25 More States Oppose MSFT Antitrust Dismissal

phebz23 writes "News.com is reporting that 25 more states (even Washington!) are rallying behind the previous 9 to prevent Judge Kollar-Kotelly from dismissing the case on the grounds that the states should not have say in antitrust policy which is opposite of Microsoft's motion. They cite the Clayton Act, which grants them the authority to continue the case." Important to note that the states say: "even when the federal government has proposed to settle a case. Congress has granted the states clear authority to proceed independently under Section 16, despite the fact that the federal government has chosen not to act, has proposed to settle a case, has in fact settled a case, or has taken the matter to trial."

Comments

Misleading Headline

[BurritoWarrior]

The states aren't really rallying around the other 9. What they are concerned with, isn't this case, but their ability to bring antritrust cases in the future. Hence they are supporting the 9 states bringing of the case regardless of what they feel about the merits of the MS case.

WOH!!! Surprised at Washington! (state)

[Com2Kid]

You would be surprised as to the amount of direct outright propaganda that Washingtonians receive every day in favor of Microsoft.

(such as the 'story' on 'software piracy' that they aired last night. Including how you lose out on that lovely support MS gives you, yah right, LOL! If you buy a plan that includes it. . . . Ah, or how piracy only saves companies a 'few' dollars, not mentioning that those office CDs cost a few hundreds from MS and that buying them FROM piraters costs only a few dollars. Heh.)

All of the stories have such a horrid positive angle to them that I swear MS could declare that Washington State is seceding from The Union and nobody in the news bureaus would bat an eye. :(

RE: YEP - Efficiency is not good.

[Fergus McTavish]

I agree with the above. I can't believe the number of people who believe that this case is going to "hurt the economy"... obviously the never explain how, that's the mistake the first post in this thread made. The money that is spent on this trial goes fairly directly into the economy, money paid to umpteen different lawyers firms and professionals and their associated aides etc. is GOOD, that's money that's going to "trickle down" in capitalist jargon. Sure lawyers won't spend all of it supporting small businesses, paying for their groceries and so on, but the will spend some. Now seriously, where do you really think the money MS puts into this trial would otherwise go? It comes straight out of profits - profits that go to shareholders, they'll pay company tax on it(if the US is anything like .au) rather than lawyers paying income tax on it. The tax is important because that is cash that is recycled into the public purse and to a reasonable degree, used for the public good. The point is that the businesses that are most in the public interest, and to whom we should direct cash, all other things being equal, are the ineffecient ones, ie. the small ones. It is always so ridiculous to see govt. looking to big business to "create jobs". Barring the creation of a new industry(about the only thing for which big business is necessary) and ofcourse the running of industries that by nature rely on big corporations(eg. shipping) big business tends towards the destruction of jobs. How? One McMegaChain fast food purveyor moves into a new area and opens one store employing 1.5 times the number of staff of other stores in the area. However it services 45% of the market in that area. Some of the 9 other stores around (say 4) have to close because with 9 stores sharing about half of their previous market the can't stay afloat. So 4 times the staff of an average store and 2.3 times the staff of the McMegaChain are now out of work. And note here that McMegaChain hasn't even employed monopoly power, except in the indirect sense that's its saturation advertising is an unfair advantage of its size. Now Linus Torvalds makes it pretty clear that there is no need for a mega corporation to produce an operating system, as does Microsoft's plethora of other applications. Software development can be done by small to medium sized businesses, if it was made possible by the government this would benefit the economy immensely and in fact a single industry being freed up this way could probably produce it's own economic boom, much like the open internet market did for a while, until the competition stopped and money going towards jobs was spent more efficiently, leaving more to go towards investors. The money that goes towards investors is money that is unproductive. It only pays rental on start up capital for business. The width of your average profit margin is the proportion of the country's goods that goes towards supporting necessary but unproductive services. Microsoft is about making those margin's as wide as possible and people concerned about jobs should be looking to make them reasonably small.