Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the does-this-thing-ever-end dept.
T-Kir writes "The BBC has an interesting article saying that now Microsoft has had the settlement granted in the US, it still faces EU sanctions concerning software bundling (or should that be bungling?) into its OS and deliberate attempts at inoperability with non-MS server operating systems."
Three problems
by
MosesJones
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
1) US courts regularly deny the authority of courts abroad
2) US courts regularly assume their rules apply abroad.
3) When the EU has ruled against US product before (growth hormone is not allowed in beef sold in the EU) the US claims it is a restraint of trade and raises it to the EU.
So what will probably happen is MS will rightly be found guilty, they will ignore the remedy, and when it is enforced they will bleat to the president who will "defend US interests", he will ignore the rights of foreign courts and claim this is purely anti-competative and anti-US rather than being a different resolution applied to EXACTLY the same finding of guilt found in the US.
Personally I hope the EU stands up and gives them a bloody nose, and makes its move over to Open Source even quicker.
-- An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Re:Three problems
by
albanac
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
All of your points are accurate. WRT the first two, however, there is no way the US could (under legal arenas) challenge an EU court ruling, and I don't think they'd be stupid enough to try. The one piece of information you didn't catch is that some four months ago, when the EU declared it's intention to pursue MS independently of the US DOJ, the State Deparmemnt immediately issued sabre-rattlings to the effect that if the EU attempted to do anything different or more realistic than the DOJ had done, the US would embark on an immediate and GDP-wide trade-war against the entire EU, covering everything from steel to immigration visas, until the EU backed off. The EUs response was to ignore them.
~cHris
Re:Does the EU have power?
by
Shimbo
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Could someone explain what the EU has power to do? Seems to me like they couldn't do much...
Re:Does the EU have power?
by
cobbaut
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The EU is a bigger market than the US. They should be able to do more than the US government did...
Besides this, more and more EU countries are switching to Linux solutions (see previous/. stories).
-- European Linux user, living in Antwerp
Basically, the EU is mean to american companies
by
Qwerpafw
·
· Score: 0, Interesting
And this bodes badly for microsoft.
The European Union and the member nations that comprise it are not particularly finnicky about local companies' antitrust issues. However, for non-local companies they are quite harsh. Recall that the heavily subsidized Airbus was started by these people basically because they didn't like having to buy american planes.
The EU also has a long history of setting ridiculous tariffs, or banning, imported products from companies they don't like or that have policies the EU disagrees with.
Remember the whole banana fiasco? and how europe has basically banned american GM food?
I wouldn't count on microsoft getting off easy in europe. They don't have the Bush administration there. OTOH, MS is very willing to sink ridiculous amounts of lobbying $$ to purchase legislators. The EU decisions makers are also not as knowledgable in computer technical issues as even the virtually computer-illiterate american judges.
Re:Basically, the EU is mean to american companies
by
ninthwave
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I lived in the US for the first 28 years of my life. For the last two years have lived in Europe and your comment about the EU decisions makers not being knowledgable in the computer technical issues as the american judges is just complete bullshite.
The GM food issue isn't just a government issue it is a populace issue. If the government accepts gm food here they will have voters voting them out. The people don't want GM food at this point in time, the governments generally want the GM food business but they don't have the popular support to do it. So the ban on GM food isn't a trade issue as it is a consumer issue. Consumers won't buy food.
The banan fiasco was that, but the US has some silly trade mark games not
-- I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
Re:Does the EU have power?
by
albanac
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Firstly, they can (and have in the past) impose fairly epic fine levels on companies they feel to be Not Nice People. The recent Nintendo judgement was relatively leniant.
Secondly, they can ban sales of bundled os + integrated apps within the EU by MS. And they can do it without having any impact on people like SuSE; that is in fact one of the courses already discussed by the commissioner in question.
Thirdly, they can adjudge MS' EULA's illegal under EU human rights laws. This is another remedy which has been discussed.
Basically, they can make life very hard for MS in the market from which MS derives it's larges revenues (they sell more software here than there).
~cHris
They can't stop MS..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
..besides, business is not where to try to hit them.
You see, the world's offices run on Office. Deny them that, and they get cranky. They start making campaign contributions, and suddenly, laws everywhere become the plaything of Microsoft.
Even if it'd cost more to buy some politicians than to switch to Open Office or something else, businesses won't stand for it. Why? Because - business despises the idea of governments telling them what they can and can't do. Businesses like *telling* governments what they can and can't do.
What would be great is if the EU frees European OEMs from the threats of Microsoft. Now, that would cause slight pain.
You see, consumers dislike the idea of paying for things they believe they do not need. How many of you here know people who still run Win 98? I can't count the people I know who are still running it. Each one of those is money that's not being sent to One Microsoft Way.
Will people, given the choice, stop buying upgrades with each computer? Yes, they will. Installing an operating system is *NOT* rocket science, and almost everyone has a kid down the street who will do it for $10.
$10, versus the Microsoft Tax. Sounds like a sweet deal, eh?
Re:EU is different from US courts
by
xutopia
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The big reason why the US law decided to be so nice with MS is because Microsoft is on of Americas leading company outside of the US.
If it were a European company hurting the US and the world the US legal jabbers would be the first one to cry for justice.
here's the deal...
by
zogger
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
...here's the deal. Ok, swell, 60,000 employees. Ya'all produce products, great! No probs! except..... there are 280 MILLION people just in the united States. For better or worse, "the internet" is an integral part of our ECONOMY and NATIONAL SECURITY. Using fraud, deceit, extortion, theft, etc, microsoft has become a dominant player in desktop pc's and is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the servers out there. the stuff is INSECURE and buggy and insists on closed propietary "solutions" that make other peoples efforts (people with families and mortgages and whatnot) NOT WORK, work badly or not at all. They expose EVERYONE to ridiculously easy to use security exploits because of their pervasivness that is extant. They-the company-has a verifiable track record of IGNORING security problems until it's been rubbed in their face for extended periods of time, for example, I'll refresh you to the BO debacle, where microsoft just slap refused to acknowledge that gaping holes in their system, denied it existed, in essence, lied through their teeth, hiding behind their weight and arrogance. They put all 280 million people in the US at risk over this, and who knows what eles is out there. this nations business NEEDS the net now, there ain't no going back. it's not a luxury it's a NECESSITY. They did this so they could make more profit. They have 40 billion in the bank, like I have written before, is there any rational explanation they couldn't have instead used 1/2 (pick a big fraction or number here) of this money to actually CODE BETTER? How many programmers and engineers could they have hired for 20 billion, and given them a directive to make SURE that their products worked as advertised and were secure? I don't have an exact number, but it looks like thousands more-but they voluntarily CHOSE to accumulate more profits INSTEAD of making their products secure and functional. This is called short sighted GREED. The security of the nation's internet infrastructure should not have become hostage to this GREED, and the needs and security of the other 279,940,000 people are MORE IMPORTANT than the 60,000 microsoft employees money.
Sorry, that's the way it is. The internet is for EVERYONE, not for just MICROSOFT. They don't OWN it much as they would like to and have actively sought to. Their efforts are severly mucking up the ability of non microsoft ANYTHING to do anything, and if palladium gets mandated directly into hardware... huh?
You drive to work? You want the road you are on to only be allowed to owners of belchfire cars, and all the gas stations to only have gas that works only in belchfire cars? Oh what's that, you don't want to run a belchfire because you notice that every belchfire needs it's own full time mechanic to keep it running and not blowing up, you can't lock the doors so every time you stop and park and go into a store you come out and your stuff is stolen, the car stops working every 2 years requiring a new engine, it then takes a "new" kind of gas, and their gas comes chunky style with crud and whatnot floating in it every single new version of gas?
Too bad, see, belchfire is "the standard" now, even if you want to buy another brand of car-which you still can- soon you'll need a "passport" to use the road, you'll need to filter your gas, and well, the drivetrain is still gonna be a palladiumBelchfire drivetrain and you'll be required to only drive on belchfire tollroads and only stop at belchfire stores. Oh ya, the want to know every place you go to, this info gets sent automatically back to belchfire headquarters. Every_place_you_go. Oh, you added a non belchfire fender to replace the one that got banged up? Too bad, your car won't start now. On and on. You want that kind of "choice"?
Sure, you still got a choice, go get your non belchfire car, good luck running it soon after the new tollroads for belchfire-only are in place and all you can get is belchfire gas. We aren't 100% of the way there yet, but we are over 90% of the way there.. No belchfire car running belchfire gas, soon you'll be hitchhiking to work, not driving, or I guess you can just buy a belchfire, right? I mean it's "fair" and you got that choice........the rest of us think that sucks, if you ain't getting it by now you just ain't never gonna get it.
I'm not an IT guy just a "car driver". I actually don't like belchfires, they have never worked all that well for me when I tried them out. yes I've owned and driven belchfires. Hmm, they actually don't work that well. In fact I've tried several belchfires, the "new and improved" are pretty much old belchfires with new body styles, the door locks don't work, I can't use anything but belchfire gas in them, and dang if every third tank of gas I put in it seemed to bust another part. That sorta suxs. I just find this sorta weird and annoying. So far I can struggle by with non belchfire, but I'm not looking forward to the new toll roads, and dang I'm getting tired of dodging all the broken down belchfires spread out on the road, and gee whizz, half the traffic is tow trucks towing in belchfires, all those broken belchfires are hurting the economy, which is hurting me in general, the real work delivery trucks can't hardly get through anymore, and I got to keep looking further and further for non belchfire gas.
Enough's enough, become part of the solution, stop being part of the problem. This belchfire leopard ain't changing it's spots, slap new paint on it, it's still a belchfire. They been asked nicey nice for years now, to PLEASE just change a few things abvout how they go about this business, they refused and even got nastier, they ain't changing except for MORE belchfire. Give it up, accept reality, belchfires useability is broken and is hindering everyone else. Your profits aren't worth the grief everyone is going through. It's just plain rank nasty wrong.
Re:Does the EU have power?
by
mysticgoat
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Could someone explain what the EU has power to do?
Seems to me like they couldn't do much...
European courts could find that Microsoft was engaging in illegal practices and void part, or all, of the EULAs involved. That could create a gray market of epic proportions. It would also allow european software houses to embrace and extend the microsoft products in ways that would be illegal elsewhere.
I'm not saying that this is a likely outcome, but it is one of the things that a band of sovereign nations could do.
Like with cars, they could enforce that every computer program sold must comply with certain requirements. For instance, it would be really cool if every computer program sold in the EU must come with a manual that describes every file format it uses in detail so the data generated with that program can in principle be read and used by other programs with no big problems.
--
--
Cheers!
The parable of the selfish pricks
by
Anarchofascist
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Keep in mind that there are over 60 thousand employees at Microsoft. All of us have families and mortgages to pay just like you...
Reminds me of a story...
One upon a time there was a dangerous slippery cliff at the end of a road before a little village.
Every so often travellers along the road would slip, slip, slip over the cliff edge and fall to their deaths; and be collected by the village funeral director. Or they would slip, slip, slip over the edge and be badly injured; and the village doctors and nurses would tend to their wounds.
Eventually the mayor of the town announced a fence should be built at the top of the cliff, warning people of the danger.
"No!" cried the doctors and nurses. "We have families and mortgages to pay with the money we get for treating the injured!"
"No!" cried the funeral directors and morgue attendants. "We need the money from the funerals to support our families and mortgages too!"
The mayor was saddened by this reaction, but decided upon a compromise. The fence would not be built, but a sign would be erected saying "please support the local economy - jump off the cliff!"
The sign was erected, and is still there this very day.
-- Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Re:Most likely EU response
by
Corporate+Troll
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
notifies all their customers in the United States, Asia, and South America that in order to pay the "unjust fine levied by European bureaucrats", they will have to raise the price of Office 15%.
Result:
a) South America switches completely to Open Source as they have already threathened so often. No more sales in South America.
b) Asia could do the same, or heck, with China developping their own OS at least China -a big market after all- could switch to something else entirely. The rest of Asia might just say? "Copyright"? We dunno what that means... and pirate happily. Result: much less sales in Asia.
c) North America: whines and bitches, and with the current economical slup they are in many companies that freeze the IT budget entirely and will continue to work with currently existing installations. Heck, many still are using Office 97 on NT4 which is perfectly viable. Net result: much less sales in North America.
Now who do you think Microsoft will hurt when they would pull a stunt like that?
Media is wrong. Microsoft will be broken up.
by
ajulius
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Its amazing how the media really has misinterpreted the Microsoft settlement. If you look at the court of appeals ruling in full, you will note that the appeals court did not strike down the breakup of microsoft because that was the wrong thing to do. It refused, rightfully so because the remedy hearings were not held. Judge Kollar-Kotely made a ruling that was contradictory to the court of appeals. The settling states made sure that the 9 non settling states were not bound by the microsoft settlement. What happened unfortunately is that the Bush administration and/or Judge Kollar-Kotely played politics with the Microsoft case. It felt that because of the acts of Sept 11th, that the economy would be hurt too much by a breakup of Microsoft. If you just look at the reason we had the settlement phase inself, it mentioned the acts of sept 11th in Kollar-Kotely's own legal documents as the reason why the case needed to be resolved quickly. The legal system is not a political system and therefore, this ruling will indeed be overturned on appeal. And yes, it will be appealed by the 9 non settling states, and those states will be lead by California Attorney General Bill Lockyear. As of around November 8th or shortly thereafter, the media will then spin the case back to the way it should be going which is to a microsoft breakup.
Slashdot Mirror
1) US courts regularly deny the authority of courts abroad
2) US courts regularly assume their rules apply abroad.
3) When the EU has ruled against US product before (growth hormone is not allowed in beef sold in the EU) the US claims it is a restraint of trade and raises it to the EU.
So what will probably happen is MS will rightly be found guilty, they will ignore the remedy, and when it is enforced they will bleat to the president who will "defend US interests", he will ignore the rights of foreign courts and claim this is purely anti-competative and anti-US rather than being a different resolution applied to EXACTLY the same finding of guilt found in the US.
Personally I hope the EU stands up and gives them a bloody nose, and makes its move over to Open Source even quicker.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Could someone explain what the EU has power to do?
Seems to me like they couldn't do much...
Microsoft could be in line for fines totalling up to $2.5bn (£1.75bn) levied by the European Commission.
Nuff said.
The EU is a bigger market than the US. They should be able to do more than the US government did...
/. stories).
Besides this, more and more EU countries are switching to Linux solutions (see previous
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
And this bodes badly for microsoft.
The European Union and the member nations that comprise it are not particularly finnicky about local companies' antitrust issues. However, for non-local companies they are quite harsh. Recall that the heavily subsidized Airbus was started by these people basically because they didn't like having to buy american planes.
The EU also has a long history of setting ridiculous tariffs, or banning, imported products from companies they don't like or that have policies the EU disagrees with.
Remember the whole banana fiasco? and how europe has basically banned american GM food?
I wouldn't count on microsoft getting off easy in europe. They don't have the Bush administration there. OTOH, MS is very willing to sink ridiculous amounts of lobbying $$ to purchase legislators. The EU decisions makers are also not as knowledgable in computer technical issues as even the virtually computer-illiterate american judges.
Firstly, they can (and have in the past) impose fairly epic fine levels on companies they feel to be Not Nice People. The recent Nintendo judgement was relatively leniant.
Secondly, they can ban sales of bundled os + integrated apps within the EU by MS. And they can do it without having any impact on people like SuSE; that is in fact one of the courses already discussed by the commissioner in question.
Thirdly, they can adjudge MS' EULA's illegal under EU human rights laws. This is another remedy which has been discussed.
Basically, they can make life very hard for MS in the market from which MS derives it's larges revenues (they sell more software here than there).
~cHris
..besides, business is not where to try to hit them.
You see, the world's offices run on Office. Deny them that, and they get cranky. They start making campaign contributions, and suddenly, laws everywhere become the plaything of Microsoft.
Even if it'd cost more to buy some politicians than to switch to Open Office or something else, businesses won't stand for it. Why? Because - business despises the idea of governments telling them what they can and can't do. Businesses like *telling* governments what they can and can't do.
What would be great is if the EU frees European OEMs from the threats of Microsoft. Now, that would cause slight pain.
You see, consumers dislike the idea of paying for things they believe they do not need. How many of you here know people who still run Win 98? I can't count the people I know who are still running it. Each one of those is money that's not being sent to One Microsoft Way.
Will people, given the choice, stop buying upgrades with each computer? Yes, they will. Installing an operating system is *NOT* rocket science, and almost everyone has a kid down the street who will do it for $10.
$10, versus the Microsoft Tax. Sounds like a sweet deal, eh?
The big reason why the US law decided to be so nice with MS is because Microsoft is on of Americas leading company outside of the US.
If it were a European company hurting the US and the world the US legal jabbers would be the first one to cry for justice.
...here's the deal. Ok, swell, 60,000 employees. Ya'all produce products, great! No probs! except..... there are 280 MILLION people just in the united States. For better or worse, "the internet" is an integral part of our ECONOMY and NATIONAL SECURITY. Using fraud, deceit, extortion, theft, etc, microsoft has become a dominant player in desktop pc's and is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the servers out there. the stuff is INSECURE and buggy and insists on closed propietary "solutions" that make other peoples efforts (people with families and mortgages and whatnot) NOT WORK, work badly or not at all. They expose EVERYONE to ridiculously easy to use security exploits because of their pervasivness that is extant. They-the company-has a verifiable track record of IGNORING security problems until it's been rubbed in their face for extended periods of time, for example, I'll refresh you to the BO debacle, where microsoft just slap refused to acknowledge that gaping holes in their system, denied it existed, in essence, lied through their teeth, hiding behind their weight and arrogance. They put all 280 million people in the US at risk over this, and who knows what eles is out there. this nations business NEEDS the net now, there ain't no going back. it's not a luxury it's a NECESSITY. They did this so they could make more profit. They have 40 billion in the bank, like I have written before, is there any rational explanation they couldn't have instead used 1/2 (pick a big fraction or number here) of this money to actually CODE BETTER? How many programmers and engineers could they have hired for 20 billion, and given them a directive to make SURE that their products worked as advertised and were secure? I don't have an exact number, but it looks like thousands more-but they voluntarily CHOSE to accumulate more profits INSTEAD of making their products secure and functional. This is called short sighted GREED. The security of the nation's internet infrastructure should not have become hostage to this GREED, and the needs and security of the other 279,940,000 people are MORE IMPORTANT than the 60,000 microsoft employees money.
....the rest of us think that sucks, if you ain't getting it by now you just ain't never gonna get it.
Sorry, that's the way it is. The internet is for EVERYONE, not for just MICROSOFT. They don't OWN it much as they would like to and have actively sought to. Their efforts are severly mucking up the ability of non microsoft ANYTHING to do anything, and if palladium gets mandated directly into hardware... huh?
You drive to work? You want the road you are on to only be allowed to owners of belchfire cars, and all the gas stations to only have gas that works only in belchfire cars? Oh what's that, you don't want to run a belchfire because you notice that every belchfire needs it's own full time mechanic to keep it running and not blowing up, you can't lock the doors so every time you stop and park and go into a store you come out and your stuff is stolen, the car stops working every 2 years requiring a new engine, it then takes a "new" kind of gas, and their gas comes chunky style with crud and whatnot floating in it every single new version of gas?
Too bad, see, belchfire is "the standard" now, even if you want to buy another brand of car-which you still can- soon you'll need a "passport" to use the road, you'll need to filter your gas, and well, the drivetrain is still gonna be a palladiumBelchfire drivetrain and you'll be required to only drive on belchfire tollroads and only stop at belchfire stores. Oh ya, the want to know every place you go to, this info gets sent automatically back to belchfire headquarters. Every_place_you_go. Oh, you added a non belchfire fender to replace the one that got banged up? Too bad, your car won't start now. On and on. You want that kind of "choice"?
Sure, you still got a choice, go get your non belchfire car, good luck running it soon after the new tollroads for belchfire-only are in place and all you can get is belchfire gas. We aren't 100% of the way there yet, but we are over 90% of the way there.. No belchfire car running belchfire gas, soon you'll be hitchhiking to work, not driving, or I guess you can just buy a belchfire, right? I mean it's "fair" and you got that choice....
I'm not an IT guy just a "car driver". I actually don't like belchfires, they have never worked all that well for me when I tried them out. yes I've owned and driven belchfires. Hmm, they actually don't work that well. In fact I've tried several belchfires, the "new and improved" are pretty much old belchfires with new body styles, the door locks don't work, I can't use anything but belchfire gas in them, and dang if every third tank of gas I put in it seemed to bust another part. That sorta suxs. I just find this sorta weird and annoying. So far I can struggle by with non belchfire, but I'm not looking forward to the new toll roads, and dang I'm getting tired of dodging all the broken down belchfires spread out on the road, and gee whizz, half the traffic is tow trucks towing in belchfires, all those broken belchfires are hurting the economy, which is hurting me in general, the real work delivery trucks can't hardly get through anymore, and I got to keep looking further and further for non belchfire gas.
Enough's enough, become part of the solution, stop being part of the problem. This belchfire leopard ain't changing it's spots, slap new paint on it, it's still a belchfire. They been asked nicey nice for years now, to PLEASE just change a few things abvout how they go about this business, they refused and even got nastier, they ain't changing except for MORE belchfire. Give it up, accept reality, belchfires useability is broken and is hindering everyone else. Your profits aren't worth the grief everyone is going through. It's just plain rank nasty wrong.
Could someone explain what the EU has power to do?
Seems to me like they couldn't do much...
European courts could find that Microsoft was engaging in illegal practices and void part, or all, of the EULAs involved. That could create a gray market of epic proportions. It would also allow european software houses to embrace and extend the microsoft products in ways that would be illegal elsewhere.
I'm not saying that this is a likely outcome, but it is one of the things that a band of sovereign nations could do.
Like with cars, they could enforce that every computer program sold must comply with certain requirements. For instance, it would be really cool if every computer program sold in the EU must come with a manual that describes every file format it uses in detail so the data generated with that program can in principle be read and used by other programs with no big problems.
-- Cheers!
Keep in mind that there are over 60 thousand employees at Microsoft. All of us have families and mortgages to pay just like you...
Reminds me of a story...
One upon a time there was a dangerous slippery cliff at the end of a road before a little village.
Every so often travellers along the road would slip, slip, slip over the cliff edge and fall to their deaths; and be collected by the village funeral director. Or they would slip, slip, slip over the edge and be badly injured; and the village doctors and nurses would tend to their wounds.
Eventually the mayor of the town announced a fence should be built at the top of the cliff, warning people of the danger.
"No!" cried the doctors and nurses. "We have families and mortgages to pay with the money we get for treating the injured!"
"No!" cried the funeral directors and morgue attendants. "We need the money from the funerals to support our families and mortgages too!"
The mayor was saddened by this reaction, but decided upon a compromise. The fence would not be built, but a sign would be erected saying "please support the local economy - jump off the cliff!"
The sign was erected, and is still there this very day.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Result: .
a) South America switches completely to Open Source as they have already threathened so often. No more sales in South America
b) Asia could do the same, or heck, with China developping their own OS at least China -a big market after all- could switch to something else entirely. The rest of Asia might just say? "Copyright"? We dunno what that means... and pirate happily. Result: much less sales in Asia.
c) North America: whines and bitches, and with the current economical slup they are in many companies that freeze the IT budget entirely and will continue to work with currently existing installations. Heck, many still are using Office 97 on NT4 which is perfectly viable. Net result: much less sales in North America.
Now who do you think Microsoft will hurt when they would pull a stunt like that?
Its amazing how the media really has misinterpreted the Microsoft settlement. If you look at the court of appeals ruling in full, you will note that the appeals court did not strike down the breakup of microsoft because that was the wrong thing to do. It refused, rightfully so because the remedy hearings were not held. Judge Kollar-Kotely made a ruling that was contradictory to the court of appeals. The settling states made sure that the 9 non settling states were not bound by the microsoft settlement. What happened unfortunately is that the Bush administration and/or Judge Kollar-Kotely played politics with the Microsoft case. It felt that because of the acts of Sept 11th, that the economy would be hurt too much by a breakup of Microsoft. If you just look at the reason we had the settlement phase inself, it mentioned the acts of sept 11th in Kollar-Kotely's own legal documents as the reason why the case needed to be resolved quickly. The legal system is not a political system and therefore, this ruling will indeed be overturned on appeal. And yes, it will be appealed by the 9 non settling states, and those states will be lead by California Attorney General Bill Lockyear. As of around November 8th or shortly thereafter, the media will then spin the case back to the way it should be going which is to a microsoft breakup.