Microsoft Critic Received $9.75m After Settlement

An anonymous reader writes "Just this month, Microsoft paid almost $20 million to the Computer and Communications Industry Association to make an anti-trust lawsuit go away. FT.com has just revealed that *half* of that payment was pocketed by Ed Black, the president of CCIA and one of MS's fiercest opponents over antitrust issues. His payment was approved by the CCIA board, which includes Sun Microsystems, Yahoo and Oracle. And here's a quote from this article at Groklaw: Could this be why Nokia quit the CCIA right after the settlement was announced, saying matters were not handled "in the proper way"?"

Comments

$20 million? To make an antitrust suit disappear?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Man, talk about a bargain. A lawsuit that could potentially bring Microsoft as we know it (one monolithic overreaching organisation) to an end and all it takes to make it go away is $20 million?

I bet the Microsoft people were popping champagne corks over that one. They would have thought nothing of spending $20 million defending themselves in court, so spending that much to make sure it never got that far was probably the easiest decision in the world.

As to where that $20 million went, well, that's another story. If half did go to Ed Black then it seems to me that he's got a lot of explaining to do.

They're all the same.

[inflex]

Just goes to show, they're all the same, it's a matter of picking out your piece of territory and seeing who can make the most noise. The more I see of capitalism, the more I'm glad that I'm content to work from home earning "enough to get by".

But it all ads up

[SmallFurryCreature]

Being a criminal is not all that much fun. Rarely mentioned is the constant need to pay everyone off. A few million here, a few million there. Now nokia has left. How much are they going to need to keep silent eh?

Worse with each payment the price goes up. If you got a complaint against MS you are hardly going to settle for a handshake are you? They paid in the past so you want your share.

There is a reason IBM didn't just settle with SCO. If they did every lawyer in the world would have send them a complaint.

Sure MS is buying itself temporary peace but this is resulting in two long term effects.

First anybody else who has the slightest case will want their millions.

But second is a far more damaging effect. If you read the FT story it is very clear that the journalist is calling this a clear case of bribery. Now why would you bribe a witness unless the witness has really seen something? I give it a couple more years before most of the real press will have decided that yes MS is a clearly corrupt company. This will cast suspicion on all their dealings.

Surely any good journalist will then start to question every time MS gets a contract or makes a lawsuit go away who has been paid off for how much?

If I were a reporter at the FT looking for a story I would do some investigation into who received what sums of money for the recent NHS deal or the US army deal. The last one is especially good. The US army has said that windows wasn't good enough for their future soldier project but it is good enough for the desktop of soldiers? Wheres the money!

unsettling

[Doc Ruby]

Cases which use our justice system, using up taxes, should not merely be settled without a fee. If they're not going to produce a precedent, they should compensate the government at least a fraction of their costs as part of the settlement price. There's no reason why taxpayers like me should be subsidizing their competition without getting a piece of the action.