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Doing the Math in the Microsoft Anti-Trust Cases
coupland writes "Bob Cringely has posted this week's column and has made some interesting comments. He says that regardless of what happens in the EU, DOJ, and class-action proceedings, Microsoft can't lose. Why? Because they make more money by paying lip-service to the law and accepting the occasional fine than by complying. He even does some simple math to prove his point. Fascinating stuff."
Bill Janklow was a recalcitrant breaker of traffic laws. He went on record saying, "Oh, I'll just pay the fine" even though he probably racked up enough violations to have his license taken away. He kept on "paying the fine" until his car met a motorcyle and the person driving the latter was killed.
Interesting take on things -- and I will say that I am no Microsoft fan. I was ticked when I had to pay the Windows tax to get a PC during the time period Microsoft got away with such tatics. Working in IT myself and being a business owner I will say that as a end user I do not trust Microsoft anymore. Not for a long time. WFW3.11 and NT had it going on back in the day. 95 came to market too soon (and no, I didn't buy). 98 wasn't any good until the se release. Me was nothing but a money grab. 2K is barely usable and XP is a joke (IMHO :).
:). New desktops are either OS X or Linux based. Period. Where possible (CAD groups) the networks have been segmented off and there's little Windows worlds that, in a couple of my offices ... can't see the Internet. Ever. Yeah, I believe it has come to that (already). Funny, but the networks always ... just work. Always.
... and I believe that it does NOT account for people like me. There's many of me out there it seems. I took my mom and dad off Windows years ago and they THANKED ME. Go figure. My contribution to the Microsoft coffers since 2000? $-0-
:). Mac's are BSD based. BSD is alive and strong, don't think it's not... Novell has gone Linux. HP and Dell want into the mix directly. What do the best tv video recorders all run on?
Funny -- of course the offices all run on Linux (and/or Netware to this day, thank you
There something wrong with this guys equations
It sure seems that with EVERY major computer type company you look at they're all going one Unix or the other. IBM is Linux. Redhat Linux (obviously
Microsoft obviously has enough money to be a around for a long while. Even while their markets are being eaten left and right. Windows is, well, a technological JOKE at best -- comparing it personally to any of the Unix's out there. OpenOffice sure isn't going away. Who knows WordPerfect may decently re-appear and there's always -X- company out there to come along. What else does Microsoft make money at? Not much.
I see their bottom line continueing to be eaten away -- left and right. Mean while their costs will continue to sky rocket and things will be, well, fun to watch...
Back during the Watergate scandals, a big corp got caught making illegal contributions to a Republican slush fund. They had to pay a fine, of course. A reporter, noticing the paltry size of the fine, remarked to one of the lawyers, "I'll bet your fee was higher than that." The lawyer responded heatedly, "I should hope so!"
But don't respond with a round of lawyer bashing. That's like blaming garbagemen for pollution. Instead, go out and elect a President who will appoint an Attorney General who thinks that anti-trust laws need penalities that actually hurt.
I thought Bob was unusually long winded this time. All he is basically saying is that Microsoft have so much money that no court-imposed monetary penalty can possibly be a problem for them. This is obvious I would have thought.
Even a forced break-up, splitting up the OS and Office divisions, would probably not slow them down too much. Then you would just have 2 monopolies instead of 1.
The forced open-sourcing of Windows is the way to go!
MS has been doing this for YEARS. He's just catching on now? What about DriveSpace and the lawsuit by Stac? MS had to change a little code and Stac went out of business. MS stole Apple's quicktime coded for windows 3.11 and all they got was a slap on the wrists. Makes you wonder how much crap they actually got away with.
We had a similar situation when I was at school. Paying to park at the meters for the bulk of the day was more than the parking ticket - which could only be issued once per car per day. The rule became, put coins in the meter if you'll be there less than 4 hours, otherwise, skip it.
Of course, they may have wanted it that way since it requires less labor to process the ticket than it does to haul away all those coins.
Mac's are BSD based.
They run on a Mach kernel with some BSD userland tools.
Microsoft obviously has enough money to be a around for a long while. Even while their markets are being eaten left and right.
Heh, only on Slashdot do you see statements like this. "Microsoft's market is being eaten left and right!" I've been hearing that since 1998. Linux makes gains here and there, but it's mostly in markets in which UNIX has traditionally existed. Nobody's market is really being eaten except for UNIX. Windows is so fine-grained in the populace, it's become synonymous with computing for most of the world. Contrary to the "frustration" stories you always here, most people are happy with Windows. I can't imagine their frustration stories if given a copy of Linux...
It's my understanding that this happens very often in large corporations. There was a recent article on a large pipe manufacturer that refuses to comply with OSHA standards for factory safety because it's MUCH cheaper to pay an occasional fine than upgrade; don't think this is a tactic only big n' evil Microsoft uses.
All we need is a little tweak to the legal system to make the officers/directors personally and criminally liable for the actions of the company! No major overhaul of anti-trust law needed.
Can you imagine Bill Gates doing 7-10 in prison?
...because of patent infringements. Patent infringements are like nukes in the IT world. Everyone has them, but no one will sue over them because, well, everyone has them. Also, given the number of patents out there, chances are every major company has inadvertently infringed on somebody else's patent. So here is how it goes down:
Linux adoption continues to increase.
Microsoft has a bad quarter.
Microsoft panics.
Microsoft digs through their 100s of patents, and find something that IBM unwittingly violated.
They sue IBM for say, 3 billion dollars.
IBM digs through its much larger patent portfolio and finds several that MS inadvertently vioplated.
IBM sues MS for 60 billion dollars.
MS wins its suit against IBM and nets 3 billion.
IBM wins its suit against MS and nets 60 billion.
And Microsoft is broke.
Unknown host pong.
Basically Cringely is arguing that the court system, whose timetables are based on pre-industrial information flows (i.e. the time it takes a man on horse and buggy to get the handwritten documents from the lawyer's office to a court house), cannot keep up with the hijinks MS is pulling in the relatively fast-paced digital age. By the time this particular case goes through appeals, etc., the story will be ancient in computer terms. MS will have screwed consumers 50 ways from Sunday in the meantime.
As far as USPS, or European postal systems having to do with MS legal difficulties -- how do you think the documents were presented to the courts? Fax? Email? ;) Now, reflect and understand why the courts can't keep up with MS-BS.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Something even scarier is that businesses can buy "permits to pollute" & barter, buy & sell those permits within their respective industries.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Instead of fines, make the penaty the removal of upper level managment from the company. You break the law you lose your job. End of story. Wonder how long Micosoft would last without Bill or Steve?
A little sauce for the goose, my friend.
l /main552270.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/05/nationa
This is such a fantastically good idea. Imagine watching our congressppl(on both sides of the isle) try to explain why they can't quite support it.
Hours of entertainment ensue.
At your expense.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Fines don't hurt enough? Finland doesn't have this problem because, for example, a traffic fine is based on ability to pay--the offender's income. That's how Anssi Vanjoki got a $103,000 speeding ticket.
Actually, that's not a bad analogy. I park illegally and get a parking ticket, but I can only get one a month. I go to court and they charge me a $10.00 fine and tell me to use the parking garage. But the parking garage wants $25.00 a month to park. So I can park illegally and risk a $10.00 fine every month, or I can pay $25.00 up front to park legally. Which would you do?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
So fines are essentially permits after the fact , and they're often avoided and appealed. As has been said , make it a punishment rather than merely a tax-deductable fee for doing business , and things may change. Otherwise it goes on the balance sheet under pens , paper and lawyer fees.
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
Maybe it's me, but that article was waay too long winded to state the obvious: As long as Microsoft canturn a profit after any sort of penalities given them, they have no motovation to comply to any sort of antitrust regulation.
Close. But you missed the point of part of the wind: That complying with the rulings COSTS Microsoft more than the fines.
So it itsn't just that the fines are too little to matter. It's that COMPLIANCE is TOO EXPENSIVE, and the fines are too small to shift that balance.
Just like alcohol prohibition and the "War on Drugs", it's explicitly PROFITABLE to DISOBEY the rulings.
Of course this brings up a question:
Does this behavior make Microsoft a "Continuing Criminal Enterprise"?
If so, it could be VERY interesting if that's brought up the NEXT time somebody brings Microsoft in for antitrust or other violations.
I wonder if the RICO laws could be applied, too.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Which brings us back to Bill Janklow again. 100 days in jail for vehicular manslaughter. How much time do you think Ballmer or Gates would do?
I'm surprised that Janklow even got 100 days. Tennessee Senator Koella was drunk, hit a motorcyclist and left him to die on the road. Koella served no time. And then they named the road after Koella when he died of natural causes.
Martha Stewart is going to prison because she's not politically connected, and probably because she's female. If only she was in Skull & Bones...
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
As you say, a person can face personal fines or jail time.
How do you put a corporation in jail for 90 days?
How do you give a corporation the death penalty?
Once upon a time, the king could revoke your corporate charter, and your company went away. That's the closest thing to a 'death penalty' for corporations that I've ever encountered, but even modern trust busting practices don't go that far (Ma Bell was dismembered, but not actually destroyed).
Similarly, the punishment for some crimes allows for any goods that were acquired in the process of breaking the law to be seized. If you have a product that violates the law egregiously, why shouldn't the benefits (profits) of that product be seized, and funneled back toward the public good?
Fining a company that has $60B in the bank 600 million dollars is chump change. They can take that out of interest payments on their liquid assets. You really want to hurt them, you seize all of their profits (or source code) for that product. Anything less is merely an annoyance.
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
The only way to subdue a larger opponent is to divide that opponent's forces and proceed to conquer them. Microsoft and any other large corporation knows this and uses it against any legal strategy which is brought against it. Our government is just too afraid to use it against them.
Remember that the original judgement order would have split Microsoft up. Remember also that they fought it tooth and nail because they knew that if it happened - then they really would have had problems.
Remember AT&T was split up and we got better phone service. IBM had to split up and we now have microcomputers that are so cheap you could work at MacDonald's and still buy one. Microsoft should be split up so software can evolve the way it should.
But then, Microsoft has enough money to buy anything and anyone. So the guy is right. When you are making so much money that you can thumb your nose at the law - who's laws do you live by? The answer is - no one's but your own. Someone giving you a hard time? Buy them off or buy someone who will remove the problem. And that doesn't mean you have to hire a hit man. You just need to hire/buy/create another company to put pressure on legislators, or do letter writing campaigns, or even just visit these people and hint that your company which brings vast wealth into the U.S. would leave and...well, I'm sure you get the picture.
So did the DOJ of Utah. If you have forgotten, remember that Microsoft was in big trouble with the State of Utah for creating a company which wrote ficticious letters to them asking for leniency in their case against Microsoft. IMHO - that is a $10,000.00 fine for each and every letter written and a 5-10 in jail for each offense. Since there were litterally thousands of letters we should never see Mr. Gates or anyone else who was in charge of Microsoft at the time ever again. Yet - there have been no arrests even though Microsoft admitted they had done this.
I think Mr. Roosevelt said it best:"...So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory."
We need victory. True victory and not hollow lapdog lickings. But all we have gotten so far is a pat on the head.
Later.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
interestingly, cities have found that there are people who park on the street and then leave the car there. Reason? It's cheaper to take the $15 over-the-limit fine each day and pay it rather than pay $20 to park in a garage for 8 hours.
The result was that some cities have started to allow meter maids to issue an additional citation for each additional hour or so a car stayed past it's limit. In other words, say a car gets a ticket at 10am, and still there at noon, would get a second ticket. And a third at 2pm, and so on....
Go ahead, ask me how I know.......
Are injunctions on product distribution not possible?
There needs to be a bill passed into law such that ANY PRODUCTS THAT HAVE BEEN FOUND TO BE MONOPOLISTIC IN BEHAVIOUR, or SIMILARLY CONTROVERISAL SHALL BE IMMEDIATELY INJUNCTIONED AND WITHDRAWN FROM PUBLIC SALE UNTIL SAID CASE IS COMPLETED IN ITS ENTIRETY.
A subclause stating that the above could only apply if the manufacturer was FOUND GUILTY ON MULTIPLE COUNTS OF ANTI-COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOR AND IN MULTIPLE COUNTRIES / CONTIENTS would easily put a limiting factor on potential "abuses" of this new law.
Anyone want to help me get it passed?
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
"how do you give a corporation the death penalty?". simple.
1. seize all of its assets and auction it ASAP.
2. put all managers, middle-management and up in jail.
3. declare all of its rights in contracts invalid.
4. watch.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
We do have one problem though, the 14th Amendment, which says that any person born or naturalized in the US is a citizen. Of course that happens to include corporations as has been sucessfully argued many times in the past. as can be seen here (It's a .pdf sorry). So when Microsoft does something Gates and Ballmer can't be taken to jail. There are many that want the 14th Amendment to be amended, however it has not proved effective.
Something interesting though is that the 14th Amendment is also what gives us the right to sue the corporation in the first place.
Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Agreed. Why is it that when women get raped, it's a serious offense, and considered "worse than murder," yet when men get raped it's funny?
How should the Justice Department take on large multi billion dollar Corporations?
Easy : never ever put financial sanctions on them. Only put regulatory sanctions on such Corporations. For instance take the EU vs. Microsoft case : a $600.= million fine is pocket money.
So demand Microsoft to remove the Media Player with the sanction , that if Microsoft fails to do so in time, Microsoft would just loose their commercial chamber registration and license, and thus would be forced to stop doing business in Europe. Easy as it gets.
Robert
This reminds me of a law that's gone out-of-fashion here in Toronto, Canada. When I first moved here in the '90s, it was illegal for stores to be open on the day after Christmas... but the Eaton's department store would. They figured that they made more money than the fine. As the years went by, more and more stores on Yonge Street followed Eaton's example. Today, Yonge Street is busier the day after Christmas than any Saturday... despite the fact that it's illegal.