Missed Opportunities in U.S. v. Microsoft

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Missed Opportunities in U.S. v. Microsoft

Posted by Hemos on Thursday September 30, 2004 @08:06AM from the looking-more-closely dept.

cyberlaw writes "The Supreme Court's deadline for filing a final appeal in the landmark U.S. v. Microsoft antitrust case expired yesterday with little notice. But it's a day Andrew Chin has been anticipating for six years. Today Chin, a former legal extern who assisted Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson during the drafting of the November 1999 Findings of Fact in that case, makes his first public comments on the merits of that case, in keeping with the D.C. Circuit's admonition that officers of the court should not comment on impending cases. He has written an op-ed article in today's Raleigh News and Observer.

Chin is currently an associate professor teaching antitrust and intellectual property law at the University of North Carolina. According to his faculty biography, Chin also earned a doctorate in computer science in 1991 as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford. After a few years of teaching math and CS, he picked up a J.D. at Yale Law School, and eventually ended up working behind the scenes on the Microsoft case.

Chin's article raises some new points about the Microsoft case that don't seem to have been considered by any of the parties, courts or commentators during the trial, such as the fact that the Windows and Internet Explorer software products actually consist of legal rights and technological capabilities, not lines of code. A longer piece by Chin is being published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology."

11 of 424 comments (clear)

Quick! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-30 08:11 · Score: 0, Funny

Quick, find a spelling error to make fun of!
Who would buy it? by zymurgy_cat · 2004-09-30 08:18 · Score: 4, Funny

From TFA:
If it did, you would own the Windows code on your computer and could sell copies of that code with impunity.

Yeah, but who would want to buy it?......

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-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
1. Re:Who would buy it? by YetAnotherDave · 2004-09-30 10:27 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I think comp sci schools would clamour for such a good example of 'how old code can get horrible and messy' for new students.
Re:Yet... by NanoGator · 2004-09-30 08:18 · Score: 3, Funny

"..another reason to remove the Bush administration from office:"

Yet another reason for me to ignore people who start a sentence with 'yet another reason'.

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"Derp de derp."
Re:No axe to grind in this article at all by AndroidCat · 2004-09-30 08:22 · Score: 5, Funny

This guy mentioned Explorer security flaws 5 times on that page alone.
That's because Internet Explorer has a lot of security flaws.

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One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Introductions by MooseByte · 2004-09-30 08:27 · Score: 2, Funny

"Yet another reason for me to ignore people who start a sentence with 'yet another reason'."
Irony, meet NanoGator. NanoGator, meet irony. I'll leave you two alone to get acquainted now.
Re:It quietly expired... by QuantumLinux · 2004-09-30 08:31 · Score: 3, Funny

Actually U.S. Consitution is pubic domain but RIAA has plans to copyright it and sue Congress for not providing royalities for it's use.
Re:Not a rumor by gnuLNX · 2004-09-30 08:51 · Score: 1, Funny

LOL yeah right. If you were a big enough linux person for microsft to sue don't you think you would at least have a slashdot name?

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what?
Re:security vs economics by upsidedown_duck · 2004-09-30 08:59 · Score: 2, Funny

In contrast, windows is significantly more expensive...

Yes, $149 is way too much for a K car, even when new.

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-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Re:I wonder.... by mfago · 2004-09-30 09:21 · Score: 2, Funny

> In less than 10 years they went from a political
> non-entity to a political-powerhouse.

Amazing what $50 billion can do, isn't it? Democracy at work...
Re:Yet... by Clockwork+Apple · 2004-09-30 09:40 · Score: 3, Funny

I think this was a jab at touchscreen voting. Meaning you may vote for whoever, but it will count for Bush.

C.

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"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."