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Microsoft Lawyer To Lead ABA's Antitrust Section
Dan writes "Wired is reporting that a top lawyer from Microsoft will take over later this year as chairman of the American Bar Association's antitrust section. The panel is organizing opposition to a congressional plan that would require more aggressive oversight by the courts of such antitrust settlements. Considering the next major ruling in MS's case is due soon, you can figure out how important this is to MS."
Why does Microsoft have so many anti-trust concerns? I mean, is there anybody left who still actually trusts Microsoft?
It only matters who is intepreting it and who is enforcing it. This is a lesson Microsoft has learned well.
And when I read the article... I had a nice big MSN butterly ad breaking it up. Does Microsoft have it's finger into everything?
Conflict of Interest?
Seriously, it's like hiring Janet Jackson to chair a senate subcommittee on decency in public broadcasting!
Even Microsoft would be in trouble if it was suddenly cut off from 300+ million potential customers.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Well, I would really like to give the profession more credit than this, but does not anyone see a conflict of interest here? The standard should be "avoiding even the appearance of impropriety", so how is it that the entire American Bar Association think this is a good idea? Are they that owned?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Josef Mengele will be taking over as the new Director of the American Red Cross.
Bush and Blair were nominated for the nobel peace award.
Mr. Fox, would you be so kind as to go to that henhouse and guard those chickens? Thank you, that is all. ;)
libertarianswag.com
I heard this story before- wasn't it called Little Red Riding Hood?
I somehow doubt he's still on MS's payroll anymore. Maybe the fact that he's been defending Microsoft will give him good insight into just how they've handled things (well or poorly). And wouldn't a lawyer with a lot of antitrust expereince make the ideal candidate for this position? After all, there are more cases out there than Microsoft. (Not to mention, are there any antitrust lawyers out there who, at one point, *didn't* work for MS? ;)
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Microsoft lobbies to avoid penalties under the law, to reduce governmental oversight of itself, and to reduce enforcement of judgements already handed down.
Duh.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Wired is reporting that a top lawyer from Microsoft will take over later this year as chairman of the American Bar Association's antitrust section
Does anyone know to whom we can appeal/complain at the ABA or elsewhere in the government about this potential conflict of interest? You know, and have the complaining/appealing be actually useful? If so, please post...
How appropriate. They've ended up putting a rabbit in charge of guarding the carrot patch...
---
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
The courses of action defined in my sig used on emails is getting closer and closer to the last option I fear. I mean, just how much longer is the american public actually going to tolerate what nearly 100% of us see as justice for sale to the highest bidder?
:
As Harry Truman once said about the buck stopping here, there will come a point when enough of us have had enough, and the passing of the buck will come to a screeching halt, with much of our constitution restored to its original meaning.
My sig?
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap,
ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
IS the position meant to be filled by someone who works against monopolies, or is it more of an advisory/educational position, where it requires someone who knows a lot about anti trust and their opinion of antitrust laws isn't an issue?
Actually, it's nothing like that.
This guy is on a panel being organized in OPPOSITION to a congressional plan that would require more aggressive oversight by the courts of anti-trust settlements.
This isn't like hiring Janet Jackson to chair a senate subcommittee on decency in public broadcasting. This is like NAMBLA hiring a pedophile to help promote its causes. The complete opposite of what you're suggesting.
Military Intelligence, is that another one of those stupid reality shows?
I mean, this guy is a lawyer. He doesn't have loyalties! Or ideals! Or morals! Or a soul.
So he worked for Microsoft. Because they gave him money. That, really, doesn't mean much about his own ideas. Lawyers are paid to put aside their own ideas, and sometimes even the truth, in order to make their own point.
According to this AP item in USA Today, the ABA has already been opposing increased oversight of antitrust settlements by the courts. The appointment of a Microsoft lawyer as Chair of the Antitrust Section may not be so much a matter of the fox guarding the chicken coop as the recruitment of an experienced and committed anti-anti-trust lawyer to help the ABA pursue its agenda. It would be interesting to know whether the ABA is actually soft on anti-trust enforcement or whether it perhaps regards judicial oversight as improper interference with the relationship between the two parties.
Give the ABA feedback, slashdot style: http://www.abanet.org/scripts/contactmail.jsp?to=q uestions
If anybody is more qualified than Microsoft in Antitrust matters, I'm sure Mr. Gates is on his way to that person's home to try and recruit them. Blantently_obvious();
Learn something new.
In other news, MSNBC is reporting that the American Bar Association's Hen House will now be run by I. M. Foxxe.
=-+
While I agree that there are WAY too many frivolous lawsuits nowadays, it's irritating that people always refer to the McD lawsuit as one.
Have you investigated the case at all? 7 days in the hospital and numerous skin grafts. The $480,000 she got (not millions) probably barely covered her injuries, with the cost of medical care nowadays. A recent trip to the emergency room for a small cut that took 30 seconds to glue shut (after a 4 hour wait) came back as a $1,500 bill before my insurance.
More than 700 people had been previously scalded, but McDonalds knowingly kept their coffee at 185 degrees with no warning signs at all that it was abnormally hot. I've even heard they did it purposely to cut down on free refills, because people had to wait longer for it to cool - but that's not a fact to my knowledge.
http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm
Or to put it another way, if you worked at one time for Sun's Java division, should you be forbidden to work for ISO?
Not everything is an evil conspiracy.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
People are not reading the article. The group the lawyer is in charge of is a lobbying group, not one that will be making any of the decisions.
He sure got experience.
Nowadays, we would outsource to Mr. Fox to guard the hen house.
This is clearly illegal. Microsoft is using their monopoly power in crooked business to gain a foothold in the lucrative crooked politics arena.
Yes. It's also not the greatest system in the world, for a number of previously-discussed-on-Slashdot reasons. Though it is better than, say, SPF.
May we never see th
Wow. The logic in your post is so twisted that I'm not even sure where to begin.
Should Hitler get the same prize for unifying countries and eliminating tension-causing influence (i.e. Jews?)
May we never see th
Didn't think so.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Try reading the whole AP article on which it's based.
The chair of an ABA section isn't all that powerful -- that is, she can't decide ABA "policy" on anything. ABA policies and recommendations are committee-driven things, and the Antitrust section is especially highly organized; there are many subcommittees based on subject, and each subcommittee has a chair (or two). Becoming the chair of an ABA section is really 1) a prestige thing, meaning that the chair is widely respected as a top-flight attorney or legal mind in the area the section covers, and 2) an organizational thing.
The ABA sections have varying levels of influence in legislation; arguably, the antitrust section is quite influential. But there are many reasons that Microsoft will really have no sway, either at the ABA level or the legislation level.
In any case, a conflict of interest MIGHT occur if the ABA were supposed to decide something important or instrumental to the Microsoft antitrust cases. But the ABA most certainly isn't, because that's not the ABA's job.
> Bush and Blair should be nominated. They ended Saddam's war against Iraq, Kuwait, and other countries which has killed over 500,000 people.
Many more, I think. Estimated 900,000 for the Iran-Iraq war, plus 300,000 Iraqi Shiites after the first Gulf War inspired them to rebel, plus many others in smaller increments.
> Iraq is now a free country, and has hope
Unfortunately, the proverbial fat lady hasn't sung yet. Other proverbs:
"You can have any kind of government you like, so long as it's the kind we want and makes the decisions we want it to."
"The arrests will continue until our welcome improves."
What is Iraq going to be like 2, 5, 10, or 20 years from now?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yeah, you can catch it on CNN & FOX every 4-8 years.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Capitalism isn't necessesarily bad.
Greed is. So is corruption.
To Capitalism's credit, it has legitimately produced very many households having a modest amount of wealth. But who of the super-rich gained his or her wealth by legitimate means?
I think you'll find that a system or ideology does not make a civilization -- the people do.
This appointment doesn't have any real significance. The ABA is not a government agency; it's a private lawyer's organization that is voluntary (lots and lots of lawyers don't belong).
The ABA has a lot of different subgroups, on anti-trust, patent law, corporate law, etc. They do training on their areas of specialty, have meetings to talk about their area of interest, and do sometimes lobby about pending legislation.
The ABA Antitrust section has been pro-business, anti-enforcement forever, so this is really no big deal.
Don't blame this on capitalism. The ABA is about as anti-capitalism as you can get.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
to find an anti-trust lawyer who hasn't worked for or against Microsoft these days, wouldn't it?
"... spend about 10 seconds solving a complex math problem and attaching proof of the effort to a message."
Already discussed:
[X] Will break mailing lists
[X] Will be forged by spammers
So ABBA has their own anti-trust lawyers?
Must be Money-Money-Money.
Damn you for stealing my joke. Knowing me, knowing you... one of us was bound to do it. It's the name of the game.
My blog can kick your blog's ass
The fox was nominated to the board that oversees the henhouse.
Isn't that a bit like putting the wolves in charge of the sheep?
There are two ways to prevent corruption, abolute power and limited power. Absolute power prevents corruption, because if you try to bribe the dictator, he can have you killed and all your stuff taken instead of giving you what you want. Limited power works because the company gains no benefit in bribing a politician who does not have the power to benefit them. Of course absolute power is even less desirable, so the solution to this problem is to prevent the legislators from making regulations or otherwise interfering with the capitalistic free-market economy. What we need is true capitalism rather than this pseudo-capitalist B$.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
I can't speak for him, but I am against the GPL as well as copyright in general. However, IMO proprietary software is even worse, as it takes away more rights; At least the GPL allows you to modify it and to use it within an organisation any any way you want, and to redistribute it under the GPL as long as you provide the source code, whereas proprietary software takes away all of those rights as well.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
This is like having Saddam Hussein chair an Iraqi human rights committee.
I agree with the first point, but if it is implemented properly it will be difficult to forge. The server could for instance generate two medium sized prime numbers(the size would be chosen such that factoring it would take 10 minutes on an average computer), multiply them, and send the result to the client. The client then must factor it, which is a much more complicated process, and send the two primes back to the server. It can't be forged, as the server knows the proper result ahead of time, while the client must actually solve the problem.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
Lobbyists pay the money. Politicians need the money to buy ads to get elected. The aliterate electorate then votes for these corrupt bozos. So lobbyists do make the decisions.
( aliterate is a word! )
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
How sad that such a forum is embarassed by the same idiotic comparisons as you'd hear on your local yokel radio station:
"It's like Janet Jackson being appointed style coach to Nickelodean!" (yuk yuk)
"It's like Michael Jackson's sister Janet Jackson being appointed censor to a live Belize Dance edition of E Travel Super Party!"
Seriously, how idiotic can you nerds get?
'Guilds' such as the ABA are in a way monopolies, it's true. On the other hand: can you think of an easier way than membership of a 'guild' with certain 'quality requirements' to guarantee that a person you wish to hire actually has some qualification for the task at hand?!? Law nowadays is a vastly larger and more complex field than it was 100 years ago. Some 100-200 years ago barbers could function as surgeons. I don't think they needed any formal education for that. Would you have a barber operate on you today?
And before we all get too excited: there is precious little analogy with Microsoft's monopoly in this. ABA admits anyone who passes its requirement for membership. These members then compete against each other. In other words: no monopoly. Microsoft doesn't license its products to anyone (afaik) and it is therefore virtually without competitors, i.e. a monopoly. Spot the difference.
Incidentally, it is not necessarily bad to have a ubiquitous operating system, be it Windows or not. Remember the bad old days when demo disks of games (or for that matter, any other software) were distributed because there was simply no way you could tell whether they could be installed/played on your computer?! The downside of Microsoft's Windows monopoly isn't Windows itself but rather
that there is no one else producing Windows so that Microsoft is free to charge monopoly prices;
that Microsoft uses Windows monopoly as leverage to sell other (inferior) products (Office Suite; Internet Explorer) or crush competitors of such (Netscape; Corel);and
that no one else gets a chance to improve Windows.
The liver is evil and must be punished.
And MS solving the "spam" problem would only lead to MORE antitrust violations!!! I personally wouldn't trust MS with that scheme either because it isn't OS independant or standard...hence it's just another ploy to get lockin.
You pay for stupidity. Let's see... "I got this hot cup of coffee. Now, where could I put it while I pour in some cream and sugar? Ooh ooh, I know! Between my legs of course! That way I can squeeze it tight while I remove the plastic lid that keeps the cup in form.... Ouch, this coffee is hot!"
Maybe McD should sell their coffee only to people who have some common sense? What next? "Hey, I poured this cup of coffee on my head and it burned me! See you in court!"
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Fine, that may represent the priciples of those involved.
This move casts doubts on those priciples and the integrity of the organization in general. It proves that their volunteer professional organization can be taken over by a representative from a company and used to do that company's buisness. Moreover, it looks like you can do this at the last minute with little planning. They should avoid the appearance of such things, much more the fact.
Stinkers:
The time frame could be as short as a week. That makes the ABA look as easy to use and discard as a paper towel from the men's room of a gas station.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
its like against teh code of ethics for attorneys. of course thats right up m$'s alley..
Greed is part of human nature. in a communist society for instance, whoever distributes the rations will probably take a much larger amount for himself. The strength in capitalism lies in the fact that it uses greed for good.
I really don't see how it uses it for "good", and you sure don't back it up with logic. I'm not a proponent of communism or socialism, but just like the communist organizers will and do apportion themselves much more in terms of resources, what do you think big business executives do? It's all an old boys' network of white collared men patting themselves on the back and similarly apportioning themselves a much, much larger portion of resources than their consumers.
Point me to the big difference, and I'll be on my way, thanks.
--- What
I believe so, Here, Here, Here and Here
but this administration has no interest in an active, educated electorate. it only serves as an annoyance to them.
don't you worry your tight conservative ass over it though. we'll take care of that come November.
There is no conflict of interest here. I'm sure that Microsoft has instructed Mr. Wallis as to exactly what his interests should be. Besides, it's not like this is news or anything. ;-)
...that one of the top lawyers defending the largest corporation in the world would chair the ABA?
Seriously...wouldn't MS hire the best lawyers available that would work for them? Consider the fact that he defended MS in an anti-trust case, wouldn't that be an indicator of his ability? (though not necessarily of his morals, *insert cliche lawyer morality joke here*)
You're right: it isn't a troll, and as the meta-moderator involved, I can (and just did) mark it as Unfair.
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