Slashdot Mirror
How the DOJ/MS Settlement was Reached
Drek was among the many who wrote in to tell us about the following: "Wired is running an article about how the MS/DoJ settlement was reached. More importantly, the DoJ has set up an email address where citizens can send comments about the case: microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov. This might be a good way for Slashdotters to do their civic duty."The address has been around for a bit, but still, a renewed call for comment.
from the does-the-doj-doesn't-run-exchange dept.
I've been staring at that for a few minutes now... what in the hell were they trying to type?
The Microsoft antitrust case was never about protecting consumers' right to choose. It was never about curbing an illegal, unethical monopoly that tries to extend its control over consumers in every possible way. It was about money.
The Justice Department used the Microsoft case to increase their own budgets. Republicans and others who supported Microsoft had no problem with increasing funding to the DoJ because more money for the DoJ means more money to enforce laws against drugs, pornography, civil liberties, and other things that conservatives hate. The DoJ was thrilled when David Boies took their case, because they would get to dole out more funding to a very expensive lawyer and take a cut from the middle. Better funding helps everyone in an organization.
The states had no interest in protecting consumers, either. The states all saw a large antitrust settlement as a gigantic handout - more money from God to drop into the state coffers and spend on pork barrel projects. And since Microsoft has customers in all 50 states, why would any state pass up the opportunity to take part in the windfall? Especially because attorneys general are not elected, so who are they really responsible to?
The antitrust trial has always been about money, and the interests who participated in the whole circus have made billions of dollars off the taxpaying public from it. It is time for a quick and decisive settlement so that the bleeding of wasted dollars can stop. The government has shown time and again that consumers are defenseless against corporations who break the law and defraud them. This time is no different.
~wally
The subject says it all! Spamming this email address with overly anti-Microsoft emails may have the effect of causing intellegent, well thought out emails to be discarded.
Please, please use your head and point out what you honestly believe the problems are (and back them up with facts when possible). We may be able to make a different here. Let's not screw it up!
Web Guy 1: Wow, we got THOUSANDS of emails to the Antitrust email address from citizens over the past hour!
Web Guy 2: In an hour? Must be spam.
Web Guy 1: You're probably right
*Web Guy 1 deletes said few thousand messages*
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Actually, it's not that they think highly of our opinions but that they're legally required to get community feedback on this type of thing. This was originally intended to make it difficult to allow for pro-environmental decisions and such, but now it's coming around to bite the government on the ass.
/must/ be responded to. Sure, the responses will probably be mostly form emails, but they also have to be forwarded to the judge- who is legally required to consider the public interest when approving the decision. So... it's not completely over yet, and yes, this might actually make a different. So... go and write something thoughtful and coherent about why you feel MS as is significantly impacts your freedom as a consumer, and it might actually make some difference.
More importantly, they're legally required to respond. As I understand it, every 'valid' email sent to that address
IAAL,BIANLY
I'd venture to guess that the Slashdot readership knows much more about law than the public in general. Of course, /.ers don't know about law! That's not what this email address is for... it's not for lawyers to write in; it's for the public at large to express the community opinion on the subject. And I would have to say that /.ers are *significantly* opinionated on this issue.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
(1) Microsoft claimed all along that the web browser was a useful application which deserved to be tied to Windows. The crucial question they never answered was: what about Microsoft Word? Everybody uses a word processor; why didn't Microsoft add Word's powerful features into Windows, to benefit consumers in the same way they did by adding Explorer's powerful features to Windows?
The answer is that Word had no serious competition, so Microsoft was content to sell it separately and to offer a stripped-down word processor ("WordPad") bundled with Windows.
I've believed all along that a great solution to the tying issue would have been for Microsoft to include a stripped-down basic web browser with Windows, and to sell the full-featured Internet Explorer separately. This would let customers surf the web without buying anything extra, but if they wanted additional features, plenty of competition in the market would give them lots of choices of more-powerful web browsers.
(2) Microsoft defeated Netscape simply because they had the cash, the resources, and the time to copy every one of Netscape's most important products feature-for-feature, and give it away for free. They rarely got things right on the first try, but by bundling browsers and servers in with Windows and by releasing subsequent versions with more features, it was inevitable that they would eventually match Netscape's quality -- and then it was inevitable that customers would choose the free solution over Netscape's. Many of Netscape's customers still remained loyal, and purchased Netscape software rather using Microsoft's give-aways, but still, Netscape was doomed from the very start.
Netscape did the research and development. Microsoft saw what worked, copied it, and gave it away. How could Netscape possibly survive?
More importantly, what does this say about the Next Big Thing, whatever that may be? What incentive does a person have to turn his great idea into a company, when he knows that Microsoft can simply steal his idea and undersell him once he proves that his idea is a success?
(3) Microsoft has a long history of abusing their power, and they've been taken to court for it many times in many different countries. They've learned, however, that if they can get a court case to drag on for years, any ruling will become irrelevant because the competition it was supposed to benefit has long since died off. And not only are they skilled at dragging the proceedings through molasses -- but they also thumb their nose at the government while doing it; were they ever reprimanded for introducing a falsified videotape into evidence two years or so ago?
Any ruling against Microsoft must be strong and unyielding. So far their punishment for shrugging penalties aside has been another court case which has dragged on for another few years, and they'll only ignore the outcome of this one too; this must come to an end.
You're close...
This is what happened. As a member of the DOJ, I can tell you that things have been rather busy lately. We all know that Christmas is rapidly approaching. To make a long story short, Bill gave us some of those new XBox consoles. He even threw in the full set of release titles and a copy of XP! Now if that's not justice, what is?
And don't go givin' me your self-righteous BS. You know damn well you'd do the same. We were nearing a settlement anyways. This just sealed the deal.
Yeah right. Back in the 80's when illegal dumping of toxic waste was big, fines for those companies were like $50k/day- a value smaller than the amount of money the companies saved by dumping illegally.
So now we are going to fine MS "stiffly?" How much would this be- 1/10 the value of breaking the rules? MS has a history of breaking these kind of agreements, and I don't see this changing anytime soon.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
- Fairly soon I'll be unable to watch any online media content without paying an MS tax. If that does come to pass it'll be specifically because of this settlement.
- I'm unable to start a business in any field might even vaguely compete with MS, because no VC in their right mind will give me money.*
- If I were offering a competitive product in another field (like NS did or the PS2 is) I'm unable to sell product at a price that actually reflects the cost of production. If it were a japanese car or steel company, that would be called dumping.
And this is just what I came up with in a few minutes while on the phone. It's quite clear, from the acts of Congress, the rulings of the Supreme Court, and the writings of the Founding Fathers that we have a legal right to conduct commerce and communicate without the obstruction or cost of a monopoly. And that right is clearly being violated.Luis
*No comment on what that says about our VCs
IAAL,BIANLY
Here's my letter to the DOJ:
I've owned a computer dealership since before IBM sold personal computers. I'm also a programmer.
Microsoft is extemely abusive and anti-competitive. -- Microsoft is far, far more anti-competitive and abusive than the US DOJ vs. Microsoft antitrust case discusses. If the present case in resolved in an insufficient fashion, there will be a need for another case immediately.
Secret file formats are anti-competitive. -- A good partial resolution of the case would be to prohibit Microsoft from using secret file formats. Then there could be competition again.
At present there cannot be competition because the software from the dominant company, Microsoft, produces file formats that cannot be reproduced because they are secret. So, another company cannot make software that reliably inter-operates.
At present, if a big customer upgrades to a new version of Microsoft Office, and sends out files in a format incompatible with previous versions, all people who receive the files are forced to upgrade their Microsoft software. Companies understandably don't want to go to a good customer and ask that a document be sent again in a former file format.
Microsoft produces software that is deliberately faulty. -- Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME all have articifial limitations which cause them to crash even though there are plenty of hardware resources. These are called "User Resources" and "GDI Resources". The memory for these resources is artificially limited to 128,000 bytes in some cases and 2 megabytes in other cases. When these resources are exhausted, the operating systems stop functioning.
Microsoft deliberately allows piracy. -- Major competitors of Microsoft like Corel Word Perfect and IBM Lotus WordPro have difficulty competing because Microsoft allows enough piracy of Microsoft products that competitors cannot sell theirs.
I called the Microsoft legal department and complained about this. The result was that I was a witness in a case against one of the pirates. More recently I tried to complain about this again, but it is now impossible to contact Microsoft's legal department.
In my area Microsoft Office 2000 is available for $50.00 at dealers who sell low-cost computers. I have verified with Microsoft that these are pirated copies. Over a period of many years, Microsoft has not taken sufficient action against the pirates to allow a chance for honest competitors.
Microsoft is ending support. -- Next month, December 2001, Microsoft will stop providing support for Windows 98, apparently in an attempt to force users to upgrade. Another good partial resolution of the DOJ-Microsoft case would be to extend the support time for at least another 10 years. Many people have computers that operate fine for the purpose for which they are used. For example, an accounting department in a small company may use Windows 95, or even the DOS operating system. These people should not be forced to upgrade.
These are only a few of the extremely anti-competitive and abusive methods Microsoft uses, in my opinion.
Regards,
Michael Jennings
An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
...and I'll say it again. You have, on the one hand, a goverment that really wants to be able to bug electronic communications. On the other hand, a monopoly software company that controls 99.999% of desktops in the world. Now, the software company owes the government a favour so....
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
It never even PRETENDED to support standards, its CSS was mediocre at best, it used the <layer> tag for DHTML, instead of the W3C specified DOM properties (which IE MAINLY adhered to, even in the 4.0 days), and in general, was a bastard to code for. Take it from someone who has worked in the industry, everyone HATES coding websites for NS4.
Mozilla is now superior to IE in alot of ways, but its is too little far too late. While NS was releasing stupid add-on patches to its piece of crap (How many sub versions / bugfixes to NS4 are there? 4.0,4.01,4.04,4.5,4.74,4.75,4.76,4.77, etc. etc.), Microsoft was releasing IE5 and IE5.5, with much enhanced functionality. Sure, we all hate MS, but at least give them some credit. Netscape became overconfident in its market share, and stopped innovating. They are at least partially responsible for their own demise.
More importantly, the DoJ has set up an email address where citizens can send comments about the case: microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov.
Important! At the end of the month the email address will be discontinued because of a domain name shift. The new email address will be usdoj@microsoft.gov
You're absolutely right. Netscape 4 was (and still is) terrible.
But this isn't because Netscape chose to stop innovating, any more than a drowning victim chooses to stop breathing.
Let's rewind history and put you in charge of Netscape circa early 1998. Your largest competitor is giving away free work-alikes to all of your flagship products, and they've got enough money to keep doing this (and to keep stealing any new features you add) indefinitely. Meanwhile, you've got to focus on fixing bugs AND adding features, but with your company's slipping revenues, the best you can do isn't even going to keep pace with what's needed. You simply don't have the money to do proper development and QA.
Netscape failed because Microsoft purposefully, aggressively, and illegally cut off its air supply.
I read the settlement. It is great for Microsoft, and almost meaningless for everyone else.
The provisions don't begin until many people have been pushed into using Windows XP (eXtra Pain), after which they will be trapped in ways that are not part of the case. Here is a quote:
"Starting at the earlier of the release of Service Pack 1 for Windows XP or 12 months after the submission of this Final Judgment to the Court..."
Why not starting now?
Microsoft must disclose APIs, but may charge royalties. This prevents competition from Linux.
There is nothing which prevents Microsoft from using secret Microsoft Office file formats in an anti-competitive way.
The settlement provisions apparently do not apply if Microsoft claims that its anti-competitive software practices provide security.
The provisions provide Microsoft significant benefits.
Bush's education improvements were
* First...Netscape ignored small ISPs as potential distributors of Netscape's Web browsing software, effectively ceding that territory to Microsoft for a long time. Through working with those smaller ISPs, Microsoft learned useful information about the ISP business and the needs of ISPs and also obtained valuable feedback about Internet Explorer and the IEAK.
* Second, Netscape lost its reputation as the supplier of cutting-edge Internet technologies. Netscape's Web browsing software is simply not as good as it used to be relative to the competition, with versions 3.0 and 4.0 of Internet Explorer winning the majority of reviews.
* Third, Netscape made the strange decision to de-emphasize its established "Navigator" brand name and emphasize a new "Communicator" brand name, despite the widespread association of Navigator with Web browsing software generally. When you have a brand name rapidly becoming as well known as Band-Aid or Kleenex, you do not wisely abandon or de-emphasize it.
* Fourth, Netscape invested significant time and money going into competition with IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange in the enterprise messaging business, a field in which Netscape had no product experience and was entirely unprepared for the rigorous quality and product support requirements of large corporate customers.
* Fifth, Netscape continued to change its corporate direction every six months, to the extent that nobody was quite sure what kind of company it was. Initially, Netscape was a Web browsing software company; then it was a Web server software company; then it was an intranet company; then it was an extranet company, then it was an enterprise messaging company; then it was an electronic commerce company; then it was a portal Web site company. That sort of corporate identity crisis is unsettling to business partners like ISPs, which look for stability and consistency. Furthermore, these changes in corporate direction also made for changes in priorities that caused Netscape to focus much less on ISPs.
* Sixth, Netscape implemented its referral server program in ways that concerned ISPs. The focus of ISP Select, accessible only by going to Netscape's Web site, made it primarily a tool for switching ISPs and not acquiring new long term users. Although this may have provided advantages to end user customers, from an ISP perspective, it was not a good thing because each ISP's profitability is heavily dependent on maintaining customers for a sufficiently long period of time in order to recover its initial acquisition costs. In addition, Netscape favored large telecommunication companies over smaller entrepreneurial ISPs in the way it set up its ISP Select program.
* Seventh, and perhaps most importantly, Netscape sought to charge ISPs very high prices for distributing Netscape's Web browsing software. Given the highly competitive nature of the ISP business, it was not economically viable for ISPs to pay such prices. Seeking to gouge ISPs was shortsighted, and encouraged them to explore alternatives. Instead of attempting to gouge ISPs, Netscape should have distributed its Web browsing software and related tools for free and thereby promoted customer demand for other software and services that it offered.
Microsoft insisted that the NT 3.51 license didn't allow use of a webserver, but it was vague enough that it probably couldn't have been enforced, but they made certain that it could be in NT 4.0. Netscape wasn't the only one that was bitten by this license change -- O'Reilly's Website server also fell victim to it. Today, the only places Netscape/iPlanet's webservers still exist are on Novell (it's bundled with certain versions of Netware) and UNIX servers.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Yes, but it is Microsoft, and Microsoft has an outrageous monopoly and indulges in outrageous misbehaviour! Turn your question on its head ... If Microsoft were not a misbehaving monopoly, would we be so zealously seeking its death? I think not.
How far should the government go? As far as it is required to maintain (create) functional competition in the market in which the monopolist misbehaves. That was the original intention of Anti-trust law before Posner et al. emasculated it. If Anti-trust law is now so toothless, that a corporation like Microsoft can't be brought to account by it, it is, IMHO, time to rewrite it.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke