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Respond To The Tunney Act
Jeremy White writes "Two nights ago, I was discussing the Microsoft Antitrust trial,
and the comment period required by the Tunney Act, with someone
who cares as deeply about this case as I do. The person
I was talking to had an inside connection that knew the tally
and basic shape of the comments actually being sent in about
this case. I learned that
it's time to stop procrastinating, or Microsoft buys this one."
This is the real link http://www.codeweavers.com/~jwhite/tunney.html. I'm sure the editors will fix this and I'll just labeled as a troll - oh boy...
Wheeeee
Or for a link that works...
- Blah blah blah, missing scientist. Blah blah blah, atomic bomb. -
Well, curl -I http://www.codeweavers.com/~jwhite/tunney.html gives the following information:
Last-Modified: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 21:25:09 GMT
So I would assume that it is this upcoming monday, January 28th.
Article here.
Microsoft says that it does not have lobbyists pushing its interests in the pending antitrust case, but that stance probably glosses over the indirect influence its lobbyists have had on the current administration.
Link to US DOJ.
Article by Cringely
Dont forget to send in comments to the US DOJ
--Metrollica
In one of the pages that are linked to, you can read that the deadline is January 28th, 2002.
A mirror (please, Swedes only ... I don't have a fast link) can be found at http://mupp.malfunction.org/~zaleth/tunney.html
Actually the EU is still investigating MS for anti-competitive behavir. The EU commission has a history of presenting companies with substantial fines in these cases (They recently fined two danish airlines $36 mill. and $12 mill for fixing prices on the Copenhagen-Stockholm route which "only" has one million passengers per year). The EU law states that companies can be fined as much as 10% of their annual turnover when acting anti-competitive - not a small amount in the case of Microsoft.
-._''_.-
Lest I be mistaken, the deadline is 60 days from the date the settlement was printed in the Federal Register. The settlement was printed November 28,2001. December had 31 days, so the deadline would really be January 27. The 27th falls on a Sunday, so you should try to get your comments in before Friday. That's in TWO days!
(it was intended to strike a conservative note)
Dear Sirs:
I am writing to give my comments on the Microsoft antitrust settlement.
I believe this settlement is counter to the interests of the American public, deleterious to the American economy, and not adequate given the findings of fact in the trial.
Microsoft's anti-competitive practices are counter to the law and spirit of our free-enterprise system. These practices inhibit competition, reduce innovation, and thereby decrease employment and productivity in our nation.
Microsoft's monopolistic practices cause the public to bear increased costs and deny them the products of the innovation which would otherwise be stimulated through competition.
The finding of fact which confirmed that Microsoft is a monopoly requires strict measures which address not only the practices they have engaged in in the past, but which also prevent them from engaging in other monopolistic practices in the future.
It is my belief that a very strong set of strictures must be placed on convicted monopolists to insure that they are unable to continue their illegal activities. I do not think that the proposed settlement is strong enough to serve this function.
Does it make sense for me to send an email aswell?
Dear Judge,
.. terminate the illegal monopoly". the proposed settlement does nothing of the sort. Its attempt to open the "API" (programming interface) of the Windows operating system will merely reinforce the monopoly, not terminate it as the court called for. Also opening the API is not enough: Microsoft plans only to open a mere a subset. Complete and full disclosure of ALL the source-code is the only "opening" that would suffice to terminate the Microsoft monopoly.
The proposed settlement is a bad one; please reject it and have the DoJ and the states go back and draft something that will address the facts found in the District court case.
A unanimous US Court of Appeals agreed that Microsoft had illegally kept its monopoly position by preying on other software developers and computer manufacturers. The bottom line is that Microsoft operated illegally, and any settlement or resolution of this case should make sure the company cannot continue its anticompetitive behavior. Unfortunately the proposed solution does not do this. In many ways, it actually reinforces Microsoft's monopoly, and does nothing to restrain Microsoft from acting illegally again in future markets.
Indeed, Microsoft has already shown they intend to continue to piggyback off their illegally obtained operating system monopoly to crush more markets. As an example, look at the "give away" of millions of dollars of development effort in their Media Player, which is unnecessarily "integrated" into WindowsXP - and is targeted at the RealPlayer product line, in order to crush it, in the same way they did the Netscape Browser. Microsoft, unlike its competitors, simply rolls the development cost into their illegally obtained monopoly operating system, and undercuts the competition unfairly. Yet the proposed settlement does not address preventing this sort of monopolistic behavior at all. Remember, developing a media player, a browser and other software costs money, and Microsoft leverages their monopoly to mask these costs while smashing competition unfairly. The Circuit court in it s 7-0 decision, and lower courts found this "bundling" illegal and monopolistic, yet the settlement does not address this in any sort of meaningful fashion: it allows Microsoft to tightly integrate and bundle its media player, its web browser, and myriad other applications into the Windows Operating System, instead of competing freely against external applications.
Also, the proposed settlement contains no provisions to remedy the unlawful monopolization of the operating system; nothing that will produce competition. Remember that the Circuit court ordered that a remedy must "unfetter the market from anticompetitive conduct... [and]
Finally, the proposed settlement does nothing at all to address the issue of effective remedy along side enforcement. the proposed penalties are ludicrous - an extension of terms that they have already violated is hardly a punishment. Fiduciary penalties must be applied, as well as structural ones. Also, the solutions proposed for "competition" are heavily dependent upon Original Equipment Manufacturers for implementation - the same OEMs who are partners and part of Microsoft's business plans (Such as Dell and Compaq).
In sum, this settlement is wholly inadequate, and should be rejected and the DoJ and the States should be directed to follow the rulings of the Circuit Court and lower courts when crafting a settlement, instead of ignoring the findings of fact and law, and currying favor with an unrepentant lawbreaking monopolist.
Regards,
MyReal Name
1234 Mystreet
Mytown, CO Myzip
(My) Phone-Number
my@email
---
Change is the essential process of all existence.
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Here's what I sent on Jan. 16th, copy/paste/scavenge at will:
/already/ entrenched in a dominant, monopolistic position, achieved in large part through unfair business practices. Creating a Technical Committee may (or may not) help with future problems, but does nothing to fix what has already transpired.
This will be a short letter, as I'm sure you have many to go through. Let me say up front that as a computer user, programmer, and IT professional, I feel very strongly that the proposed Microsoft Settlement will do nothing to punish past monopolistic practices, or to prevent future violations of anti-trust law.
Most importantly, what the settlement fails to address is that Microsoft is
Lastly (for this letter; I do not pretend that I am addressing a majority of the problems with the settlement), I would point out that much of Microsoft's monopoly is maintained through mechanisms not mentioned in the settlement. For example, Microsoft Word is the dominant word processing software mainly because it's file format is proprietary and controlled by Microsoft -- and changed frequently, so that no other program can reliably use it. If a standard file format were enforced, competing products would have a chance to co-exist and interoperate with Word; something that just cannot happen today.
I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reject this settlement and seek stronger action against Microsoft.