[TriLUG] A little off topic

[al johson]

To put it in very simple terms: It is possible to do something which would
ordinarily be very legal, in such a manner so that this otherwise innocent
action becomes illegal. Think about hammering a nail vs. hammering someone
on the head and you come pretty close to what Microsoft did to Netscape. It
not just WHAT they did that was important, but WHY the did what you did! You
must have honest motives for any competitive activity to be considered
honest!! For those who are a little slow about all this, Hollywood has made
a movie entitled ANTITRUST which is considered by many to be a very lightly
veiled description of Microsoft and Bill Gates.
It's an entertaining movie which TRILUG members might want to see to get a
view of what Microsoft is all about (when carried to the extreme).
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Vinson <billvinson at nc.rr.com>
To: <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 11:22 AM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] A little off topic


> First off, let me say we should keep this discussion friendly and
> productive :)
>
> On Fri, 07 Sep 2001, rpjday wrote:
>
> > and now that you've finished frothing at the mouth, allow me to
> > enlighten you.  the issue here is not whether the federal government
> > has the right to tell Microsoft how to run its business.  the issue
> > is whether the federal government has the power to tell microsoft
> > to *stop* *breaking* *the* *law*.
> >
> > did i type that slowly enough for you?
> >
> > i am thoroughly tired of people who, apparently without a clue, keep
> > harping on how the government should get off microsoft's case, leave
> > them alone, stop telling them how to run their business, etc, etc.
> > blah blah...
> >
> > the issue here is very simple:  microsoft broke the law.  this is not
> > in dispute -- it's been established beyond any reasonable doubt that
> > microsoft abused their monopoly position using tactics like predatory
> > pricing, exclusionary contracts and so on, to cripple and/or outright
> > destroy their competitors.
> >
> > the issue now before the courts is -- what should the punishment be?
> > that's what you get when you *break* *the* *law*.  is this starting
> > to make any sense?
>
> I don't have any doubt that they have broken the law.  However, Justin
> is correct in stating that the constitution does not give the government
> the right to interfere.  However, various federal and state laws do as
> does the Sherman Antitrust Act.  I don't believe that bundling IE with
> Windows should be illegal.  I believe that bundling does improve the
> product.  What I don't agree with is their
> agreements/licenses/unremovable bundled applications.  They have bundled
> which is fine, but they attempted to make the bundling become a weapon
> that could defeat the competition by not allowing their customers to
> unbundle and include competing products.  I believe this is where we get
> into the monopolistic behavior in this instance.
>
> M$ is definitely predatory, but the bundling of IE in itself was not
> wrong.  I don't belive breaking the company is necessarily warranted,
> nor do I believe it will work in ANY WAY.  There are other remedies and
> it is shown that broken up companies continue to thrive historically,
> whereas remediated companies can find that their power over the
> competition is cut out from under them.
>
> Regards,
> Bill
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