Slashdot Mirror
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.
Oh come on, really, can you really say that just because their OS costs more than most pieces of hardware predatory?
Some people like to say that the USA is the home of pure capitalism. However, that's an oversimplification of how our system really functions. I'd rather call it capitalism with gutters on either side of the bowling lane so that when something starts to go off course in a bad way, the law kicks in and makes sure that the bad shot both fails to score, and also cannot go further off course so that it impacts the scores on other lanes.
Microsoft has been on the edge of falling into the gutter for quite awhile, and there's been a lot of people who so far have come close to pushing them in. This is yet another tale in a continuing series of stories about projects that have the potential to just do it this time.
Microsoft has brought some amazing things into the world of computing, but they are far from perfect and in no way deserve to have all of the business power they have successfully amassed. We have to depend on our justice system to take some of that power back from Microsoft and return it into the available pool for everybody else to draw from in order to adjust the situation in a way that corrects for effects of misdeeds done in the past.
I wish them luck... it's about the time market forces delivered us working and cool IT products again.
"This lawsuit appears to differ from earlier challenges to MicroSoft's marketplace dominance by entertaining the possibility of a Class-Action lawsuit." Um, RTFA? At least 16 other states have had similar lawsuits, including the recent settlement here in Minnesota.
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
Is the market really free if the state of California tries to regulate it?
If we're going to get into that topic it's worth noting that Microsoft only exists in its current form through governmental regulation.
That horse left the barn the second they incorporated.
Now they must render unto Caesar.
KFG
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
"Predatory pricing" is traditionally a term that refers to when a merchant tries to sell a product at a price that is vastly less than what the competitors are selling their product for.
In this regard, if one wants to go after so-called predators (and I'm not one of them) then the government should go after Red Hat and Suse and Mandrake, as they sell far more product in a box and at a far less price than Microsoft.
Once you go down the slope of the madness that is government interfence in the economy, all things are possible, mostly bad.
"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!
True free markets exist in textbooks. Not in reality.
Of all the states, I'm least surprised by Cal taking a (?another) shot at the Redmond giant. A number of Californian businesses (some of them quite big... most of them in Silicon Valley) have suffered at MS's hands.
-- james
I dont recall anyone ever saying that government has no place in a free market economy. Without government there would be anarchy, and that seems to be bad for business ;).
Government does many things including provide for enforcement of contracts (legal system), provide pure public goods, ontop of busting up monopolies.
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
Microsoft creates more jobs in one month than you linux fags will do in a life time. Thank god our legal system is rational, microsoft will probably just have to pay a fine.
Why does the opposite of Microsoft have to be Free software? A fair market situation would be if e.g. at least 3 different OSes for PC were sold and would have an equal market share.
The fact that only a free os can compete with Windows proves how ill the software market is. A monoculture is always bad. Even for jobs. If there were real competitors to Microsoft, there would be more people employed. Have you ever questioned how many people lost their job because Microsoft ruined/bought their company?
This is one lame signature, please read the message above instead.
This is a very interesting language issue because so many conservative interests like to use the terms interchangeably in defense of Capitalism while they're really quite distinct and even incompatible.
In fact, free market ideas are dangerous to Capitalism. While the US is a good example of an economy that relies heavily on Capitalism, capitalist economies existed long before the US and are considered to have started in 15th Century Venice. Capitalism, as I'm referring to it, is a system where equity markets such as a stock, bond and commodities exchanges where inverstors use their capital to invest in shares play a central role in the economy. Clearly, such equities markets are very important to the US economy, so it is fair to say the US economy is heavily reliant on Capitalism.
But examples of a free market include ideas like international outsourcing. While globalization is clearly a good thing from a free market perspective, it is not necessarily a good thing for shareholders of American corporations or even for those corporations themselves. Taken to its logical conclusion, outsourcing could quickly gut a capitalist economy. So, what's good for free markets in general is not necessarily good for any particular instances of Capitalism such as the Dow or the NASDAQ.
Let's look at another example of a free market activity that hurts rather than helps Capitalist enterprises --second-hand sales. Again it is easy to see that second-hand sales are clearly free market activities, but if it becomes too popular, it begins to erode sales of new items. So, the general idea of free markets and the rather specific instances of Capitalism are often at odds rather than being interchangeable synonyms.
(MS Product->Who they stole or bought it from)
MS PowerPoint->Forethought Presenter
MS FrontPage->VTI FrontPage
MS Visio->Visio
MS SQL Server->Sybase SQL Server
MS Internet Explorer->Spyglass Mosaic
MS DOS->SCS QDOS
MS Visual Foxpro->Fox S/W FoxPro
MS Windows NT->Digital Equipment Corporation
MS DoubleSpace->STAC
Any other examples of the "Great Innovator"?
http://asia.cnet.com/news/software/0,39037051,3918 9680,00.htm Microsoft creates a special cut down version of Xp for developing countries, then sells it for $36 USD making it the cheapest windows version available. While selling copies here with a few more features for $200 to $300 USD kind of ironic.
Sure, /. loves to hate MS. But isn't this at some level an inevitable problem? Network effects make dominance of a particular OS inevitable at some level.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
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!
The Silicon Valley area in Northern California does have a lot of Open Source interest - it's a very dynamic technical culture, and lots of people moved here because of the computer and Internet boom of the late 1990s. (The Internet means that you can do your work from anywhere in the world, so everybody moved to the same city....) Many of the projects people wanted to develop needed some kind of Unix platform, and Linux and BSD and other open-source projects gave them that platform, and open source was a good model for developing many of the tools they needed to develop their real applications.
One particular timing issue is that in the Internet business crash of the last 3-4 years, lots of computer people were unemployed, and they wanted to keep their technical skills strong, have fun, do something that got their name well-known, keep in touch with their friends, and maybe create a new business or new job, so writing open-source software was a popular thing to do. Also, for many people, they learned a lot of interesting technology during the boom, but were too busy with their jobs to have fun experimenting with it, but once they were unemployed, they had time to work on the projects they'd been thinking about.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Some define capitalism as free markets period. Others as a system whereby capital means are primarily owned by non-state entities. And then there's Marx.
Stock markets are just a by product, and don't actually contribute much to raising capital except for IPOs and additional offerings (in which a company sells its own stock, rather than day-to-day trades).
Commodity markets aren't about capital at all, they trade commodities.
Outsourcing in general should be good for the economy - wealth of nations, and all. However, that doesn't take into account the fact that there's no level playing field at the moment (e.g. agricultural subsidies, freedom of movement, etc.). Globalization is catching so much flack at the moment precisely because the "free trade" aspect is being implemented in such a way as to benefit multi-national corporations (and their shareholders), whilst giving the shaft to developing nations and out-sourced tech support people.
Second hand sales don't hurt Capitalism at all! In fact, they promote the efficient allocation of capital means, which is surely a good thing. After all, that's what the "Invisible Hand" is supposed to do!
You seem to have fallen for the the stock market myth of the need for ever-growing profits, an ever growing economy etc. There's really no need for all of that. Many small companies simply make a stable profit each year and don't feel the need to expand. In fact, a large chunk of the economy is chugging along happily, neither experiencing explosive growth or busts. That's because an ever-expanding economy is either unsustainable (both from an economic, as from an ecological perspective - yeah, I said ecological, very un-Capitalistic, but hey, oil will peak) or, more simply, a myth (i.e. you make more money, but you spend more too, and in the end you don't get any additional tangible thing in return.. That doesn't just include inflation, but cost-of-living/doing-business as well - lawyers will always have a rising income because there are always additional laws being made, rather than less - but they don't add value to your products.)
I liked the "second hand sales hurt Capitalism" bit though. Very RIAA-esque. If we don't expand copyright to stamp out second hand and public domain sales, then the world will come to an end because anything that's free has no value. Indeed, freedom has no value! Only (monopoly-)"rights" do.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
And it's not just Microsoft doing it.
How about a class action lawsuit on those grounds? I've never heard of one on EULAs, and most need to be taken down a notch or two.
When I buy software, it's MINE and I'll do what I please with it, including reselling it for a profit, if I want to.
And yeah, copying and selling is clearly wrong - I'm not talking about that.
If I had a real
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.