I'm not familiar with the SEC action you're referring to, but the SEC has nothing to do with antitrust law.
Nor do I accept your premise that antitrust law was used to reward or punish M$ for giving or failing to give campaign contributions to either party.
The Clinton Administration prosecuted M$ because they believed antitrust law promotes and protects competition. The Clinton Administration's prosecution became more, not less, vigorous with time.
The Cheney Administration believes in the "Chicago School" of antitrust which - after you peel away the rhetoric - holds that the purpose of antitrust law is to increase the net wealth of society. (Actually, I believe Cheney, Bush et al. are plutocrats, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here.)
M$ clearly engaged in anticompetitive behavior, but it is not clear that the net wealth of society has been reduced. Consequently, Cheney's people don't believe the M$ did anything wrong, even if the conduct was illegal.
The problem with the remedies you propose is that they are not practical, and courts value practicality. Supervision of MS's practices is exactly the type of expensive (for the gov't) and difficult remedy courts want to avoid. MS would simply treat fines as a cost of doing business and continue with its predatory practices in the future. A break up, on the other hand, is clean and simple. After MS is shattered, there should be no need for future involvement by the gov't or the courts.
Even Bush the lesser believes that such conduct between "baby bills" is a CRIMINAL violation of antitrust laws. Maybe not Bill Gate (see the cover of the Sept. 1998 issue of Brill's Content), but most MS executives would hestitate to violate laws when the stakes are jail time.
Linux will never achieve a significant market share in the corporate desktop market so long as it lacks a version of MS Office. Divorcing MS Office from Windows will almost certainly result in a Linux version of Office. Furthermore, all MS currently has to do to kill Linux is adopt features in IE that won't work with Linux web browsers and servers. If IE is divorced from Windows, the incentive to develop IE in an anti-Linux mode is over. Remember, most computers are bought by corporations and other institutions. The people who make the purchase decisions in those groups don't know anything about technology other than "no one got fired for buying MS even if it is crap."
Re:No use without teachers who understand computer
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Laptops In Education
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· Score: 1
Here's the crux of the problem. The easiest computers to use and support in an education environment are Macintosh computers. But no one is talking about purchasing iBooks because "in the real world everyone uses Windows." And no one is talking about increasing operational budgets to train and support teachers in an all Windows environment. Based on my experiences with the Portage Public Schools, I think these schemes are just ploys generate kick backs to school administrators and school board members.
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I'm not familiar with the SEC action you're referring to, but the SEC has nothing to do with antitrust law.
Nor do I accept your premise that antitrust law was used to reward or punish M$ for giving or failing to give campaign contributions to either party.
The Clinton Administration prosecuted M$ because they believed antitrust law promotes and protects competition. The Clinton Administration's prosecution became more, not less, vigorous with time.
The Cheney Administration believes in the "Chicago School" of antitrust which - after you peel away the rhetoric - holds that the purpose of antitrust law is to increase the net wealth of society. (Actually, I believe Cheney, Bush et al. are plutocrats, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here.)
M$ clearly engaged in anticompetitive behavior, but it is not clear that the net wealth of society has been reduced. Consequently, Cheney's people don't believe the M$ did anything wrong, even if the conduct was illegal.
As M$ would probably point out, group boycotts are illegal under American antitrust law.
The problem is that MS claims it is already exposing all of the APIs, so this will change absolutely nothing.
The problem with the remedies you propose is that they are not practical, and courts value practicality. Supervision of MS's practices is exactly the type of expensive (for the gov't) and difficult remedy courts want to avoid. MS would simply treat fines as a cost of doing business and continue with its predatory practices in the future. A break up, on the other hand, is clean and simple. After MS is shattered, there should be no need for future involvement by the gov't or the courts.
Even Bush the lesser believes that such conduct between "baby bills" is a CRIMINAL violation of antitrust laws. Maybe not Bill Gate (see the cover of the Sept. 1998 issue of Brill's Content), but most MS executives would hestitate to violate laws when the stakes are jail time.
Linux will never achieve a significant market share in the corporate desktop market so long as it lacks a version of MS Office. Divorcing MS Office from Windows will almost certainly result in a Linux version of Office. Furthermore, all MS currently has to do to kill Linux is adopt features in IE that won't work with Linux web browsers and servers. If IE is divorced from Windows, the incentive to develop IE in an anti-Linux mode is over. Remember, most computers are bought by corporations and other institutions. The people who make the purchase decisions in those groups don't know anything about technology other than "no one got fired for buying MS even if it is crap."
Here's the crux of the problem. The easiest computers to use and support in an education environment are Macintosh computers. But no one is talking about purchasing iBooks because "in the real world everyone uses Windows." And no one is talking about increasing operational budgets to train and support teachers in an all Windows environment. Based on my experiences with the Portage Public Schools, I think these schemes are just ploys generate kick backs to school administrators and school board members.