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West Virginia Joins Massachusetts in MS Appeal Bid
diwolf writes "West Virginia is seeking to join Massachusetts in appealing a U.S. District Court decision that rejected a tough antitrust remedy sought by nine states in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case. This is also being reported at CNN and ZDNet."
I was hoping someone else would have some balls. #3? Anyone?
While I'm not that sure how much good it is going to do, it is good to see them at least continuing the fight. If more states continue to join in on the appeal, it may gain some weight.
West Virginia and the other non-settling states had argued that Microsoft should be required to sell versions of Windows without a Web browser, music player and other software to make room for competing products.
On the other hand though, how hard would it be for Microsoft to just give the option upon install of not installing these components? Would it be worth MS's time and money (in terms of legal costs, etc) to give this option? Though I'm sure they're more than willing to spend the money to keep their products on as many PC's as possible
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
And I know some people hate it when it happens, but I must point out the obvious spelling error in the title. It's one of the first things a reader sees and shouldn't be there. The word is correctly spelled 'Massachusetts'. Thanks timothy.
You'd think that Virginia would want a piece of them too...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I have to ask: who would actually be interested in pursuing this case?
It is quite clear that there will be no noteworthy changes to the original settlement, so any interested parties (mostly Microsoft's competitors) don't have anything to gain. It is also quite clear that the main loser is going to be the taxpayer. So who is the winner of this case (other than the army of lawyers)?
The answer is that a bunch of people (e.g. the attorney generals of these states) gain some free press and cheap popularity from the ongoing coverage of the case. The important thing to notice is that the case itself is absolutely irrelevant, these people would attach themselves to any other high-profile case just as quickly.
So don't ever think this is about "freedom" or any other nice ideas, it's only about buying votes and personal agendas.
When men used to be men
.A president should have nothing to do with the wheels of justice.
Wrong. Executives across the country are empowered with discharging mercy where due--a breakup is a death sentence for a corporation, and Bush would be in his right to give MS a pardon to avert their breakup if he felt it was good for the country. That's his call, and if we don't like it we can pick someone else in two years.
Justice should also be a lot swifter than this. That Microsoft case should have been over in at least 6 months.
Yes, it should have. Jackson should have mentioned future versions in his original consent decree way back when, he should have kept his mouth shut so his original antitrust ruling could stand, and President Bush should have left the extant prosecution stay on to finish the re-trial.
Of Course, they have confused Free (as is speech) Software with free (as in beer) software, and didn't always realise that Linux is not the only free software out there.
and note: they didn't save the sale for Microsoft.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Remember when a decent PC cost at least $4000 (US)? Then came the clones and we were able to get a PC for about $2000. After the clones came into their own, the prices just started free-falling. The reason was that IBM couldn't keep their own monopoly on PCs and charge whatever THEY wanted too - and you can bet that they wanted too! Look at Apple. They had control of everything to do with their machines and they insisted on gouging their customers. It wasn't until recently that they decided to price their machines in line with the rest of their (PC) market. Yes, they have a superior design, blah, blah, blah,... But when it comes down to it, their design wasn't worth the premium that they used to charge - sorry Mac folks.
MS turned the PC market into a commodity market. Since MS wanted to grow/keep their monopoly, they charged pretty damned cheap in my book.
What I'm trying to say is ... here it comes ... that if it weren't for MS, we would still be paying an arm and a leg for PCs.
For the record, I'm a Linux Luver
There is no spoon or sig.
Well... okay. Isn't that what punishing a company and making an effort to restore competition usually does? How can you accomplish those two goals without bring benefit to the competitors?
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
"This has got to stop. The anti-Microsoft propaganda and complete disregard for any kind of SOCIAL regularity is pissing me off."
Parent poster has a point. Slashdot's turning into an Anti-MS tabloid. Though this story is legit, some of the recent stories like "Apple Users Hate Microsoft" illustrate how ridiculously low this site can reach.
Remember the good old days when Slashdot was about posting cool geek stuff? I can't believe a site that's so pro-Linux can't help but watch MS's every move.
I'm from MA as well and I have heard that part of the reason we are pursuing the case is that we have already incurred most of the legal costs of the case in the initial stages (according Tom O'Reilly, our attorney general for non massholes). I suppose that makes some sense if you consider how much preparation must go into a case like this; I can see how the research and paperwork might be the most expensive part.
remember, no matter where you go, there you are
Why give up? This is exactly what they want - keep battering for long enough, and cracks will show. A Law Firm here in New Zealand went as far as to lodge a complaint with the Commerce Commission regarding Microsoft's new licensing regime. Although the complaint was rejected, the new scheme has so incensed one of the partners, Craig Horrocks, that he has set up a site here which has a copy of the complaint, an open letter to MS users, and assorted news articles. You can be assured that this law firm is not about to take it lying down, as this site shows.
The Mothership
Maybe they should spice it up for sweeps with some guest appearances in the courtroom...maybe Larry Lessig, Steve Jobs, and the perennial courtroom favorite, OJ! :-D
That's his call, and if we don't like it we can pick someone else in two years.
That's how it's supposed to work, at least.
The reality is that we're not going to get the option to elect a president who stands for rigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws, because such a candidate would have great difficulty raising money from business interests who aren't particularly fond of such laws.
Of course, probably the only reason we ever saw an anti-trust case brought against Microsoft to begin with was that Gates & co. hadn't wised up to the need to make generous campaign contributions. With $4.6 million in contributions in the 2000 cycle, I'd say they've now figured things out, and the DoJ's antitrust division can now go back to sleep.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
1. M$ is scared shitless of Linux. They have no real strategy to deal with something that even they know is more stable and secure, and know they can't compete on price.
2. Win XP and M$'s licensing went over with customers even worse than what you read - even here. M$ kept a tight lid on how badly Win XP cratered in the corporate world.
3. M$ rank-and-file are a bunch of arrogant asswipes who think big corporations and gov't have no choice but to buy M$
Bush pardoning a death sentence? Well, that's something you don't see everyday.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Just look at how quickly AT&T went out of business after it was broken up...
Do you have any evidence to support this opinion? Certainly Micro$oft applications would be more successful if they weren't forbidden from supporting other platforms in order to prop up the Windows monopoly. In my opinion, a breakup would be good for for innovation, shareholders, for employees, and for customers. The only thing it would be bad for is Bill's ego. What proof can you show me that the combined revenues of the separate companies wouldn't be greater than Micro$oft's current revenues?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
So many say "Why bother? M$ is above the law." What a crock of shit. Even if my tax dollars are going toward a battle which may be lost, I would be more pissed off if there were no appeals, much as I was pissed off about the states who signed the settlement. It is obvious that Bill & Co. think that they are above the law, or rich enough to buy it, so why should we throw our hands up when there is still more that can be done to fight the ruling?
I believe that these states should be congratulated for not stopping. That is what the court of appeals is for. And I hope the other seven decide not to back down either.
LOL. There's a couple of hundred guys down in Texas you can ask about W's sense of mercy when it comes to death sentences. Oh wait... you can't ask them any more.
Well, at least he's found it in his heart to spare poor Microsoft. All is forgiven. Go forth and sin no more.
West Virginia has a long history of their population getting dispossessed and sold up the river broke-and-naked by rich out-of-state corporations so this warn't that big a surprise. Microsoft is just like any big coal company looking to take buttloads of money out of West Virginia except Microsoft hasn't started having their opponents murdered... yet. That we know of, anyways.
PCs didn't really get cheap until the internet boom of the mid-90's. Considering the hottest browser at the time was Netscape, shouldn't they be credited with bringing PCs to the masses and the masses credited with lowering prices through demand?
Just about any OS can run a browser, so what did MS do? I mean other than bundle a free browser with their OS. PCs may be 1/4 the price but Microsoft's software sure isn't.
I like your website, but you are completely wrong here. We would all be serfs owned by a Rockefeller if it weren't for antitrust. MS dominated the desktop based on superior marketing. It used its dominance to move into servers. Anybody seriously think MS had a technical advantage over Novell or any of the Unixes? Only a wintroll would say as much. But a half-assed windows tech can manage a windows server about as well as a desktop machine. So it grew. Maybe I'm a luddite, but I don't think a server needs (or should have) a GUI, let alone multimedia. MS used its dominance of the desktop to kill off a shift to web-based computing. Now instead of using the web to free users from pc's, MS was able to pervert and invert the move and the web is now harnessed to pc's. It's as if internal combustion engines have been installed on wagons.
I think you confuse economies of scale (which drive down unit cost, to a point) with network effect. There was an astroturf economist who, based on astroturf product reviews, claimed that MS products were better than their competitors at the time they took over the market. Never mind that the reviews were generally atrocious journalism, the reason Office took over was because of clever bundling. The reason IE took over was because you couldn't get a machine without it, but had to do something extra to get Netscape. Once you start to lose momentum vs. MS, the rest of the world smells blood and the downturn accelerates. If everyone else uses it, you sort of have to as well.
Once you have the power to own everything that can generate the power to own things, it's over. Markets are great. Monopolies are not markets. Libertarians take note! And MS wasn't just a Baby Huey, good-naturedly and inadvertantly squashing competitors. It wasn't just big, it was evil. MS is a sleazy, sociopathic entity. It cheats, it lies, it extorts, it bullies, it bribes.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
A loss doesn't look good; the attorneys general that are pursuing this case wouldn't waste time on if if they thought they didn't have a chance to win it.
The real question is why the other states aren't pursuing it further. I suspect that's because of heavy lobbying and "campaign donations" by Microsoft, convincing politicians that what's good for Microsoft is good for the country.
Microsoft dodges yet another possible bankrupting lawsuit by buying the entire state of Massachusetts...
Agreed.
It's not so much the application, iexplore.exe, that is the fundamental part of the OS, it's the MSHTML rendering engine that comes in the Internet Explorer backend DLLs.
Most applications, if they want to launch a web session or access HTML content, load an iexplore.exe inside of their own window, instead of rendering the page itself. Easier that way...
IE isn't just the program people use to browse the Internet; the API (seems) to involve quite a bit of talking to the application itself, not just the backend. Designed, no doubt, to make something like that easier -- for my database program to be able to show me the manufactuerer's web site, inside it's own window, while still correctly rendering all the scripts, etc.
(IANA Developer)
Last I heard, the states had $25 million to divvy up. California I believe had the largest share of expenses.
So Microsoft pays. It's a win-win, ha-ha. I doubt the states will be reimbursed more than actual costs. I also assume/hope the law has some safety valve against nonsense prolongation of the litigation, but this appeal sounds meritorious if doomed.
(And, it should be noted, an appeal costs peanuts compared to the $25 million -- tens of thousands, maybe. I'm sure Microsoft doesn't mind, they want to be sure this is done right.)
" We have law makers introducing anti-terorism laws [e.g. patriot act et al.] You have law makers introducing new adjustments to miranda, you have law makers trying to break up a computer firm in a tough economic time."
The above is false. The miranda case currently in review is in regards to a police officer who shot and blinded/crippled a mexican immigrant for no particular reason and is now trying to justify a false confession from him while riding in the ambulance to the hospital with him and harrassing a confession out of him. The case is bogus background noise to try and save the officer from going to jail.
"Suppose they manage to shut down MS [or severely disrupt it]. What comes of that? 1000s of people lose their jobs."
No one is trying to shut down MS. They are trying to find justice for the companies MS has destroyed.
"By making MSFT illegal and leaving linux as the only option you'd actually be hurting the industry, not helping it."
There are many options, Apple, Linux, FreeBSD, Sun. The list would be much larger if it wasn't for MS shutting down companies such as Be Inc. and destroying OS/2's chances of making it. If MS got out of the way today, there would be 20 companies inline tomorrow to pick up the slack. It's called a free market and is the only proven method for economic stability and growth.
"When linux distros actually compete with Windows [e.g. in a meaningful sense, having 1500 packages on 3 CD's is not "competition" when installing a GFX driver can kill the install] then we'll see the beginning of the demise of Windows."
Agaian, no one is wishing for the demise of windows. It has it's place just like Linux does. Linux will never be as userfriendly as Windows or MacOS. Linux developers don't care about that nether do most Linux users. It's only when a "company" is held accountable for it's products due to bad sales/no sales that the product advances. Linux for this reason will always be playing catchup until some company picks it up and actually does something with it. However they cant do something with it because they have to make it freely available and like my mom says "If you're going to give it away, no one is going to pay you for it". It's just as simple as that.
For example, there was never really a decisive victory against IBM, but the decade of ongoing legal scrutiny caused IBM to change their business practices greatly, in many areas. As a specific example, the fact that the PC is a fairly open architecture is a result of such legal efforts: IBM only outsourced the PC operating system to Microsoft because they were afraid that bundling hardware and software would get them dragged into court again.
While this created another monopoly in the form of Microsoft, the overall outcome was still better than the alternative, a closed, all-IBM solution. The fact that the PC software was separate from IBM hardware allowed a third party hardware market to flourish and indirectly made software like Linux possible.
So, nibbling away legally at monopolists like IBM and Microsoft does produce long-term benefits, even if such efforts fail to produce groundbreaking short-term victories. The efforts against IBM opened up the PC hardware/software platform, and similar long-term efforts against Microsoft may kill the Microsoft monopoly as well.
And there are indications that Microsoft is changing subtly under this pressure already. But the point is: the longer the legal pressure is on them, the more they will change. This is not the time to lean back and say "oh, we'll just stick with this little settlement". It is on-going lawsuits, not some signature under a settlement, that ultimately keeps companies like Microsoft in check.
Eventually, we have to get a judge that either sees the sense in all of it, or cannot be bought, or (hopefully) both. How much more can will it take?
Yes, and you know why MS got the opportunity to do this? Because IBM was subject to the same legal scrutiny as Microsoft is now. IBM outsourced the PC operating system to MS because IBM was afraid of more anti-trust action if they did both the PC hardware and software in-house. Note that influencing IBM in this area wasn't the result of an actual settlement, it was the consequence of on-going legal scrutiny and the threat of lawsuits.
Today, Microsoft is the monopoly that kills innovation and competitiveness. And we can apply the same strategy to Microsoft as we did to IBM decades ago: on-going legal scrutiny and on-going lawsuits. Discovery, legal proceedings, and the threat of legal judgements have the teeth that anti-trust settlements lack. This is what will keep Microsoft in check, just like it did IBM.
What if every government or private entity that disaproved of Micro$oft tactics simply stopped buying their products??? That would punish them far more than anything the courts are going to acheive, and would do much to promote alternatives such as Free/Open Source Software.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Microsoft could offer a selective install option like, say, Apple does, but it doesn't want to. I refuse to believe there are serious technical obstacles -- even if they can't extirpate all of, say, the browser code, all they have to do it sabotage access to it. Why would anyone do this is they didn't at least save disk space? Well, they wouldn't, but Microsoft doesn't wan to give up even this much control, and worried what vendors who preinstall the OS might do.
MS (correctly) perceives that it is doomed if it does not branch out into newer and different industries from its stalwart OS. It is not enough to keep its OS's on as many machines as possible, because its monopoly will not hold forever, and when it breaks so will their profit margins. The Web caught it off-guard; now it thinks it can conquer it. The easiest and most familiar way to do so is to bootstrap via the OS advantage. Hence its aggressive efforts to slot IE into everyone's desktop including Apple's (which seems to have gone away now).
Also, MS has for years now used a scorched earth policy towards any competitor. It viewed the government as just another opponent. Its recent recent experience appears to be making it less arrogant and more political. There was even an NYT magazine article on the kinder, gentler Steve Ballmer.
Trying to get on with life is exactly what this is about. We want MS to stop restricting what we as consumers and competitors can do.
We want our vendors to have the right to sell us a linux or dual-boot box without losing their right to sell MS.
We want MS to tell the damned truth.
As of Win 3.1, BG was oblivious to the Net/WWW. He figured that the world's computers would all be connected by the MSNetwork, when *he* was ready to do it. 3.1 didn't even have a TCP/IP stack. Suddenly IE is a core component of the OS? Of course not, it was purely an embrace-and-extend tactic.
"It's soooo old."
Yeah, it's old, but not so old that we don't remember the exciting and competetive mini and micro days before the 800 pound gorilla sat on us all. The personal computer revolution was about to happen with or without the kid from Seattle. He jumped aboard the train as it was gaining steam and highjacked it.
Believe it or not, I'm not religiously anti-MS. I was very happy to have Bill's Basic available on many pre-PC machines. I was happy to be able to walk into the store buy a copy of DOS5.0 when I bought a used PC with the drive wiped clean.
What I'm vehemently against is their ability and willingness to stifle and/or steal the fruit of other people's ideas and hard work. If I were still a customer, I'd also be very upset at the way my data was being held hostage.
If MS has proven anything in the many years of settlements with the DOJ over breaking the law, it's that a settlement with them is as worthless as one with Saddam.
That is insulting, to the Iraqi leader. No real sanctions have been applied to Microsoft, no demands that they submit to inspections or bombings either.
...a judge who agrees with you is a judge who "sees the sense in all of it", right?
Good grief. How many lynch mobs have behaved in precisely the same dull-witted, imbecilic, zombie-like manner? Not knowing, not caring about the "facts," a lynch mob doesn't rest until the noose snaps tight. After that, it takes the time to consider its actions.
Your idea that "nearly the entire computing industry hates Microsoft," is truly one of the most egregiously ridiculous statements I've ever heard. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of software and hardware companies world wide which owe their existence--their entire success--to the market Microsoft built with Windows. In fact, Microsoft could never in a million years have built such a market without the aid of all of these companies consciously working to build a market. The idea that Microsoft did it alone is sheer nonsense *chuckle*--the Dells, Gateways, Microns, HPs and all the rest in this world have contributed just as much if not more to the Windows market as Microsoft has.
The kind of thinking which places Microsoft in its current position and forgets all of the other corporations sharing in and assisting in Microsoft's market illustrates the most extreme kind of ignorance.
Frankly, I'm sick of the self-righteousness of deluded people who think the courts, the companies--and anybody else who stands in their way--is wrong. It's really looking like a pathetic viewpoint these days.