Appeals Court OKs Microsoft Antitrust Settlement

mbstone writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has upheld [pdf] the settlement reached between Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department in the antitrust case filed in 1998, beating back a challenge by Massachusetts, the only state that didn't settle. Many critics, of course, believe that Attorney General John Ashcroft took a dive on the case which was originally filed by former Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno."

Comments

Of course Ashcroft went soft

[nate1138]

Of course Ashcroft went limp on Microsoft. After all the money that they funneled to the republican party, how could he do anything other than bend over and grab his ankles for his new corporate masters?

From here:

During the last election campaign, Microsoft employees gave more than $50, 000 to the Bush campaign, while the company and its workers gave $500,000 in unlimited, soft money donations to the Republican National Committee for use in Bush's battle against Democrat Al Gore. Gore did not receive any money from Microsoft, according to election commission records.

According to data supplied by the Center for Responsive Politics, Microsoft employees also donated $22,500 to Bush's recount effort, and a Microsoft executive gave $100,000 to the Bush-Cheney Inauguration Committee.

Of course, nobody should be surprised by this anymore.

Re:Of course Ashcroft went soft

[danheskett]

Of course, nobody should be surprised by this anymore.
FYI.

Bush openely promised as a campaign pledge (I know, I was at a debate and asked the question to which he responded) to instruct the DOJ to seek a settlement as soon as possible.

In light of that, your suggestion that this wasn't on the up and up doesn't really fly.

Wrong

[truthsearch]

Nice try, but true.

From a news article: "Massachusetts was the only state to hold out against the DoJ settlement. And it is still talking a good fight. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, the judgment shows that antitrust laws are not working. 'Our high-tech economy will not reach its full potential unless regulators and the courts are willing to deal with Microsoft and its predatory practices,' he said, Reuters reports."

$996,000 to Democrats during 2000 election cycle

[Chibi Merrow]

Now I don't know where the San Francisco Chronicle gets their data, but opensecrets.org (the defacto source for Slashbots) paints a very different picture of contributions... They still gave more to Republicans, but not significantly more... Heck, excluding the whole anti-trust thing, tax cuts are business friendly. That's enough to earn Bush support, really.

Besides, the person who really lost the antitrust case was Judge Jackson. If he hadn't gone on about Microsoft being a bunch of evil bullies his breakup order would've stood. However, when an appeals court sees a lower Judge out spouting off belligerence in public interviews while a case HE is working on is winding through the legal system, they tend to act in favor of the person being punished.

Re:I wonder what'll happen in the EU

[Graf Typo]

I wonder what'll happen in the EU anti-trust sanctions.

This just in: Microsoft already paid the fine of 497.2 million Euro. Details at Heise (in german, but you can always use babelfish).

Greetings, Graf Typo