Microsoft Case Enters Crucial Penalty Phase

An Anonymous Coward points out an article from Joseph Menn's in the Los Angeles Times which begins: "Microsoft -- Nine states waging a landmark antitrust battle against Microsoft Corp. are preparing to venture into territory that has been barely visible during the past years of legal slogging: the future." This delves slightly into ways in which the states in legal conflict with Microsoft would like to see Microsoft constrained legally going forward.

Comments

About time

[PhoenxHwk]

Honestly, it's about high time that we're getting around to the penalty. It has always bothered me how much money the government needs to spend to enforce simple laws like the Sherman Antitrust act. *sigh* Perhaps we would have just been better off if the government had just subsidized the ridiculous price of Windows and Office.

And it's not like this is the end either. MS will appeal every last thing they can think of.

Never ending cycle

[Eric Damron]

What good is punishing Microsoft it they keep even some of their ill-gotton gains? If I steal $25,000.00 and get a $10,000.00 fine but get to keep my stolen booty is that a deterant?

Microsoft is now using the gains it made illegally to expand into internet services and other areas. There will be new violations. There will be new victims. There will be new lawsuits.

As long as the Justice Department is getting it's giant Federal dick lubed by Microsoft the cycle will continue.

Re:Never ending cycle

[Bodrius]

If you steal 25K, and you are proven to have stolen 25K, the government will take the 25K back. But they will not take away your house, your car, your children's college funds or your 401K.

Microsoft may have been declared to be an anticompetitive monopoly by the government, but it is not clear, in monetary terms, how much they owe to being a monopoly and how much to being just a successful software company.

You have to remember, Microsoft wasn't always a monopoly, and I don't think the case was clear on when exactly did it become one.

So, from all those billion dollars they have made since that old version of BASIC, how much would you say is directly linked to the crime? It's probably impossible to prove, and trying to figure it out would probably cost about as much in time, lawyers and accountants. That's why the federal government doesn't get into that mess and lets the respective parties deal with it in civil lawsuits, since civil lawsuits are more liberal with the definition of "facts".

Would this really be so bad?

[bmw]

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has said it's unrealistic to think that Microsoft could come up with multiple Windows versions that work equally well.

Who says they have to work equally well? Especially considering the wide variety of needs that people have. What works well for one person, doesn't necessarily work well for another. This would just give people a much needed choice in what is installed on their system. If everyone used a stripped down version of their OS that does only the things they absolutely need (and can be added to at a later time if so desired) then the internet as a whole would be much healthier.

Re:Landmark case for IT industry

[Daniel Dvorkin]

If, however, Microsoft are severely penalised, the IT industry is very likely to decline, as there is at the moment a large dependency on Microsoft in the IT industry. And there is no point denying it.

The IT industry is dependent on people's needs for IT. If you need to move information around efficiently, you need IT to do it, and these days every business, from banking to agriculture, needs to do just that. (The dot-bomb showed us that just moving information around isn't enough to have a successful business, but I think hardly anyone would argue seriously against the proposition that it is a prerequisite for success.) Whether you do that information-moving with Microsoft products or with some other kind of software has no real effect on the demand for movement of information.

Therefore, any penalties imposed on Microsoft will not harm the IT industry as a whole. If the demand for MCSE's and other Microsoft-dependent drones declines, it will be matched by a rising demand for people who know other OS's and applications. In the short run, I see no reason to weep over Microsoft lackeys getting fewer jobs while people with broader-based computer science education and experience get more jobs (which would be a welcome reversal of current trends.) In the long run, of course, Microsoft being nuked would increase innovation and quality in IT as a whole, and so be good for everybody. In short, whether you know it or not, all you're doing is repeating M$ FUD when you claim that a severe penalty in this case would have any major negative effect whatsoever.