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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."
From the articles:
Court:This is a resounding victory for the Justice Department and American consumers. The Court addressed the merits of every argument raised against the Department's remedy by two industry groups and the sole remaining state plaintiff (Massachusetts), and it clearly and thoroughly rejected all of them. The Court's forceful decision confirms what the Department has been saying all along - our settlement protects the public by providing a full and effective remedy for Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct.
MS: "We remain 100 percent committed to fulfilling our obligations under the settlement and earning the trust of our customers and the industry," Smith said. "We are excited about the potential our industry has to bring new innovation into people's lives and help them realize their full potential."
My comments: In order to see what a real inovation is, one has to compare firefox's mouse gestures to Ie's SP2. I mean, who gives a damn about mouse whatnot, we don't want viruses, right?
But I actually don't care since I switched to Gentoo..
Now we can concentrate on SCO losing in court and Linux winning in the hearts and minds of the consumers.
I wonder what'll happen in the EU anti-trust sanctions. If they manage to get off the hook there, it'll be hard to convinve me that they didn't buy the European politicians.
Under construction: swpat politics overview article
A drop in the bucket here. Overseas sales, sales here, and a lack of change in their business structure means that this settlement accomplished nothing.
The only hope now is that the negative publicity will affect sales somehow. Stupid Ashcroft.
The anti-trust case seemed to disappear from the media very quickly once the Bush administration came in. I think Microsoft is going to get less support now because of the EU anti-trust lawsuits as well. It will be interesting to see if there is a different decision reached between the states and the EU.
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I suppose after 6 years the state decided it had sunk enough money into this morass and tried to cut its losses.
"Piter, too, is dead."
because it's our right, as Americans, to get another coupon for $10 off the latest version of Windows XP2003MEServer 64-128bit edition
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My uncle. A local politician is fond of the saying. "Law is like sausage, anyone who likes either should never watch them being made". Whoever says justice has nothing to do with politics, or claims law and its use is not always someone enforcing their morality on someone else, needs to take a look at this case.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
It's not really news anymore. It's not much of a surprise, anyway. I'm nore interested in the EU case. Oh.. this isn't anti-microsoft enough..
Microsoft is like.. the man.. and I am like.. the person being oppressed by said man. Yo.
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.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
The truth of the matter is, even a couple hundred million dollars of fines is not that much of a hit to Microsoft, and it isnt exactly a secret that Microsoft holds a near monopoly, so, the whole lawsuit is a nonissue in the end
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."
Developers: We can use your help.
The blame starts with Reno and the people that were assigned to the case.
Wha...? The lawyers she had on the case knocked it out of the park. It's now out bobbing in the ocean somewhere. Every time David Boies brought up a MSFT witness, he was able to discredit them and show that MSFT was indeed using its monopoly power to limit competition.
Reno has nothing to do with what judge is assigned to a particular case (would you want the DA to be able to choose what judge hears every case? I didn't think so either). What Judge Jackson did was pretty bad and he should have known better.
But Ashcroft pretty much rolled over as soon as he was AG. He settled and tried to get everyone else to settle as well. Why is a different debate, but he certainly had enough evidence to win in a new trial.
Even assuming it's Reno's fault, why didn't Ashcroft fix it instead of just throwing up his hands and saying "well, it's fucked, forget about it"? Either he's lazy, or in bed with Microsoft, or both. Either way he is not suited for his position.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
But Ashcroft pretty much rolled over as soon as he was AG. He settled and tried to get everyone else to settle as well. Why is a different debate, but he certainly had enough evidence to win in a new trial.
Here's a link for you. When the (then) richest man in the world donates to your boss's campaign, I think you're going to pay him back in some manner or another.
A quick note, though...There are as many Democrats as Republicans on that list of donation recipients. Bill Gates donates to those with power...not necessarily to those of any particular party.
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The government is notorious for being both sloppy with its networks and being computer illiterate. The prosecutor in the anti-trust case didn't even have an email address as of late 2000.
There was an article by Scott Hacker called He who controls the boot loader. It mentions how the DOJ missed the real issue entirely.
It wasn't web integration that did the damage. It was Microsoft classifying its boot loader as a trade secret that toppled competition.
Slashbots tend to have selective memory about this whole thing. The Appeals Court knocked out most of the key rulings -- specifically the "tying" charges related to putting IE and WMP into Windows.
There was no longer any grounds for a breakup, the government had to rollover. A hypothetical Gore DOJ would have settled this in a similar manner.
(Actually, Clinton DOJ was begging for a settlement the whole time -- see Wired's reporting. But Gates just would not deal with them.)
Maybe we can concentrate on developing and using better alternative operating systems instead of having the courts make all our decisions for us.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
I'd love to see a nice documentary on the Microsoft case and how the Bush administration rolled over and let Bill have his way.
Maybe he could call it "Justice 1.0," or something.
Declining returns means more effort put in for less yield, like a mine what was initially opened because rich deposites of ore were found on the surface, now poorer ore is deeper down and requires more expense to extract. Windows, in case you haven't noticed, and to which I alluded, isn't about the operating system, but all the junk that comes bundled with it. To maintain the same profit margin and growth Microsoft has enjoyed for years they need to find some way for you the NEED the n, n+1, n+2...nth version but making it do all sorts of things a computer operating system isn't at all about.
On an unrelated topic, something like the RIAA example of not knowing how to deal with all the innovation comming in.
The RIAA simply wasn't forward looking, they were content to sit on their fat asses and collect on old works, invent new manufactured acts of shite music and screw to death anyone who tried to cut their own slice of the pie. Simply put, it was all about fear of losing control and not wanting to actually work out where music needed to go for the future, like MP3's and such. They've got a buddy in Microsoft though, who will work with them to ensure they both get rich and keep consumers under their thumb with DMCA an DRM.
On the other hand, Linux may commercialize, gain momentum and start having all the risks the windows market have. But, by the way how things are set up right now. At least I can control what goes into my source/applicaiton tree.
The beauty of Linux is the many distros and different packaging available. You can build your own OS with no more or no less than you need. It's far harder for some scumbags to put in a half-assed effort and distribute bug-riddled code, since it's checked by many eyes. It's also very hard for a special interest to force upon Linux things like DRM, since the code is open and a reasonably bright programmer could work around it. Which probably has something to do with more crap winding up in firmware for devices, like DVD drives, which are outside a programmers control.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...how is this a victory for consumers when most of them complain that they buy Windows and then need seperate antivirus software, seperate firewall, and seperate software to do everything? Making MS not bundle WMP or IE with their software is just going to make it more difficult for Joe Public consumer and they'll probably just go to Microsoft.com and download all the MS software anyway.
So does this mean that PC companies like Dell will be able to bundle RealPlayer with their PCs instead of WMP? How does this benefit the consumer? It's just going to lead to more people clogging up support sites with basic queries as they try to use the WMP and find out that it's called RealPlayer, is shit, and has a different interface.
From the same article in the parent post:
"Overall, Microsoft and its employees were the country's fifth-largest political donor in the 2000 election -- contributing $4.7 million to politicians and their committees. Republicans received about 53 percent of that money."
and
'"Companies that are really toeing the 50-50 party split on donations are basically pragmatic," said Sheila Krumholz, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors political contributions. "They court all sides."'
No large corporation is stupid enough *not* to hedge its bets.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Your local politician must be a fan of Otto von Bismarck, who coined that phrase when he said "people who enjoy eating sausage and obey the law should not watch either being made."
The Computer and Communications Industry of America had Robert H. Bork and Kenneth W. Starr. Not a bad couple of lawyers . . . well, at least they've got name recognition.
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The CCIA represents a group of non-Microsoft software companies who were trying to intervene and argue that the settlement was not in the public interest. The Court let them in as a way of wrapping their arguments into its opinion.
CCIA wanted the court to order MS to incorporate a Java platform into Windows. They also object to the part of the consent decree that let MS reveal only those APIs that MS's middleware uses.
This last one is kind of a funny argument. CCIA says, if they won't give us all the APIs, we'll only be able to make software that's as good as MicroSoft's, not better. The court basically says--"Hey, at least you're not being disadvantaged now . . .
There's also an argument by the CCIA that the District Court didn't do enough because it didn't require MS to sever its OS from its other products (IE, for example).
There's a whole bunch of stuff in this opinion. If I get time to look at the guts of it, I may come back and post a more thorough analysis. Still, it's interesting to see what the CCIA was asking for, and why the court felt they didn't deserve it.
--AC
Yet another insane BushCo attack/apology, from an Anonymous inverted Coward. Reno won her antitrust case against M$. Ashcroft ignored the monopoly, cutting a cheap deal that keeps M$ in control of the sick state of disrepair from which we all suffer. The fact that Ashcroft is required to protect us from cyberterror is yet another reason the guy should be fired and prosecuted for malfeasance, and even treason. But of course, ACs like the parent poster will instead call for his elevation to the Supreme Court for his crimes. Why do they hate America?
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make install -not war
Maybe another reason the DOJ "rolled over" was because Microsoft had already been defanged.
At the start of the trial the common wisdom was that the Microsoft monopoly prevented competition. It was generally believed that Microsoft would simply purchase, aquire or destroy any who stood in their way, and that they would use every illegal means to do it.
But the impossible happened. Along came Linux. From some perspectives this was inevitable. Despite Slashdot myths to the contrary, Linux was not written to be a Windows competitor. It didn't have to be Linux, it didn't even have to be Open Source. The evolution of the personal computer created a vacumn for a cheap powerful and customizable operating system, and Linux managed to be there at the right time and place.
Now come to the end of the trial. Linux had become a household word. It had sucessfully prevented Microsoft's domination of the server market, and even managed to score higher market penetration in certain areas. Microsoft still retained its monopoly on the desktop, but it was slowly but surely being eroded. Beyond Linux, Apple was back from the dead in an time when people said no one could compete with Microsoft.
In short, the Microsoft threat had been dulled. The primary purpose of the trial was not to punish Microsoft, but to correct a problem in the market. The situation was being corrected by market forces.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
On the other hand, it's pretty clear that Jackson had already made up his mind early on what the facts were. Another judge handling the trial "by the book", might have come up with a different set of facts. Overall, I'd say that Jackson did more to drown MS than to save it.
On appeal, Jackson was actually given a lot of deference on his findings which is the cultural norm for courts of appeal. It was that same cultural norm that made it unlikely that the settlement would be overturned.
You win the prize for being the first person to do so in this thread. Congratulations. You have also won the SUPER BONUS PRIZE as this is now the ONE BILLIONTH TIME someone has blamed the Clinton administration for something the Bush administration dropped the ball on.
Congrats!
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
MS has more money than they have use for anyway. What matters is whether or not they're going to have to disist the forced exclusive bundling of Windows Media Player with Microsoft Windows.
Look up sometime how much money Microsoft is throwing away on the XBox with no apparent hope of recouping a cent of it anytime in the forseeable future. Next to that 500 million euros doesn't seem significant.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Perhaps the best example of "taking a dive" was the June 28, 1997 fight between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, in which Tyson bit off a piece of Holyfield's ear in the third round and was disqualified by referee Mills Lane. The Vegas sportsbooks offered 20-1 odds against Tyson losing in the third round, which of course was advantageous for anyone who knew the outcome in advance.
This may be why Tyson has not as yet been successful in regaining a license to fight in Nevada.