^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Windows XP is actually released into the wild and the issue becomes moot.
Sometimes politics is so depressing.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
"Microsoft Appeals Anti-Trust to Supreme Court"
They may not have liked it, but the movie never mentioned the company Microsoft. I don't see what the Supreme Court will do for them at this point, I mean, it's already in rental anyway.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
As scary the possibility that the verdict could be overturned might be, it is completely outweighed by the fact that if they lose this one, Microsoft has nowhere else to turn. They will have appealed to the highest court in the USA and LOST.
This kind of surprises me since it's been the DoJ's Antitrust Division that has consistently wanted to take this case to the Supreme Court (and bypass the hostile appeals court). This move might backfire for M$ because the Supreme Court's antitrust decisions during the Rhenquist years have not always been favorable to the defendant. In fact, there are actually some prominent pieces of Supreme Court antitrust case law that might play into the hand of the DoJ. Perhaps M$ will shoot themselves in the foot with this move.
network and system admins across the world try to deal with the Code Red I and II worms, while MS pushes us forth into .Net land. IIS 6.0 on a .Net server, hey why not? [sarcasm]
What I find so strange is, when someone commits a crime, they are held accountable for it and often spend a long period of time getting out from under the financial burden that it created. When MS stresses the envelope in the OS market, to the point where tax payers' money is used frivilously to prosecute them, it makes them millions on advertising and free PR revenue.
- tre
http://piclabs.com
I wonder if the imminent product launch of XP might bring this entire issue to a head faster than anything? MS probably doesn't want to have any news stories that have the lead: "Microsoft launched XP amidst worries about a strengthened monopoly."
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
An ending to the case! No more appeals, something has to be decided... No matter what the decision, I'm happy.
No sig for you.
No one is suprised that this action is being taken, and the outcome is almost assured, however, it's important to get closure on the issue both for Microsoft and for their opponants/competitors. This way the courts can proceed with establishing a remedy, and Microsoft will not be able to delay further, that stage of the trial. As it stands now, their appeal to the supreme court may delay further action just long enough for them to be able to release Windows XP. Thile this in itself is a bad thing, it does finally exhause Microsoft's options with regard to delaying any remedies that may be established by the courts - which is a critical issue in the technology industry where the battlefields are created and dissapate in months, weels and sometimes days, with their foundations buried in the shifting sands that are the internet. Microsoft has already succeeded in the browser war, and the desktop space licending issue, neither of which are relevent any longer since Web inspired technologies have spawned far more insidious technoques for marketing such as embedding links to adversisers and vendors deep within applications such as was done with the digital camera software that's boundled with Windows, as evidenced by the Kodak case.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
The Supreme Court is unlikely to do anything about this. They are unlikely to overturn Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law made by a federal judge and upheld by a circuit court of appeals. They are unlikely to agree to hear the case. This is more a holding action designed to make the whole process as slow as possible.
It will go to the Federal Circuit Court again, to the Appeals Court, and on back to the Supreme Court at least one more time before things are done. Microsoft needs to give the Supreme Court a reversible error or Constitutional issue before the Supreme Court will agree to hear it.
It is interesting (if you are into legal wrangling), but hardly an important story. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear it, THEN it is news!
...doesn't mean the Court will hear the case. They already refused to hear it ahead of the appellate court, so it is as likely as not that the Supreme Court will allow the penalty phase to be decided before hearing the case.
That's especially true when you figure the the SC probably doesn't want to have to craft a penalty, and would just send the case back down for a penalty phase if it upholds the lower courts' rulings.
The Findings of Fact and of Law are already pretty firmly entrenched in this case. I feel reasonably secure that when and if the case does make it to the Supreme Court that it will stand by the findings made by the lower courts.
Right...
Apparently Microsoft hopes to fix everything in the next release. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
or what?
Just when they are poised to put a stranglehold on the Internet, e-commerce, network servers, and your mother-in-law's underwear, they are going to try and tell the Supreme Court they are not a monopoly?
this is a correct analysis.
The Supreme Court will deny the application for a hearing, correctly realizing that the best opportunity for a hearing will be after the remedy hearing. hopefully they will take an expedited appeal from the second trial.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
if it's determined that a LARGE FINE be imposed rather than a breakup, it's likely to be well more that a billion dollars in my humble estimations. Like any other crime, it can't really be undone, and how do you measure the damage done to the industry and more importantly, the consumer?
I think this money should be diverted to open software to prevent any company from being able to monopolize the software industry going forward. Do we get enough cash so all those developers whove contributed to Linux/GNU so far can quit their day jobs and hack the good hack full time? Or do we push open source into schools training teachers and funding an educational system based on freely available source code? (hey work done at unikversities often becomes their sellable property, work from public schools could go back to the public).... What's the remedy, is it tap 10 Billion dollars from MS and if so, what's to be done with that cash?
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Well, they risk a lot. What if Supreme Court will think that Judge Jackson had actually pretty good idea and will order to uphold the former decision to break the company? They can still do it, right?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Unless the Supreme Court rejects the appeal out of hand in the next 2 months and attempted injunctions against releasing Windows XP fail, Microsoft wins, at least in the short term. IANAL, but if I understand legal proceedings correctly, the entire remedy phase is on hold until the Supreme Court rejects the appeal, vacates the ruling out of hand or hears the case. Typically, the Supreme Court takes several months to reach a decision on whether to put a given case on the docket. Microsoft's short-term goal is to extend the case into November, clearing the way for the release of Windows XP. It's a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle, and both sides know this.
Regardless how you feel about Microsoft, though, this isn't good for consumers. The October release date has become much more than an arbitrary deadline, and XP will be released in whatever condition it's in. (I know, the same can be said about their previous versions of Windows, but this time there's a lot more than PR on the line!)
Personally, I don't think the Supreme Court will even hear the case. There doesn't seem to be any legal ambigity or any untested or controversial legal rulings at stake. A conservative, MS-friendly court ruled unanimously against Microsoft on all counts. As big and powerful as Microsoft is, I think the Supreme Court will simply reject the appeal without comment, leaving it to the lower courts. The Supreme Court doesn't like to get involved unless there are constitutional issues at stake, and there aren't any here.
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Something cleverThe Supreme Court hasn't exactly been lying low since the Bush v. Gore fiasco, but they they're not going to touch this one with a ten-foot pole. There's just no need for them to do so.
The Supreme Court's docket is entirely discretionary. They only hear a couple hundred cases every year, out of the thousands that get submitted. It takes years for a case to make its way up to the Supreme Court from the lower courts precisely because the Supreme Court's policy is to let all lower remedies get completely exhausted first and to let all the difficult legal issues receive one or two decisions from below.
They might someday hear a Microsoft antitrust case, but it's not going to be this one right now. Why would they jump into the fray now before the breakup measures are even decided? The case is even dimmer for Microsoft in light of the unanimous circuit court ruling. It's not unheard of for the Supreme Court to overturn a unanimous ruling, but they've almost never gone out on a limb and done so when there were alternatives like waiting for the wheels of justice to turn some more.
Instead of focusing on the Supreme Court, we should be focusing again on the upcoming battles in the district court. While it's decided that Microsoft is guilty of antitrust violations, whether that fact will create any lasting legal or economic ramifications has yet to be seen. It still could go either way: they could be broken up and fined, or they could just get another slap on the wrist with another toothless consent decree.
And with the possibility still open that Microsoft and the DOJ could settle out of court, well, we've got bigger things to worry about.
I'd rather have a bannana.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't know, I've never found them that appealing...
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Something cleverMan - that's two whole days' potential delay they passed up on!
The MS legal team must be losing their edge.
-Renard
WinXP ships, and the injunction is imposed against it after it has already started to move copies?
My ideas of the consequences - legal minds feel free to correct me:
1. Walmart, Babbages, Everyone else who sells software is required to 'yank' shelf copies to comply with the injunction. Most stores will be slow to comply, and then claim that they sold out before the injunction hit.
2. We'll have a 'limited edition' of WindowsXP in the wild. Pirate copies will run rampant online and on Ebay because 'the most popular OS' cannot be legally bought in stores, and MS will be in the odd position of having to try enforce their own injunction because they can't be seen as encouraging piracy, can they? The other members of the BSA would scream if they did.
3. After a few months, Microsoft will release something like Windows IR (Injunction Release!) online as an 'update' to existing copies of WinMe and Win2k. It will be an Internet Explorer 4.0 type release -- all the funcitonality of a new OS, all the FUD and anticompetitive bullshit, but Microsoft will give it away as a new product just to spite the Fed and its competitors.
4. ANOTHER LAWSUIT over whether or not MS violated the injuction by releasing WinIR (Say that one out loud!)
5. Microsoft releases much of WinIR under their 'shared source' license, locking hundreds, if not thousands of developers into MS-only development. Hey, if it's free, code for it, right?
6. After months and months and months, a judge finally gets the breakup to stick.
7. Because they won't let him make the rules, Bill takes his toys and goes home. Microsoft 'exits' the home operating system market, and concentrates solely on a 'Software as Service' business market. They sell Win200x releases on a yearly basis to people who want or need server software and are too dim to use a *nix.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I recall the Microsofties gloating when the D.C. Circuit announced its result. The test, at the time, I though, as to for whom the result was better would be whether the government or Microsoft filed a petition for certiorari. It appears that it was, in fact, the government who had the better result.
Sounds pretty unimportant to me. But if your life revolves around weed... well, each to their own.
I'd rather the Supreme Court review a case against a company who's actions touch upon many major sectors of the economy. Microsoft is so big that they have influence on the news/media. They affect your choice and price on various high-tech products, which in turn affects many people's jobs. They have a very real influence on people's retirement plans.
I for one think if a business is going to become that powerful, they should be under ethical scrutiny once in awhile. Who cares about a goddamn plant.
The intention is to hold things up while they negotiate. It's not a matter of changing the ultimate "binary" outcome, i.e. whether Microsoft is a monopoly or not. What they are trying to do is create enough delays that the other side will be willing to negotiate the degree of the applicable penalties.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They're worried that they might be facing an injunction against shipping WinXP with everything they want buried in it, one forcing them to either not ship or make those things modular so they can be replaced by the consumer if they choose. They figure that by appealing to the Supremes now they can freeze the case's return to the District Court level and any possibility of an injunction until after they've shipped WinXP the way they want it, and that once the thing's in the field it'll be too late for the District Court to do anything about it. IOW, they want to stall until they can present the court with a fair accompli.
Their delay tactics have already resulted in the demise of the Netscape browser before relief could be granted. They know that if they can roll out XP and .NET before the district court can stop them it will be too late. You can't put the egg back in the shell. The district court will still be able to consider other remedies, but Microsoft will have already been successful in widely deploying new proprietary standards and other agendas such as new activation techniques, killing USB 2.0, strangling MP3, anddiscourage Linux/Windows dual boot systems.
Because these new standards and agendas will have been adopted by other hardware, software and service companies, the district court's ruling will have limited effect on the standards and agendas themselves.
I'm tired of seeing stories like this one from earlier, where Microsoft is throwing their weight around. From a neutral point in this holy war, it is obvious Microsoft has made some great software in their time... and just as often have abused their monopoly to force all sorts of things on people, whether its .doc files that don't have a standard and thus are difficult to convert, or .NET, or a hundred thousand hacked IIS servers with open cmd.exes available.
.NET, and such is a whole new round of attempts to lock people into computing hell if they aren't totally dependant on Microsoft from cradle to grave for anything touching a computer.
Their renewed attack with dynamic web-rewriting,
And lets face the fact: If one of them DOES keel over, or retire (as Sandra Day O'Connor reportedly says she wants to) they are likely to be replaced by someone FAR FAR more scary. Think about this: Bush is like Rush Limbaugh - only FAR more stupid. Who do you think he's going to try and appoint to the court???
By the way - is anyone else seeing "Invalid form key GvORsfGrvV !" every damn time they try to submit something? Hey Rob! Fix the damn site please!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
The real question is:
Does Bill Gates own any oil companies? If so, He's got all the buddies in Washington DC he'll ever need.
Don't write in this space.
OK
They know that if they can roll out XP and .NET before the district court can stop them it will be too late.
... [and] would allow PC makers to sell systems with Windows XP installed in September."
So it's completely predictable that they would have taken this step (and others) to try to delay the courts.
What I hadn't heard predicted, though, is that they also may ship XP next month! "Microsoft could send PC makers the final--or gold--code for Windows XP as early as Aug. 15
Anything to beat the clock and dodge the bullet.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
No, we're mostly capitalists, we mostly have a free market, but the goals of a decent society may not match 100% with the end result of a whole hog capitalist free market.
So finding the former better than the latter, we mold capitalism into something slightly different that gives us what we do in fact want.
MS broke the law, and they're good laws that have kept the country running for over a century. Late 19th century abuses of corporate power were really something, and I don't think that anyone wants to go down that road again. (save the very very few that would directly benefit from it, and those who fantasize about being in that elite)
Basically, we want all of the good, and none of the bad, and since the system isn't carved into stone, it's possible, though it requires a lot of manual fine tuning.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Funny, the last time I looked, they don't advertise raw machines anymore. In fact, that is what I went there looking for not 3 months ago, and was presented with two choices: Win and Mac. I couldn't even find LINUX machines on their site anylonger. I suppose it's possible that I simply had an aneurysm and wasn't reading what I was looking at correctly, but it sure seemed that OS-less machines were not listed anylonger.
<Vlad goes and looks>
Yep! Here's what currently listed on the page for choices:
Systems
PC - Windows
PC - Apple
PC - Kits
Notebooks
Hand Held
Hand Held Accessories
Servers
Server Accessories
NOTE: You can get a Windows Machine, an Apple, or an unassembled incomplete kit. OS-less machines no longer an option.
Gee, I wonder if this had anything to do with the recient rash of MS threatening people who sell PC's without operating systems?
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
They Circuit Court didn't rule a breakup unjustifiable. It ruled that Jackson exhibited poor faith in how he went about choosing it as a remedy -- that he showed bias in the various Microsoft motions he denied and the inappropriate extralegal comments he made.
When the case goes back to the district court level, the new judge can choose a breakup remedy anew.
They will shift to a fraction of a penny from a trillion transactions a year and leave the utility OS market to the lower cost competition.
.NET really needs 64-bits and I don't see them competing against Linux when its already on those platforms, free and easier to administer.
Besides
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Remember, this is the same supreme court that angered 49% of the entire country without seeming to care at all.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
This appeal is on one issue - Judge Jackson. The Appeals Court threw out Jackson's remedy (the breakup) to be reconsidered by a new judge. Microsoft is trying to get the Supremes to throw out the rest of Jacson's rulings, and get them reconsidered by a new judge as well.
The Appeals Court didn't buy this strategy. They said they reviewed the record, and that there was no 'actual bias' prior to the remedy. Microsoft disagrees, and says that they don't have to show 'actual bias', just the perception of it. In this petition, MS relies heavily on two precedents, the biggest being some other case where the Supreme Court said there didn't have to be 'actual bias' to throw out a lower court ruling.
This petition sounds valid on the face of it. (I don't get why the appeals court didn't throw out Jackson's findings, personally. IANAL, thank god) But MS is probably stretching the precedent they clearly want to apply.
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Hasn't been a seven-member court for ages. You need five to get a majority - there are nine justices.
... five should be as well, as long as they are in good health, lead relatively safe lives (e.g. no high-risk hobbies), are thoroughly bought and paid for, and can then be retained (via additional bribes, extortion, blackmail, party or filial loyalty, or what have you).
:-)
All that aside, seven supreme court justices were appointed by Republicans. Whatever political favors were owed were paid back in full last December, notwithstanding another poster's pathetically niave notion that merely because they were appointed by Junior's predicessors (including his own father, Bush Sr.) the result is somehow unrelated. History would appear to indicate otherwise, although calculating a monetary value for services rendered (and the cost of obtaining said services) will probably be a subject of scholarly debate among historians a couple of generations from now.
In any event, thence came my initial 7 x [value of an appointment] = what it cost Junior (or, more accurately, his party) to get the supreme court in their pocket. As to whether one could get it cheaper (e.g 5 x [value of an appointment]), the question then becomes how reliable a 5 member majority is vs. a seven member majority and what exactly does it mean, and does it take, to truly have the court in one's pocket? Seven justices clearly were quite adequate
It is really quite moot anyway , as Microsoft has more than enough capital to buy all nine justices regardless of price.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"This decision was upheld unanimously by a very conservative lower court, there is no way the Supreme Court would overturn that. There are no higher judges, but even Supreme Court Justices will respect a lower court's decision if made that emphatically."
The decision of the Court of Appeals may have substatial predictive value for how the SCOTUS will decide to grant certiorari or decide a case. But it is in no way determinative. This court has emphatically indicated that it may grant certiorari when all observers expected that it would not. This court has decided cases in ways that are not obvious to even experienced SCOTUS observers. Personally, I don't think they will grant cert either but I don't kid myself about it.
"I expect this to be denied cert, which essentailly means that the Supreme Court has voice their agreement with the lower court's decision without actually hearing the appeal."
Denial of a grant of certiorari in not a mechanism of voicing agreement without hearing the appeal. All that denying cert does is end the appeal proceess for whatever issues are on appeal. The court may or may not agree with the appeals court. It is possible that they disagree with the appeals court on the technical issue but agree with the outcome. They may be waiting for a better set of facts. They may think the issue is insufficiently important. There is no way to tell because the court doesn't say anything when it denies cert.
It is important to remember the effect of granting or denying certiorari. If the court grants cert than the decision it reaches becomes binding precedent on the entire country. If the court does not grant cert, then the court of appeals decision is binding precedent only on those jurisdictions that lie within its circuit. The decision may well influence decisions in other circuits but they are not bound. When there is a disagreement on a point of law between the circuits, the SCOTUS will often settle the matter when a case with the appropriate facts and posture petitions for certiorari.
Finally, I don't see why you think this is a bad move. Does Microsoft have something to lose by exercising their right to appeal? And if they do, is it offset by whatever they gain from the appeal? Just because an appeal doesn't produce the ultimate result of reversal doesn't mean it doesn't produce other, lesser benefits.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
1.) Whether the ruling is upheld, overturned, or not even heard by the court. (OK, so this one is probably a gimme)
2.) If it's heard, who comments on the decision, and do they support or dissent?
3.) If it's not heard, will there be any comments, and what might they say? Will the justices kick it back down with a chuckle, or will they too say something about (for example) Microsoft's disrespect of the legal system?
Microsoft is focused on getting XP out in October, and they are rationally playing for as much time as they can. To me, that looks completely Machiavellian, uninterested in justice, and devoid of conscience, just like you would expect a profit-maximizing non-human entity to behave. Keep this in mind when you give that entity your credit card number or entrust it with personal information. Scary.
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Wow, that strategy of attacking Judge Jackson for running his mouth sure worked out well. It bought them just enough time to realize how stupid it was to not challenge the entire judgement, so now they get to go to a Supreme Court that doesn't tend to be very friendly to big corporations. I guess they are hoping that a few of the older justices croak and get replaced by some of Dubya's corporate cronies in time to save their butts.
Of course, at this point MS is just fighting for time. Netscape has slowly managed to die off, despite Microsoft's arguments that AOL paying too much for Netscape in the DotCom days showed that Netscape was doing fine, and AOL is continuing to hold off switching from IE to Komodo, which doesn't make MS look good. Linux companies are dropping left and right, and game companies that were once very happy to push for Linux are coming out with the fact that Linux games don't sell, pointing out that Linux isn't really a desktop competitor. On top of that, MS is starting to gain server market share once held by Sun.
So I guess Microsoft is making a last ditch effort now, trying to pull a hail Mary victory with the Supreme Court. This should be interesting.
There has got to be a way around the calender chicken that is being played out here.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
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