All MS Settlement Comments Now Online

Sundance writes: "The DOJ has published their answer to the Tunney Act comments on the Microsoft settlement. The gist of it is that, basically, they like the settlement agreement the way it was written and won't change much of it, if at all. Choice quote: "A number of commentors are concerned that Microsoft will deny disclosure of APIs and Documentation, or licensing of Communications Protocols, to open source developers on the grounds that the developers do not meet the "reasonable business need" or "authenticity and viability of business" criteria of Section III.J.2.(441) The United States believes that the requirements in Section III.J.2 are no broader than is necessary to prevent misuse or misappropriation of intellectual property." I guess that crimes pays, after all -- provided that you're rich enough to start with." hbo adds: "The comments are indexed by comment id. There is also an alphabetical list of commentators. To find a particular comment, look it up in the list, then find the comment id in the index. Finally, click on the particular comment to view it."

Comments

Incorrect link in the post.

[clarkie.mg]

Woops, there is a typo in the /. post, the correct link is

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms-alpha.htm

I don't HREF it because the page is very heavy (1.9 Mb) and useless.

It starts :

Public Comments on the
United States v. Microsoft Settlement
Alphabetical List of Individuals or Entities Who Submitted Comments
Comments are listed in alphabetical order by the name of the individual or entity submitting the comment. Each comment is identified by the comment number, number of pages, and submitter's name (as provided in the comment).

To view a comment, go to the Master Index of Comments and look up the comment by the comment number (MTC number).

MTC-00018130 0001 (u)
MTC-00029203 0002 --
MTC-00012751 0001 1157587@concentric.net
MTC-00010476 0001 16fort36@cs.com
MTC-00028611 0001 1miler@dragonbbs.com
MTC-00021140 0001 2trash
MTC-00000850 0001 3211@usa.com
MTC-00028710 0001 78455@attbi.com
MTC-00004269 0002 a
MTC-00013489 0001 A GOP Loyalist
MTC-00019734 0001 A. Walter

and ends :

MTC-00028529 0002 Zukowski, Tom
MTC-00016442 0001 Zulaski, Stan
MTC-00012479 0001 Zuschlag, Mary
MTC-00005343 0001 Zwierzycki, Walt
MTC-00000649 0001 Zygmont, Justin
MTC-00023199 0001 Zygmunt, Steve
MTC-00014085 0001 Zylanoff, Phillipa
MTC-00009122 0001 Zynski, Bud
MTC-00024478 0002 Zyphur, Mike
MTC-00008199 0001 Zyskowski, Mike
Note: Every effort has been made to accurately reproduce the comments on this web site. Some comments were converted into text using optical character recognition (OCR) technology and then tested for accuracy. Nevertheless, some differences may exist between the original document and the text version on this web site. The PDF images of these documents most accurately reflect the original submissions; the HTML versions are provided to facilitate browsing and searching.

have you looked at the responses?

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at 25, all from this website

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/public/ in dx34.htm

Every one of them was exactly the same, SAME EXACT WORDS!

and guess what, they all supported the settlement.

damn republicans, i wouldn't mind so much IF bush actually won..

damn microsoft, damn microsoft.

Lawyers still use Word Perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

It was accepted as a standard before Word had a significant market presence. Many built extensive templates using it, so they were slow to switch.

Plus there was a case about a year or two ago where some lawyer who was using Word had his brief thrown out of court because it was too long. Apparently Word skipped counting the words in the footnotes. Given that the opposing lawyer had no such problem, this was not good...

Improved index

[Hal Roberts]

Here's an improved alphabetical index that prevents the annoyance of having to cross reference manually:

http://eon.law.harvard.edu/mscomment/

I think that @inetgw just means emailed

[Anonymous Coward]

My comment appears with that appended, and I sent my comment in by email. (Trust me, that was not a form letter.)

What's the odds

[jsse]

that different comments has exactly same content in a row?

Comment MTC-00021678
Comment MTC-00021680
Comment MTC-00021682
Comment MTC-00021678
Comment MTC-00021694
Comment MTC-00021702
Comment MTC-00021704
Comment MTC-00021705
Comment MTC-00021706
Comment MTC-00021710

What do they think? They take DOJ an idiot who wouldn't notice this? Oh wait...

I'm too tired to list them all, but I'm sure there's much much more.

(This line is inserted to get around the lame-o lameass filter, blah blah blah blah lameass filter is lame, blah blah blah blah)

Re:Word Perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that it's posted in WordPerfect is that many within the legal system still use it. Legal documents have to be very carefully formatted, so the "reveal codes" feature of WordPerfect is very useful.

Duplicates

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/public/23 /mtc-00022140.htm
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ ms_tuncom/public/23 /mtc-00022172.htm

Is it just me or are these 2 the exact same message? These are the only 2 pro microsoft one I've found so far and they are dupes.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[bshanks]

I have no idea about the others, but Red Hat submitted a comment. See the list of "major" comments at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms-major.htm

Done...

[weston]

Perhaps. So now some perl-savvy Slashdotter should write a script to mirror the site into a database, and post the resulting URL. Shouldn't be more than an hour or two of work for someone who has the skills...

http://weston.canncentral.org/msdoj/lookup.php

This lets you look up any comment by name, or comment ID (if you know it).

I also threw in the ability to let you look up comments by minimum number of pages.... this lets you look at "substantive" comments quickly.

The code that I used to do all this is located in the directory. Feel free to take and mirror ... just credit me and link to my site, OK?

(Alas... I lost my mods for this thread when I decided to post this... my apologies to the parent poster and the sibling poster who made the comment about database programmers sleeping in -- at first you both amused me, and then you inspired me...)

Re:Important lesson

[TheConfusedOne]

Congratulations. You have almost successfully rewrote history.

First off, Netscape WAS NOT FREE. Granted most people chose to ignore the Shareware-like license and just download and use the product. I do know many people who actually did go and buy it. That, however, is not the real problem.

The problem came with Microsoft's licenses with OEM, ISP's, and Application Developers. Microsoft illegally used the leverage that it had with the Windows license to force Compaq to stop bundling Netscape on their machines. (Something that Compaq was paying for becaue they felt that their customers wanted it.) Microsoft offerred "bounties" to ISP's for getting their customers to change from Netscape. Finally, Microsoft signed restrictive contracts with Application Developers to allow them access to necessary technical information about Windows 95.

All the while Microsoft was pouring Billions of dollars into the development of IE and artificially welding it into their OS.

As to your algebra and worries/questions about whether things are clear or not, that was what the whole trial was for. Microsoft presented their side of the case, the DoJ presented it's. Microsoft "lost" (found guilty of the various violations). At this stage of the trial, the only question is the N punishments. The X things wrong have already been established. (The DoJ did have the opportunity to press for additional things wrong, but decided to forego that for reasons unkown.)