AOL Time Warner Files Anti-Trust Suit against MS

ChazeFroy writes "This article at the Washington Post says that AOL Time Warner has filed a suit against Microsoft seeking damages from anti-competitive practices over the Netscape browser." Can't say I'm surprised.

Comments

Re:how does this compare...

[ptrourke]

I thought that part of the reason for the states v. MS was these type of problems (MS trying to squeeze out Netscape). And even though AOL has already had their input on the matter, I guess they still have the right to sue. Seems odd that they'd just now jump on the bandwagon, and that they could have been on it all along.

Not odd at all.

1. The US and the states are acting in the public interest, not in Netscape's.
2. Despite this, if the US and the states had come up with a good remedy, that might have been enough for AOL/TW.
3. AOL/TW sits back and waits to see what happens, letting the US and the states spend all the money.
4. When they get the decision they want, but don't get the remedy they want, they bring suit in their own interests, using the existing judgment to reduce the amount of resources they have to dedicate to the suit, while putting themselves in the driver's seat with regard to the ultimate remedy.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Re:Goliath vs. Goliath

[blonde rser]

I don't mean to jump on you specifically but I see this analogy to law thrown around a lot and it makes me nervous. More and more people are looking at court battles as sporting competitions; consider the make up of both teams, weigh advantages and disadvantages of each, consider how similar you are with each, and hope the team you like more wins.

This is a fine for sports but in a court case only the laws at hand should be considered. Otherwise, in practise, only nice and likable people have access to the law. Or in other words being mean and unlikable becomes illegal because you will always lose in court.

Sure law is fundementally like this because it falls from man and some forms of sympathy are inevitable. But we don't have to encourage this behavior. Microsoft is dislikable but not because everything they do is illegal. And people tend to like to do illegal things to dislikable people; this is a major motivator for illegal activities, even among likable people. Therefore in some suits that Microsoft is involved in the law favors Microsoft, even if they are the dislikable party. In these cases I hope Microsoft wins because a society not tempered by blind justice is far more dangerous than Microsoft could ever hope to be.

Sure we can all continue to root for the popular and the likable but just hope that you never become unpopular, find yourself sued, and find people who root for the popular on the jury. I know I'm hoping this.

The definition of an OS is not the point.

[enkidu]

Just couldn't let this one go by:

Microsoft isn't being sued for including the desktop/start menu etc. They are being sued for leveraging their monopoly on the kernel+OS+desktop into other software tools. They do have the right to include their web browser. But as a monopoly, they don't have the right to:

• Forbid licensees from including other browsers or software [exclusion]
• Charge more for windows without IE than with it [anticompetitive pricing]
• Charge more for Windows or refuse to license because you want to add Netscape/Be/Linux onto the computer in addition to Windows [both]

In my opinion, Microsoft has broken many many laws, the most aggregious being the use of exclusive licensing agreements with manufactures to lock out alternative operating systems and products.

Heck Be (may it rest in peace) offered all PC manufacturers BeOS for free if they would include it on their shipping computers. Lots of companies were "interested". Microsoft prevented this from happening by threatening/extorting the manufacturers with their illegal "licensing agreement" and in the end only one, Hitachi, took them up. Even then, Hitachi was forced to hide the partition so you had to go through a labyrinth of steps to boot into Be.

I think if any of the PC manufacturers ever grew some balls (or got desperate enough) and sued Microsoft for predatory pricing/illegal practices, they would have the best chance of all of winning a shitload of damages. Unfortunately, Microsoft would be able to drive any big manufacturer completely out of business before they could win in court.

Maybe this is why AOL bought NSCP?

[aliebrah]

Did it occur to anyone that AOL possibly bought NSCP for no reason other than to have the avenue open to do exactly this -- file suit against Microsoft.

NSCP wouldn't have had the time or resources to do it, but AOL basically 'bought' a case for them to dump onto Microsoft. AOL on the other hand has the time and more than enough resources to make this a real PITA for Microsoft.