Feds to Publish Public Comments on MS Settlement

Silas writes: "This AP Article notes that the government is going to be releasing the comments submitted by the public on the Microsoft anti-trust case. Highlight: 'Overall, the department said it received about 7,500 comments from people in favor of the settlement reached by the federal government and nine states, while 15,000 opposed it. Another 7,000 comments were dismissed as opinion, like "I hate Microsoft."' Apparently they have to publish and respond to each one." CNN is carrying the AP wire story as well.

Comments

one of the cdroms

[berniematt]

As much as I hate to admit it, I think I would be interested to read some of the comments that people had to say on this matter. Does anybody know how the CD-ROM's that they speak of in the article could be obtained? This might even be good for my school's library.

Re:That's it?

[Dino]

Considering that's more comments than the all front page Slashdot stories combined see, I'd say it's not too shabby.

Clearly, it shows the Government, Microsoft and the world and the people are against the Microsoft Settlement.

Numbers could be misleading...

[trcooper]

I wonder how many of the comments that were against the settlement were looking for a harsher settlement as opposed to the number of those thinking no action or less action should be taken. At first glance the numbers seem to indicate that twice as many people think there should have been harsher punishment, but the actual content of those comments could be different.

Astroturfing?

[Eric Seppanen]

I hope they publish the commenters' names. I hope somebody tries to contact a statistically significant pool of them to find out why they wrote what they wrote.

I wonder what percentage of the 7500 in favor of the settlement are Microsoft employees' sisters, or work at companies with Microsoft contracts, or were somehow contacted by Microsoft PR hacks and "encouraged" to write letters. It'd be hilarious to find that 6000 of the letters were all written by some poor intern at Microsoft, using names from the phone book.

Re:Astroturfing?

[jafac]

I hope they DON'T publish my name. I don't want to be rounded up by Bill Gate's jack-booted SE's after this suit is thrown out, and it's made clear who the "rabble-rousers" were.

In fact, I really hope that they don't find out who I work for, because my company has a relationship with Microsoft (as any software company in today's world really must, if they're to have any chance of long-term surival). They might think that my opinion reflects poorly on my employer.

Just great.

[Lemmy Caution]

This means, of course, that the anti-Microsoft community was represented by a goatse.cx link.

My first reaction was that anti-Microsoft loonies would, by their zealous over-reaction, bile, vitriol, and social incompetence, play right into the hands of Microsoft. Of course, there's a handful of loonies on the pro-Microsoft, or anti-regulation side of the barricades, as well, but for the most part, even though I'm not a part of either of those camps, I suspect that none of their partisans are quite as fanatical about their cause, and so probably appear more reasoned and sensible. However, I'm sure that some loonies on each side posed as loonies on the other, and it all came out in the wash.

Like T.S. Eliot said in The Waste Land, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate
intensity".

Be interesting to verify the 7500

[A Commentor]

Seeing how MS has already admitted to sending letters to congress with other people's names, doubtful they would be stupid enough to do it again with this, but the people/names should at least be verified.

Most likely that those 7500 people are just shareholders of MS.

Microsoft not playing fair

[acherrington]

If I remember correctly, microsoft has played this game illegally before with alleged grass roots campaigns (having people who dont even exist sending letters to their representatives), fixed online polls to sway public opinion (zdnet), and squashed competition and innovation to make the almighty dollar.

Somehow i fail to belive that those 7000 letters are from real people and just another fabrication from microsoft.

Online and on CD-ROM!

[ism]

Justice has asked the federal judge handling the case to allow it to publish them online and on CD-ROM.

I'm glad to see this has a good chance of happening. It would definitely be nice to have easy access to the comments. I'm kind of interested in the 90% that were not "substantive," including the "pornography."

The figures don't exactly add up though. The article states it received 30,000 comments and breaks it down into 15k, and 2 7.5k chunks. However, the first part of the article says only 10% was "substantive."

If the numbers are true, I must say I'm actually quite pleased at the turnout. I'm curious as to whether or not the uh... less constructive comments will have any bearing on the decision. The article seems to paint the picture that most of those opposed the settlement. It does make you wonder if Microsoft's "grassroots" efforts are responsible for those comments.

Re:That's it?

[Flower]

With all the /. stories I expected to see a higher number of porn^H^H^H^Hgoatse.cx messages. But that's just me.

It's a sad state of affairs when even the trolls don't live up to their potential.

On a more serious note, what do you expect? /. can't even organize a boycott of DVDs. Hell, we even get frontpage stories about the latest anime DVDs to come out. You have a majority here that when you take an activist stand, like say voting for Nader, tell you you wasted your vote even when said critic admits to not voting at all.

Most of the /. crowd and even me to a shameful degree don't have an activist bone in their body. We're opinionated but not motivated and definately not inconvenienced enough to "get religion." The fact is we're too diverse of group to all congregate on any real issue. Having an interest in technology is simply not encompassing enough to organize this group.

Washington Post Article

[craw]

Here are some snippets of the comments from some of the "big guns" who responded. This article was published last week.

Polls and Openions

[garoush]

Is this how we are going to deal with our laws from now on? Ask the public via polls and opinions as to how to deal with an issue and than use that as a fact to win a case?

I wander how many of those opinions came from people who *really* know what a computer is.

---

15,000 that were not trolls, etc

[Alien54]

Well there were the form letters.

Then there were the "me too"s

So you actually had a decnt chance of being included in the comment base if you took the time to actually write an intelligent thoughtful comment. Form letters were tossed as obvious attempts to flood the channel.

It probably winds up being similar to the number of comments in any number of Slash articles, and reading everything above 0.

!5,000 submittals that were not trolls, flamebait, etc, and which actually had some content is probably not that bad.

Heck, you could go for months here at slash before you hit that many.

Just taker a look at alterslash