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Microsoft faces Monopoly Lawsuit (again)
james_in_denver writes "Forbes magazine is reporting
that Microsoft will be sued in California for predatory pricing. This lawsuit appears to differ from earlier challenges to MicroSoft's marketplace dominance by entertaining the possibility of a Class-Action lawsuit. This would allow individual users/licensee's to participate in the lawsuit. A notable quote from the full text states: "It's anticompetitive, it's predatory, and it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers, the benefits of innovation that a free marketplace should provide,""
Translation: Lawyers get rich, users/licensees get worthless vouchers.
Microsoft is anti-competetive. But this raises the question: ;)
Is the market really free if the state of California tries to regulate it?
I say this is a good thing, but im not that much of a free market lover
And to quote Nelson: "HAHA!"
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
I'm european so I don't know much what's going on there in USA. The thing I noticed is that most interesting news about OSS, and anti-microsoft seem to originate from California.
So I ask you: is that statement in my subject, true?
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Linux is free to anyone who wants it. All the apps are free. How can anyone claim Microsoft is a monopoly that unfairly prices its products? This argument doesn't work anymore. It's a free market. Don't like MS? There's a free alternative. Stop whining.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Same thing over and over again. State sues MS. MS challenges. MS Looses (the judges work for the state, right?)
MS "pays" restitution in free liscences. MS is even more entretched.
It's a dance called the:
"The PR Microsoft Litigation CircleJerk shuffle".
At the end of the dance the stains are a bit hard to get out, but the public gets it up the ass everytime.
it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers
Since when are we not all taxpayers? A consumer is almost always inherently a taxpayer in the U.S. A notable exception would be certain untaxed items in some locales, big ones being food and clothing. You also need to get the money somehow so that you can "consume" and that is usually taxed. I hate how we allow ourselves to be called taxpayers because what that means is that we are seen by the politicians as nothing more than those people who give them money. Call me a citizen or constituent, but not just some dumb taxpayer. Shit, I'd rather be called a "voter" than a taxpayer, because if there was only one activity associated with me that one would be better.
I am feeling fat and sassy
"In fact," she said, "we've built our business on delivering innovative software at low prices, and have been the market leader in reducing prices while increasing the value contained in software."
Since when is $100-$200 for an OS a 'low price'?
I wonder if this will have any impact on the proceedings? "Independent auditors" recommend Open Source, suggesting that California could save $32 billion.
Can't Microsoft point to reports like this and say, "Hey, look! There's competition!" These reports this might end up serving Microsoft, rather than OSS, in the end!
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
So that's how the RIAA and MPAA can bring all those lawsuits to bear on US citizens?
The only reason there are gutters is for the businesses to dump the little guys when they're done with them. The politicians are standing shoulder to shoulder with the big corps over this, too - that's why US drug prices remain at the highest levels in the western world, and why laws like the DMCA and the INDUCE Act will continue to make their way onto the books.
So long as politicians keep get big $$$ from big business, there's going to be a severe tilt towards serving business interests as opposed to human interests. I'm surprised there haven't been overtures to ban political donations from corporations - I think it would fix a lot of problems.
-- james
>>Microsoft will be sued in California for predatory pricing. This lawsuit appears to differ from earlier challenges to MicroSoft's
Does anyone edit any more?
Microsoft strategy is just to drag out court proceedings until a regime change in whatever entity is suing them. Pump money into the opposing campaign and -poof!- suddenly lawsuits lose their teeth and disappear.
-Electrawn
It will result in the state settling for some relatively rediculously paltry sum, 50% of which will go to lawyers, and which will only reach consumers in the form of a $50 off coupon on any future Microsoft product they purchase.
Seriously, is there any way whatsoever this case could end in anything resembling a victory for consumers?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
"It's anticompetitive, it's predatory, and it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers, the benefits of innovation that a free marketplace should provide,"
What exactly does the free market place have to do with taxpayers? Are people who cheat on their taxes not entiteled to a competitivly priced OS?
And since when is innovation a "right"? If so when will iMacs be subsidized by the gov't?
MS,as scuzzy as they are, have the right to charge anything they want. It is their product! I personaly don't want it written down in the great history books of geekdom that Linux won by default. It's one thing to press charges over threatening companies into unreasonable, exclusive contracts (through monopoly power). It's another matter entirely to sue for "the right to competative priceing". Go to a dollar store for criminie's sake!
I would rather be ashes than dust!
From "AmosWEB:Gloss*arama":
I don't know how they can sue based on simple capitalistic economics. I mean go ahead, just don't get hyped up.
BTW, I hate MS's shit, it just seems silly at first glance. You can't sue until the price is right
Get your Unix fortune now!
Therein lies your problem.
What has Congress ever done to protect consumers rights in this regard? They're trying to legislate out Sony vs Betamax (thank heavens for the courts).
What has Congress done for the Corps? Hmm, let's see. DMCA. Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Induce Act. And the list goes on.
The law has been set up so that one side benefits. These Corps are robbing us, and Congress is providing the getaway car.
-- james
Randroids are to economics as al-Qaeda followers are to religion. Meanwhile, those of us who live in the real world realize that things are rarely that cut and dried.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
(MS Product->Who they stole or bought it from)
A vast majority of Open Source stuff is also copied
from existing software.
the pretense is that you are _not_ a valid citizen if you don't pay taxes -- in other words, disabled and criminals who are in prison should not have voting rights
It seems to me that anything to deal with anti-trust and Microsoft is just a calculated facade designed to maintain the status quo.
Bob Cringely wrote an interesting article (covered in Slashdot)explaining the economics of these anti-trust suits and how Micro$oft actually benefits.
And since these companies don't pay taxes or get tax breaks from Republicans, these suits are a sort of different way for the people in Washinton to get paid. Except this time, the trial lawyers get paid too!
So, the lawyer$ sue Micro$oft so that they can take a huge cut of the money they are going to hand over to the politician$. With class-action lawsuits, they have private lawyers (read expensive lawyers) representing individual claimants, most of whom don't care if they ever get the $20 rebate good toward more Microsoft products (because that's probably all they'll get.) This is a calculated public payoff to those in power (lawyers and politicians) by Microsoft to maintain they're monopoly.
Government: Freeze Microsoft!
Microsoft: What do you want? We're busy screwing the marketplace and raping consumers!
Government: This is a shakedown! Give us what we want and we'll let you go about your business.
Microsoft: Here take it! Now get it out here!
So, why doesn't Microsoft just roll over that easy? Cause they're just trying to talk down the car dealer. It's the same reason parents shouldn't get their kids everything they want, because then they'll just become spoiled and want more and more. They guys just fight over how much to they agree to be extorted for, throw in some free software for schools and libraries (cause that's a good campaign story) allowing the violator of the law to further entrench himself on his gang-land turf.
You said it man. Nobody f#%ks with the Jesus.
While I'm not formally educated in economics - why not? Isn't the whole idea of outsourcing that it saves money (ideally) for the business? If the business saves money isn't it more profitable and capitalistic?
The core of your statement is correct. Just don't blame Republicans only. The sad fact is that M$, just like all major corporations dontes to both sides so that whoever wins will owe them. They buy leverage with every election cycle.
The fairest tax would be a flat tax with no loopholes. Everyone pays the same percentage, individuals & all businesses of any size. Then the expense of enforcing a bloated and unreadable code could be cut by 80%. The only people hurt would be the tax accountants and tax lawyers who would have to find "honest work".
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Just out of idle curiosity, since the primary competitor(s) to Microsoft these days are in the OSS world, how does selling your work for a given price compete unfairly with selling your product for 'free'?
I believe he means in relation to a captialistic system where investors are important as well to a nation. While outsourcing may help companies, not having employees (who use their money to reinvest in the system) will eventually hurt those same companies. Of course, this is as long as those outsourced employees don't feel like investing (which they may not be able to do, depending on how cheap the labor is).
Microsoft has just released their much anticipated hands-free cordless mouse. Warning, it may hurt a little at first.
Perhaps, but in a true objectivist state, Microsoft could not have a monopoly, since it is not efficiency that protects their software, but a collection of laws.
"Barring physical force or fraud, there is no such thing as "unfair" competition; there is only competition that your rivals may not be good enough to match."
This means that if Microsoft's source code was leaked, and products were made based on that source code, it would be fair in Objectivism; Microsoft failed to keep the information secret, now it has to eat its lunch. However, when that source got leaked, I saw nothing but the fear of being "Tainted."
That also means that any rival who cares to can freely reverse-engineer any part of the operating system without fear of reprisal; that's just another form of competition.
In fact, that above statement just argued against things like copyright, patents, and trade secrets; those are results of government intervention, and not true to the objectivist morality.
The Penguin Producer
Yeah, I'm sure billg will personally walk up to the judge and pay it out of his pocket change. MS won't notice the fine and everyone involved will probably get something like $3 each except for the lawyers.
Do these class action lawsuits ever serve anyone _but_the lawyers?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
"Bill Gates, the court hereby declares that you are guilty of predatory pricing and monopoly tactics. For your actions, you will be rewarded with an extension of your monopoly in the form of vouchers: it will cost you next to nothing to fulfill the vouchers and it will mean more people are stuck with your crap."
No, it isn't. What you describe is called "competition".
"Predatory pricing" is when a merchant tries to sell a product for less than cost in an effort to destroy its competitors and establish a monopoly. In effect, the merchant would be *paying* customers to take the product.
In order to do this effectively, the predatory merchant must have sufficient resources to survive while selling at a loss. A small merchant is less likely to be able to do this; predators pretty much have to be big, like Microsoft or Walmart.
Red Hat, SuSe, and Mandrake aren't selling at a loss. Therefore, their behavior is just plain old competition.
Secondly, the argument that there's no alternative is also bullshit. There are numerous vendors that offer to install GNU/Linux, and there are individuals who'll do that for money. E.g., RayServers. Furthermore, contracts between OEMs and MS to only sell their computers with MS Windows installed are voluntary private contracts that violate the rights of no-one. OEMs have the right to sell their PC's however they like to. No-one has the right to prevent them from only putting MS software on their PC's, or force them to put anythign on there that they don't want to. Doing such -- first and foremost -- is a violation of their property rights, which is also a violation of freedom of association (which really boils down to property rights).
Thirdly, anti-trust laws are nonsense. See The Case Against All Antitrust Legislation and The Truth About Sherman by Thomas DiLorenzo:
I would also suggest Monopoly and Competition from Murray Rothbard's treatise on economics, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market .
Regarding "predatory pricing" in particular, it is the most ridiculous and idiotic idea that anyone's ever come up with. To make a law protecting us from "predatory pricing" is really no different than making a law protecting us against "unicorns" or "witches" -- things that simply don't exist. Of course, that doesn't stop the witch-hunt.
What price-cutting refers to is cutting prices below the level of any competitors to drive them out of business, and then afterwards raising prices to extremely high levels. This, of course, is total humbug. If any of you think this is a good idea, try suggesting it to an executive at your company. You'll be laughed out of the company. Any company that tried doing such a thing would go bankrupt, because companies cannot operate on a loss for a sustained period of time (and it would take a sustained period of time to drive competitors out of business). Furthermore, the second part -- that they can then just raise prices to be very high -- is flatly wrong, since that would encourage competitors to enter the field, thus forcing them to lower their prices or go out of business. In reality, such a scheme has never been implemented in the real world, and never will, because it is impossible. See Monopoly and Competition.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen