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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?
.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.
It is quite clear that there will be no noteworthy changes to the original settlement
No, it isn't. When both higher courts toss it out, THEN it'll be clear. Until then, its' worth pursuing.
It is also quite clear that the main loser is going to be the taxpayer.
The lawyers pursuing the case the government lawyers paid a salary, not hourly wages. The taxpayers don't pay much extra by pursuing this case... and since MS has to reimburse the legal expenses of the government at market rate, the taxpayers will, if anything, MAKE money.
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"
When PC's cost $4000 Windows cost $100. Now that comodity PC costs ~$800 Windows still costs $100.
If there was competition in software as there is in hardware Microsoft would have had to bring their price down. If Microsoft gets their long-dreamed-of 100% market share and no piracy, do you really thnk that they'll keep their price at $100?
Not likely.
Bush pardoning a death sentence? Well, that's something you don't see everyday.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
So many say "Why bother? M$ 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.
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!
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.