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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. -
It is funny to see, when 4 out of 5 posts so far comments on the broken link in the story, and 3 of them posts the real one (a toughy to figure out).
:)
Now I am gonna sit around waiting for someone to actually have an opinion about the matter too.
Looking at Dan Kegel's letter the one thing that's striking me about this issue is...
Microsoft is global company causing global problems not just to the development process inside the US but outside it as well - especially as alot of open source projects have a wide range of international contributors, but as things stand only US points of view can be submitted to the courts.
While I agree that as this case is being brought in the US weighting ought to be given to US residents as this affects everyone people outside the US ought to have some scope to feed comments into the process. I know the EU is looking at (or are they still?) bringing its own case against MS but again this only will take account of EU concerns.
For matters of this nature which are truely global a global perspective needs to be presented.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
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.
I sent this email from my Hotmail.com account ;)
How hard was that? It does specifically what Mr. White asks, which is to submit a vote against the current settlement. It took 5 minutes. Heck, it took longer to write this comment than that.
-- Dan
Do it like this.
Open a new topic: Send Your Comments On The M$ Antitrust Trial
Allow the normal Slashdot moderation process to weed out the bullshit.
Deliver all the 3 to 5 comments to the judge "in personam" printed out on paper.
Use the power of this constituency, its literacy, eloquence and intelligence to make a difference.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
I just recieved one.....
I send you this file to seek your advice.....
settlement.doc
No wonder they are getting a large number of favorable responses.
O,ok this is getting to be an old bit, but it's funny!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have been talking about sending in email for a long time. I kept thinking about it, but I didn't send it till Monday night.
Microsoft is probably paying people to send email in support of them. We need to stand up and fight back. When Lawrence Lessig was interviewed he said that the people on slashdot are politically apathetic. This has to change. This is not that hard to do, now is the time to tell your feelings to the judge or whoever reads those comments. It is just one email. We can't just stay on the side making comments about how much Microsoft sucks. If we do that, and don't participate then we are helping M$. Even if it doesn't change the ruling, it will change what is in the public record. If there are 10,000 times the number of bad as good in that record, then no matter what ruling is made, M$ has had a loss. You have to compete against hundreds of dead emailers, but lets at least try to compete.
If you roll your eyes at this and say, whatever, then you have just decided not to stand up to M$. M$ will be proud of you for taking their side, by opting out.
Tantris
and send an anti-Microsoft/DoJ settlement email to the DoJ. You don't have to be articulate or even polite. Numbers count here, sending just "NO to Microsoft" is enough.
And register it will. By law, all public comments submitted must be published in the Federal Register. And the judge in the case will read them, each and every one. Come on, get off your ass! What's two minutes cost for inscribing your opinion in governmental granite for all posterity? Send all those bastardos up in Redmond a real message!
Feel free to copy/paste/send:
---
Regarding the Microsoft settlement, I don't believe that the current proposal provides adequate reparations to those injured by Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. Hundred, even thousands, of small companies have ceased to exist over the decades because of Microsoft's business practices.
Similar to the settlement against AT&T, Microsoft should become a government regulated Monopoly, until its market share drops to an acceptable level (40%, for example, assuming one of it's competitors is now also at 40%). This must be true for all Microsoft product lines, before regulation is lifted.
Even after being found guilty of being an illegal monopoly, Microsoft's behavior has not changed. Regulation of their behavior, with the threat of severe criminal penalties for failure to comply, is the only remedy that I can see will curtail them. The market must be able to return to a state of competition.
Imagine the damage to the United States if Microsoft were to fail, as Enron failed. The risks of a monopoly are greater than merely the loss of competition.
Thank you for your time.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
That's a good question. It's a little annoying that issues like this that affect most of the world are handled by just one country. Maybe the EU can do something, other than worrying about how curved bananas are, and clamping down on the heinous crime of selling said bananas by the pound.
Or maybe not.
Does anyone know if comments from non-US citizens are accepted?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I noticed, in reviewing the reference materials, that under the proposed settlement, Microsoft gets to keep secret (no obligation to publish or document) anything having to do with security. As soon as I saw that, the recent Gates memo "redirecting" corporate efforts made more sense -- Bill's just herding the troops into a safe harbor sanctioned by the settlement, so they will not need to change their basic practices.
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.
Imagine if the criminal law was like this: imagine if you were paralyzed realizing anything you did good could end up causing you to be sentenced to jail.
Were you worried about writing this sentence too well? Or were you simply reading Ayn Rand during English class, instead of paying attention?
This happened last time when the government requested comments on patents. Slashdot posted it and how many responses were there? Something like 5. I think there are more than 5 slashdot readers. Here is what I sent them below, at least cut and paste it or someone elses to show you have a vote against Microsoft:
----
The current proposal for the Microsoft settlement will not prevent Microsoft from staying a monopoly in the computer industry. Microsoft employees are spreading this around as "..a victory over the government." If the government shows they are incapable or unwilling to stop Microsofts monopoly over the software industry, who else is there to stand in Microsofts way?
Since the trial has started Microsofts grip on ISP's and hardware vendors has slowly loosend up for fear of how it would be represented in the case against them. Once Microsoft accepts the current settlement they will go back to their previous methods of forcing the industry to accept their software and force out competitors, but it is not their previous methods the software industry is only worried about. By recieving the current settlement this will show the industry that even the government and it's laws cannot stop Microsoft's monopoly. Microsoft will be able to expand their practices beyond strict EULA's, enforcing proprietary "standards" and harrassing/buying out small companies. They will be able to stretch more laws, find more loopholes and choose more "un-ethical" business means knowing that the most powerful system that could have stopped them was not powerful enough.
Once again I say that the DOJ and US government should be putting a stop to Microsofts monopoly. By forcing them to release their file formats, source code, protocols or something similar that will allow other companies to compete with them. But the current settlement simply shows that the government no longer has the power to enforce the laws that control our capitalist country.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Some guy who worked for a company hired by Microsoft called my office and asked to speak to the head of IT. He then said that I would be getting something in the mail if I hadn't already detailing the settlement for Microsoft. He then said this trial is costing taxpayers every day that it continues and it should be stopped. He told me about the public comment period and to go to their site which would submit a comment for me to the DOJ. I told him I would be much happier if Microsoft just crumbled and told him where he could put his propaganda. He said, "But taxpayers are the ones suffering here." and I said "Well Microsoft could just close their doors now and save us all the pain." He hung up. I forgot the name of the website but if I get that info in the mail I will put the info up somewhere. Jerk.
The so called predatory business pratices are also crap, I think about expanding my own business along the ideas in the "Halloween Document" all the time. The only reason MS got shafted for it was their market position.
That is correct. There are things you can do when you're a small business that you can not do when you are a monopoly.
Why?
Because the monopoly already has a substantial advantage and if they were allowed to use that substantial advantage as they saw fit, competitors wouldn't stand a chance.
Remember: It's not illegal to have a monopoly. Getting there is a good sign that you're doing something right. It's illegal to maintain a monopoly through things like predatory pricing ("dumping") and other means. You can not exploit your already enormous advantage to keep other companies out of the running.
Since I can still get 7 more Karma points, I decided to post my letter. Anyone who likes it is free to use parts of it in theirs.
=====
To whomever this concerns,
I understand that I have the ability to comment on the proposed settlement between the Justice Department and Microsoft.
I have been using computers daily since the mid-eighties, when my father brought home an early portable IBM computer. I hope to earn my livelihood by working in the computing industry. Consequently, this issue is centrally relevant to my life.
It is widely believed by those familiar with the case that the proposed settlement is completely inadequate. It will do little to punish Microsoft for it's plainly illegal conduct in the past, and virtually nothing whatsoever to prevent future violations of antitrust law. As a consumer, it infuriates me to be forced to pay for increasingly expensive software that diminishes in quality with each release. I applauded the Clinton administration's investigation of Microsoft. Their case was an effort to protect consumers and promote economic growth by restoring fairness and competition to the computer industry. Now that the DOJ is under new management, it has essentially abandoned it's pursuit of Microsoft, suggesting that the DOJ no longer has any concern for either economic growth or the public good.
The United States is a successful nation because its free markets encourage firms to compete for customers by producing high-quality, low-cost goods. This system needs to be protected from monopolists who gain so much power that they can destroy the competitive nature of the markets in which they participate.
I urge all parties involved to reconsider the proposed settlement. Microsoft deserves more than a slap on the wrist for it's destructive abuse of it's monopoly power. More importantly, American consumers need to be protected against future abuses.
Thank you for your time,
Stephen C. VanDahm
Spartanburg, SC.
I've been recieving weekly urges to comment from MS's FIN lobby...
.
Update: Settlement News; Public can Comment in Antitrust Matter; Class-Actions Suit Returns to Litigation; Deadline Nears for Public Comment on Antitrust Settlement
The Tunney Act review period, during which the Department of Justice seeks public comment on its proposed antitrust settlement with 9 states and Microsoft, closes Monday, January 28. The settlement is not guaranteed until after the review ends and the District Court determines whether the settlement is indeed in the public interest.
The provisions of the agreement are tough, reasonable, fair to all parties involved, and go beyond the findings of Court of Appeals ruling. Still, while consumers overwhelmingly agree that settlement is good for them and the American economy, and overwhelmingly want to move beyond this litigation, nine states have refused to join the settlement. Some, including Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, are urging citizens via email or Web site to submit their comments to the DoJ during the Tunney review period. While Microsoft commends these public officials for involving citizens in a decision that will affect them so profoundly, your voice is more important now than ever before to ensure that the DoJ hears the full spectrum of opinion on this matter. Concerned citizens already have begun submitting their comments about whether the Microsoft case should be settled or further litigated. The Department of Justice will take all public comments and viewpoints and include them in a report for the District Court to consider. Please send your comments directly to the Department of Justice via email or fax no later than January 28th. Whatever your view of the settlement, it is critical that the government hears directly from consumers. Please take action today to ensure your voice is heard. Email: mailto:microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov . In the Subject line of the e-mail, type Microsoft Settlement.
Fax: 1-202-307-1454 or 1-202-616-9937
To find out more about the settlement and the Tunney Act review period, go to the Department of Justice Website at: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms-settle.htm
Thanks for taking the time to make a difference.
Class-action Lawsuit Returns to Litigation
Friday, January 11, U.S. District Judge J. Fredrick Motz rejected a settlement that would have resolved more than 100 private class-action lawsuits filed against Microsoft in the wake of the 1999 decision issued by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson during the trial court phase of the federal antitrust lawsuit. Under the proposal?s terms, Microsoft would have given disadvantaged public schools more than $1 billion in funding, software, services and training, and around 1 million Windows licenses for renovated PCs.
Microsoft, who sought input from educators on specific terms of the agreement, will review the court?s opinion and at the same time move forward with the next steps in the litigation while we continue to look for reasonable ways to resolve the matter.
For more information on the class-action lawsuits, go to the Freedom to Innovate Web site at www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate .
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Hmmm, wonder what would happen if I used Word to type my letter.
"It looks like you are writing a letter to the DOJ.
Would you like help?"
Talk about a conflict of interest... How do I make this thing dissapear?
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
I would like to register my objection to the proposed settlement in the United States vs. Microsoft case.
The biggest problem I see is that the settlement is not a structural remedy. Oversight remedies have been tried against Microsoft in the past, and they have coded arounded them, lobbied over them, and legally maneuvered past them every time. The only thing that hasn't been tried yet, and that has a hope of working, is to break them up.
Breaking Microsoft up into OS/Applications/Other divisions wouldn't break their monopoly, but it would make it more difficult for them to use their OS monopoly to create new monopolies in other areas, which they are doing with Windows XP even as I type this.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I've sent in my comments regarding the antitrust too, but I thought I'd share a little info on what the federales are likely to pay attention to. I've got a relative at Sequoia / King's Canyon Nat'l Park, and they recently had a comment period on prohibiting snowmobiles in the park. This relative was one of the people sifting through the comments, and we talked then about how it was done. While the federal courts may do things differently, the following was the experience I heard about.
My relative said that form letters / chain letters / spam / one sentence responses were all completely set aside and virtually ignored. Despite the link in the story here where the guy says it's the number of complaints that count, it's complete BS. It's content that counts. What the park superintendent and NPS officials were interested in were the original responses of people who'd thought about the situation and expressed their opinion, no matter what that opinion was. They cared not a bit what the content of the response was, only that it seemed to be something someone thought about. Copies of responses, like the cut & paste jobs people are advocating here, were tossed except for one copy because they really represented the writing of only one person.
Then, these functionary-types sift through all these filtered responses, and place them in about a dozen separate stacks, from vehemently against to completely for, and everything in-between. The numbers of responses in each stack was counted, and a "summary report" of what the people in each stack thought was made, and responses the functionaries agreed should be seen copied and forwarded to the big-wigs. The Superintendent and NPS officials then read the summary reports, the selected reports, and the superintendent, since he's actually at the park, came & read a number of the nonselected responses in the stacks & prepared his short report on the people's response to the proposed rule.
I guess the point is that the comments definitely count, but they shouldn't be forms or cut & pastes, and should represent your own feelings on the matter. Think about it -- if all you're willing to do is cut & paste or pass on someone else's words, what credence should you be given?
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
I fear the Microsoft antitrust trial is deeply misunderstood, by the prosecution and the public at large. The consequences could be dire if a settlement is reached too early and in Microsoft's favor.
This case has a lot in common with the trials of the railroad monopolies. By their end, public infrastructure in the form of superhighways and was at hand. People no longer depended on the railroads as the only means of transportation cross country, and federally funded interstate roads provided an alternative to moving people and goods only by tracks. The introduction and assistance of cross country roads from the government helped resist the price fixing from the railroads and gave people a choice. Ultimately that choice resulted in heightened interstatecommerce and heavy population of the west coast of the United States.
Like the railroad companies, closed source operating system companies will always gravitate towards monopolistic unified control. This is in part because of the difficulty of building a new operating system infrastructure (building a new set of cross country tracks) and partially because it lowers the parent companies costs. Any remedy must be ongoing until the United States congress sees fit to address the cost of building, obtaining, or securing a open source software infrastructure.
Any assistance from the government helps drive back the very real market force of fear of obsolescence, which helps repair the psychological damage caused by previous competition being wholly futile. Compare the argument, "why should I buy a car when there are plenty of trains and there are no roads" to the modern application obsolescence quandary, "Why should I buy an operating system when there are no applications, and Windows is free?" (Windows is not free, but that is the public perception).
Like moving goods, only when people can choose to manipulate information in the fashion which proves most efficient for them will the free market flourish. At the least, Microsoft license terms and prices must be predictable and uniform for however long it takes for a federal infrastructure to be made readily available for use by Americans. Then the market can choose once again.
Thank you for your time.
Matthew Newhall
President of LILUG
Long Island Linux Users Group
president@slashdotified.lilug.org
http://lilug.org
My physical address
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
[Not any better than the others here, but it's yet another example for those who are seeking one....]
... Publicly Available Software includes, without limitation, software licensed or distributed under any of the following licenses or distribution models, or licenses or distribution models similar to any of the following: GNU's General Public License (GPL) or Lesser/Library GPL (LGPL); The Artistic License (e.g., PERL); the Mozilla Public License; the Netscape Public License; the Sun Community Source License (SCSL); ..."
I am writing to express my opposition to the proposed settlement in the Microsoft antitrust trial. As a scientist, I spend much of my time developing data analysis software for multiple platforms, including both UNIX and Microsoft Windows Operating Systems. My work is thus directly affected by the current proceedings, and I am concerned that a judgment be reached which is in the best interests of myself and other science and technology professionals.
I am particularly concerned that the Proposed Final Judgment does not adequately address the problem of Independent Software Vendors who ship Open Source applications. The Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.1 SDK EULA, for instance, states in part that
"...you shall not distribute the REDISTRIBUTABLE COMPONENT in conjunction with any Publicly Available Software. "Publicly Available Software" means each of (i) any software that contains, or is derived in any manner (in whole or in part) from, any software that is distributed as free software, open source software (e.g. Linux) or similar licensing or distribution models
This and other similar EULAs severely limit the potential for software makers to build Open Source software which is compatible with, or which makes legitimate use of, Microsoft tools. Since scientific software is often "Publicly Available" as per the above definition -- in keeping with the duty of scientists (especially those with public funding) to make their work available to American government, business, and academic institutions -- it follows that such behaviors on the part of Microsoft serve to impair the ability of the scientific community to meet its public responsibilities. Given the finding of fact that Microsoft holds a monopoly on Intel-compatible PC operating systems, it is espectially important to guarantee that Microsoft will not be able to use its monopoly power to control Independent Software Vendors. The Proposed Final Judgment does not succeed in accomplishing this.
The United States Department of Justice was in the right to take action against Microsoft initially, and -- as a taxpayer -- I certainly hope they will see that justice is served. The Proposed Final Judgment, however, is insufficiently strong to prevent the abuses which resulted in the initial action, much less the potentially actionable practices already proposed by Microsoft in the coming years. A strong judgment, possibly including the breakup of Microsoft, is the only viable means of restoring the benefits of free competition to the American software industry.
22 January, 2002
Renata B. Hesse
Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
Suite 1200
601 D Street NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Ms. Hesse,
I am writing to add my name to the list of people opposed to the Proposed Final Judgement in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust case.
As a software developer with 11 years of business experience, I have watched Microsoft's rise to dominance in several markets and been dismayed by many of the techniques it has used to attain and maintain dominance at the expense of other companies, competing software platforms and consumers such as myself. Still, while I have often found Microsoft's techniques distasteful and unethical, I am far less concerned about remedies for its past behavior than I am about ensuring that the same types of behavior are prevented in the future.
From my reading of the Proposed Judgement those remedies that actually work against Microsoft would be ineffective against a company determined to bypass them and would not even constitute significant obstacles in that bypassing process, further in many cases the remedies and definitions seem to have been specifically crafted to make them effectively nonexistent or to actually strengthen Microsoft's position in current or potential future markets. That Microsoft will work to bypass the original intent of the Judgement is clear for both technical and business practices - even during the course of the trial and settlement negotiations it continued to use tactics that should be blocked by a solid agreement.
As an example, the future direction of Microsoft's focus has just this month been declared to be security, while under the Proposed Judgement anything related to security need not be disclosed even if such would otherwise be mandatory. Under a strict reading, if Microsoft adds even rudimentary security interfaces to its APIs then none of those APIs need be disclosed and there is no penalty for not disclosing them -a requirement for receiving documentation for those APIs is that any business needing it must meet Microsoft-developed standards of business viability; non-businesses need not apply at all because access will simply not be available.
Overall, I feel that the Proposed Final Judgement is deeply flawed and should be substantially revised to remove these flaws before being accepted. A software and content monoculture such as Microsoft clearly wishes to have in place harms all of us in the long term, including Microsoft and its investors.
Sincerely,
Alan J. Miller
Des Plaines, IL
fencepost
just a little off