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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."
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.
This is I feel the beginning of "to the pain" for microsoft. I wonder if even they understand fully how quaint little laws from the states themselves will begin popping up dragging them into dangerous and legally hopeless territory?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
... is futile.
When will the states learn they can't compete with MS?!?!
Heh, just kidding.
Seriously though, what is the impact of the States continuing the case if the Federal Government has already dismissed it?
Does it lessen the damage(s) or penalties that could have originally been levied on M$?
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
This is important for the continuity of government and the law. Essentially the Department of Justice did a complete about face after the Bush administration came into office. (Microsoft gave more money to government and incumbents than did Enron by the way including our Federal Attourney General who while recusing himself from Enron case did not apparently see any conflict of interest in the Microsoft case).
If the states did not have this kind of legal standing, cases that stretched over administrations could side-step the law entirely.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Considering Microsoft's contention that the dissenting states didn't have any legal standing to continue the case, this is pretty unsurprising (although I admit, I didn't expect it).
The states are, at the minimum, protecting their right to bring suit. If the Attorneys General of the states didn't react to the MS contention on standing, they would be falling down in their responsibility to protect the states' legal rights in court.
It will be interesting to see what the actual filings say... so far, I haven't found a public link to them.
We are the Music Makers, and We are the Dreamers of Dreams...
Built-in protection against Micorosoft's lobbying efforts at the federal level. I wouldn't have thought our government capable of such forsight.
Then more come.
And more.
Pretty soon any state's attorney looking to add a notch to his belt buckle is dragging you into court on this violation, or that violation, and using state law, not federal, to force you into any compromising position they choose.
Now mind you, this won't put them out of business (the old, don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg theory). But forget about the days where you only had to face a -significant- lawsuit once every 4 or 5 years. Get ready for several a year from now on. And no settlement is going to make it go away.
It's true that this antitrust trial is dragging on and on, but I feel it is good for the general public.
Face it, a LOT of the public doesn't really care or understand the ins and outs of this trial. The more states that stand up for their rights, the more the public gets to learn about Microsoft's blatant misuse of their monopoly. It does drag on and on, but it degrades Microsoft's public image by constantly being in court for stuff they KNOW is against the law.
It seems as if M$'s motion might have backfired a bit. I wonder if this latest development might lead to the 25 backing the 9 in some other areas as well, they've just shown that they finally have the gonads to stand up to the beast.
I stole this Sig
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.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
After a long period of consideration, here is what the remedy should be:
1. For a period of 10 years, Microsoft shall be prohibited from selling any operating system product directly or indirectly to a computer manufacturer.
2. For a period of 10 years, Microsoft application products shall limit their file formats to an approved version of XML. Furthermore, for a period of 10 years, any changes to application file formats shall be announced and documented nine months prior to their commercial introduction.
3. Microsoft shall release upgrades to existing versions of applications to enable them to write the documented XML file format and to disable their ability to write the previous proprietary file formats. Their ability to read the previous proprietary format shall remain unchanged.
Now sit down and think what the world would be like.
Howard Roark, Architect
I believe in a Man's right to exist for his own sake.
Yup, the $4.3 million to people in both political parties, including President Bush, appears not to have gone far enough for them. With all those billions, you would figure they could at least afford a cool $20 million to put down the antitrust measure, that sure would do it.
Instead though, they put the same amount of pennies into political donations as they do for bug fixes...err wait...do they have a budget for bug fixes?
You can bet Bill will correct this horrible situation in the next election. . . problem is, buying off every state could cost more than even Micro$oft is worth! LOL
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
News Flash: "Hail Redmondia"
MS has defined the borders of "Redmondia"
on 100 square miles of what was formerly
contained in the State of Washington and ceceded from the United States.
The State of Washington has accepted an
undisclosed amount to enable Redmondia
to establish a Monarchy within their borders.
Citizenship to the new country will be granted
to all inhibitants of Redmondia and land rights
will be transferred to MS Corp.
"Change to Rules... whenever you appear to be
about to loose... winning is just delaying
any possibility of loosing."
McD
There is no doubt that Bill will try to correct this situation in the next election. However, (arguably) we all know that Bill is not so dense so as to go bankrupt while buying off every state. So, what else could he do? That's right:
However, he will join neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties, because those were not invented by Microsoft. Instead, he'll be the candidate from the Business Software Alliance Party. Their flag will consist of Clippy drawn over the Windows logo on a blue background.
I shudder at the thought of all this.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Although the sum that this case costs is large on both sides, you should not be intimidated by its size. The damage done to economy by Microsoft's monopolistic pracitices is many times higher and I would bet its even higher than all the profits Microsoft has ever made and definitely more than all the taxes it ever paid.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Governments have a DUTY not to allow themselves to be manipulated.
I notice that it takes a long time for abuses to be recognized, and to be stopped. Societies do not have efficient means for stopping a determined abuser, particularly one that exploits the lack of technical knowledge of its customers.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been continuing exactly as it did before, testing the limits. Perhaps there should be several new anti-trust and abuse-of-commerce cases.
With Windows XP, Microsoft seems to be trying to blur the distinction between its computers and its customer's computers. Windows XP sometimes resembles a trojan (except that you must pay for it). Numerous operating system programs call Bill:
- Microsoft Media Player (tells Bill the music you like)
- Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test
- Microsoft Help and Support Center
- Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server
- Microsoft Application Error Reporting
- Microsoft Management Console
- Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
- MS DTC Console program
- Services and Controller app
- Run DLL as an app
- Windows Explorer
- Microsoft Office keeps a number in each file you create that identifies
your computer. No one has said why.
- Microsoft porn search looks on your hard drive for those photos of your
wife. Okay, maybe not, but you aren't sure are you?
- These are just the ones I know about. There may be others.
It is such a relief to use Linux! With Linux, there may be problems, but I know that they aren't caused deliberately. Linux is an OS that does not involve me in adversarial behavior.Bush's education improvements were
Then we as the US could bar the sale of all goods here from Redmondia. :-)
Karma whorin' since 1999
An AC wrote:
> Can't we end this now. Hasn't Mr. Gates suffered enough already?
Microsoft was found to have broken the law. We are now in the penalty phase of the trial. There is no longer any question as to how guilty MS is, only how much they will pay for breaking the law.
Problem is, we can't get Microsoft and their lawyers (both those who are employees of Microsoft and those who supposedly work for the Department of Justice) to clam up and get penalized already. It would really help if the so called "Department of Justice" would quit defending Microsoft and start prosecuting them like they are supposed to be doing. Then we wouldn't have a settlement that MS is using to repeat their illegal activities, and 9 states off on their own because they seem to be the only ones who care about doing their job.
The 25 states will help here, even if they don't formally join in with the nine states. State governments are important, and they have rights, even in this "War on Terror" era. It's high time they stood up and let people know that.
.Net, DRMOS, using the Settlement like a rolled up newspaper to smack their OEMs around... It is plainly clear that Microsoft has not suffered enough, because it obviously has no intention of mending its ways. Until justice is done, until Microsoft mends its ways, until huge corporations respect the law of the land, this isn't over. We have a choice. Either the computer industry becomes vibrant, prosperous, innovative, and free (as in liberty), or we have the Microsoft Millenium. Choose!
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
"Mosura", 1961
People use the multimedia to brainwash you into whatever they want. Just watch the sound bites at election time, back stabbing as an artform.
The tv commerical that pisses me off is about kids who are smoking a joint, then they say the drug money is used for supporting terrorism.
-
Sure you can trust the government! Just ask an Indian!
The part that so many people miss when talking about political contributions is that for every politician you can influence with your money there are two or three of his opponents that now see you as a potential enemy. That's why most companies that give money give to both sides. They can't afford to make enemies. Besides, Microsoft isn't the only company with money to burn, and many of Microsoft's competitors are very important to the economies of much larger states than Washington. In the end, its votes that get you elected, and if you aren't pandering to your consituents you are likely to get run out on a rail no matter how much money you spend campaigning.
Microsoft's "take on the world" mentality works against them in this case. Microsoft may be rich and powerful, but they have made a fat pile of enemies, and these enemies are beginning to organize themselves into coalitions, both in the technology world and the political one. It's not uncommon to see Microsoft's competitors rallying around technologies like Java or Linux, and many of the large companies that oppose Microsoft carry their own political supporters.
In short, it would take a lot more than $20 million to pull Microsoft's fat out of the fire.
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Washington State isn't jumping on the "let's break up Microsoft" bandwagon; it's jumping on the "if we don't stand up for states' rights the federal government will usurp them" bandwagon.
Governments have a duty to do the right thing. They don't always do it. That doesn't mean it is not worth saying, however.
You said, "I don't suppose you're aware that the bin-Laden family provided the financial backing for George W. Bush's first oil company, did you?"
I'm aware. I wrote a book about these kinds of things. Including the links, it is about 660 pages: What should be the response to violence?
What I want to know is, how did my earlier post about Microsoft abuses get moderated "Redundant"? I looked, and I didn't see another post remotely like it. Bill, was that you? Did you moderate my comment down?
Bush's education improvements were
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sing it loud and proud my brother. amen.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
You are naive. Microsoft has controled the bar, not raised it.
You can only honestly say that you have no idea where the bar would be, or how that bar would be measured. I believe it would be higher if Microsoft never existed.
Get a free ipod.
Look at the internet boom. One of the reasons so much money was made on the net is because microsoft did note have the net under its control. Pretty much every person that uses the net uses a computer. Yet there never really was a consumer computer software boom, because microsoft was able to kill off and then assimilate any good application. After a couple of companies got assimilated, people just stopped trying. Now sure there some companies that were succesful with consumer software, but there was nothing like the excitement and glut of new companies of the internet era.
2/3rds of the states bother to "show up" and ultimately represent the underlying balance of and right to local judgement. Chalk up another one for freedom, regardless of what you think of this trial in general. I guess the US still has more life to it than I previously thought.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Its not really a dificult legal issue. It is simple statutory interpretation.
I really doubt that the Supreme court will take this.
Just look at how Microsoft has raised the bar for consumer level computers and graphics
Please name one innovative, creative, "bar raising" product from Microsoft. Show me such a program and I'll show you a program that was developed by anoter company at least one year earlier.
I contend that Microsoft has not raised the bar for consumer computers (other than forcing progress through bloatware that crashes old computers) and that they have never innovated in computer graphics.
t'nera semordnilap
is the mouse wheel. They did come up with that right?
There is no such domain as news.com.com
www.news.com is not an active site
Is CNet not propogating their DNS records or something? com.com appears to be a travel agency.
Bill Gates will run for President of the United States ...
However, he will join neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties, because those were not invented by Microsoft. Instead, he'll be the candidate from the Business Software Alliance Party. Their flag will consist of Clippy drawn over the Windows logo on a blue background.
ROFL!
Very little money was actually "made" on the net. The money that was made on the net was made because investors were fooled into believing that the stock they were buying would go up in value - and for a while they were right because there were other people fooled into bidding it higher. It was a big pyramid scheme and it collapsed.
That crap about having the net under the control of one company is just bullshit. Companies with no business model were being valued at several billion dollars.
Mmmm.. Donuts
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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.
I knew the world would start to get better once goatees and cigars fell out of fashion...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And just how the hell do you know where the bar would be if MS hadn't killed off all the competition? You from some alternate universe or something?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I honestly was not bashing Microsoft. I am more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates. If he were pro-Microsoft, he wouldn't let his company be so abusive. The bad PR is dragging his company down.
Anyhow, at the present time, my comment is moderated, "Troll". Since, to be a troll, it would have to be factually incorrect, it is not a troll. I suppose Bill has been moderating again.
Bush's education improvements were
Regardless of what propganda they spread, we all know how Bush feels about "States Rights". He wasted no time bypassing the Florida state rights and going to the federal courts to stop counting the votes because it would have cause harm to his image ---well gosh, his image may have been tarnished! --- thinking back now and seeing how a year of bush has been we should be asking what harm was caused to America by not counting the all votes. OH wait, that's right, we are NOT allowed to question that, we can only wave our flags and be happy.
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
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The part that so many people miss when talking about political contributions is that for every politician you can influence with your money there are two or three of his opponents that now see you as a potential enemy. That's why most companies that give money give to both sides.
This is relativly easy in the US where politics at just about every level appears to be a "two horse race". Does the US even have political parties specific to certain regions, states or cities? Any which stand much chance of getting any candidates elected to either state bodies or Congress?
In other countries it can be more difficult because there can be more sides and different political parties may be effective at different levels. So bribing 3 or 4 parties might give you control of national government, but you'd need to bribe 20-30 parties (and independants) to get all government.
Please name one innovative, creative, "bar raising" product from Microsoft. Show me such a program and I'll show you a program that was developed by anoter company at least one year earlier.
About the only actual Microsoft innovations appear to be along the lines of "egomaniac" naming conventions, e.g. "My Computer" and cartoon style "help". Hardly "bar raising" or even especially worthwhile.
Ok, it looks like the editors (read MODERATORS) have been modding once again.
Well, cheers!
Mr Editor...slashdot will take care of itself mostly - it would be wise to either quit moderating, but if you insist, then allow yourselves to me MetaModerated.
That'll help keep things fair and reasonable.
But, I'm not holding my breath!
Cheers!