Legal Archive

"Microsoft's gamble to break the law to fend off competition paid huge dividends. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's decision Friday permits Microsoft to repeat illegal acts and lets it retain all of the fruits of its illegal behavior. The way is now paved for a Microsoft-owned Internet." Read the rest at USAToday.

"In short words, the company broke the law--and got away with it. It's been a while, I know, since the Court of Appeals upheld the original trial's Findings of Fact, sending only the question of appropriate remedy back to the lower court for reconsideration. But as I noted at the time, one of the crucial questions was whether Microsoft could freely stifle potential competing technologies without abusing its monopoly powers. The company claimed that the very novelty of alternative platforms, such as the Java-enabled browser, kept them from being part of the market in which Microsoft's monopoly exists." Read the editorial at eWeek.

Plaintiffs in private antitrust lawsuits including Sun, Netscape and Be win a point as they are told they may be able to use findings from the government's earlier case.

The court decided yesterday, at a trial where an internet cafe's owner was charged of letting his customers play Counter Strike, that the law that prohibited playing games is unconstitutional. This paves the way for the law to be struck down. There's some additional information at ZDNet UK.

Slashdot runs an (unconfirmed so far though) story regarding Dell and other PC sellers, literally taking orders from Microsoft, that effectively from Aug, 26, are not allowed to sell PCs without an OS pre-installed. The rule does not specifically speak about not installing alternative OSes, but about having an OS always installed in the sold hardware. We should not forget the related Be, Inc.'s suit against Microsoft for the destruction of Be's business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. Our Take: IF true, Microsoft is gone too far and they should answer for it or recall this rule to the hardware vendors immediately. I like some of Microsoft's technology, but their business practices continue to be as smelly as ever. UPDATE: We contacted MicroTel's Rich Hindman regarding their "no OS" PCs sold through Wal-Mart, and here is what he replied for the OSNews readers:

"Attorneys for the states seeking tough penalties for Microsoft Corp.'s antitrust actions have backed off of a demand for a modular version of the Windows operating system, saying information sharing is more important than dismantling the Redmond, Wash., software maker's flagship product." Read it at eWeek.

A Microsoft Corp. executive urged the company to quietly retaliate against supporters of the rival Linux operating system in an August 2000 memo that nine states still suing the software giant want admitted as evidence. In the meantime, Microsoft executives apparently attempted to steer the direction of a Web services standards body away from rival Sun Microsystems, according to evidence and testimony introduced during the software giant's ongoing antitrust trial. "I can live with this if we have the positioning clearly in our favor. In particular, Sun not being one of the movers/announcers/founding members," Gates is said to have written in an internal email.

"Nine states seeking stiff antitrust sanctions against Microsoft showed the judge on Wednesday a commercial version of the Windows operating system that already has removable features -- similar to one of their key demands. Microsoft has said requiring a version of Windows that can be customized by computer makers and rival software companies would fragment the operating system, cripple Microsoft, harm consumers and hurt the entire computer industry." Read the story at Reuters.

"An attorney for Microsoft argued in court on Monday that Red Hat Inc. had failed to popularize the Linux computer operating system because of its own shortcomings, not because of any interference from Microsoft. Cross-examining Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Michael Tiemann, Microsoft attorney Stephanie Wheeler said Red Hat had spent little money on research and development, and dedicated few of its employees to winning over software developers to write programs for Linux." Read the report at ZDNews.

A former Gateway executive recently testified (NY Times login required) that Microsoft punishes PC clone manufacturers like Gateway for developing rival products. This was i.e. done by reducing discounts Gateway received for the Windows operating system. Gateway at a time was developing a new Amiga computer, but all of the sudden this ambitious project was cancelled, reliable sources (read the comments section of this article I recently wrote for OSNews) have stated Microsoft to be the reason behind this sudden move. My opinion: A good example of how Microsoft stifled technological progress within the computer industry these last 10 years. Hopefully people will start to understand why it has taken the Amiga community this long to get a new Amiga computer onto the market and why PC manufacturers left Amiga technology in the cold when the classic still was clearly superior technology compared to Microsoft's offerings.

"The loser in the browser wars has filed a private antitrust suit against Microsoft. But the company doesn't deserve to win. It isn't fair. Netscape gave us a revolutionary product that has touched the lives of everyone in America, and in exchange we took away its market and made the company a minor subsidiary of AOL Time Warner. But we can't fix things by exchanging the rule of law for a popularity contest. I know that if it were me I'd be mad as hell -- but nevertheless this is one fight that Netscape deserves to lose." First of a two-part series editorial on the legal battle between Netscape and Microsoft. Update: Second part is online: "Microsoft should be punished".

"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the software giant would have to withdraw the Windows operating system from the market if a federal court approves sanctions being sought by nine states in its antitrust case, according to depositions released Monday." Read the rest of the report at News.com. Our Take: A non-development or withdraw of Windows and its support can hurt an immense number of companies, which can have a huge impact to the economy in many countries. I still can't get it. They are fighting Microsoft for the browser case, instead for its dirty business practices. It's comically tragic.

"The US States still pursuing Microsoft have upped the ante by asking the judge to force Microsoft to show them Windows' source code, their reasoning being that they need this to verify whether or not Microsoft is telling the truth when it says that producing a stripped-down and/or IE-free version of Windows isn't technically possible." Read the rest of the article at TheRegister. Our Take: Once again, all these hordes of lawyers are hunting the wrong thing. These days, it is inconceivable to ship an operating system without a file manager or a web browser or even a media player. What the States should be researching and demanding is clues for truly dirty business practices, not for the right (or not) to include your own software in your own OS.

The news break was yesterday, with AOL suing Microsoft over the Netscape-IE issue which resulted in Netscape losing its market share (from ~90% in 1997 down to ~7% today). While this is not surprising news, we wonder why AOL/Netscape is suing today, and not 4 years ago.