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Microsoft Coverage Around the Web |
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For your convenience, LawMeme provides links and quotes from some of the extensive coverage of yesterday's Microsoft decision:
The Washington Post has extensive coverage:
- Judge Accepts Settlement in Microsoft Case
"It's not an appealable decision," said Robert Litan, a Brookings Institution antitrust expert who filed a lengthy brief criticizing the federal settlement. "She's pretty much closed the book. It looks like she gave tremendous deference to the government" and an appeals court would likely grant her that discretion.
- Regulation Vs. Competition: No Winner Yet
"Looking at the outcome of this case, the next Microsoft-or indeed Microsoft itself-will not feel particularly deterred from engaging in illegal anti-competitive behavior in the future," said Steven C. Salop, an economist and antitrust expert at Georgetown University Law Center who helped the Clinton administration prosecute the case.
- Microsoft Ruling a Blow to States' Case
What's more, Microsoft has sweetened the pot several times along the way, by offering to pay the legal bills of states that settle -- and alternatively, mounting pricey lobbying campaigns against attorneys general who have held out.
- Microsoft Pleased; Foes Critical
"After finding violations of antitrust law, the Justice Department imposed a slap-on-the-wrist penalty on Microsoft," [Gene] Kimmelman [director of policy for Consumers Union] said. "This is a signal that the administration's view of antitrust will allow for large, dominant firms to exercise control in the technology sector. This kind of antitrust approach will accelerate more consolidation in the industry. It is quite dangerous for the view that we need a lot of players with a lot of applications hooking up to operating systems and information transmission systems."
- Q&A: Few Big Changes Loom at Microsoft
No, Microsoft is not required to sell its operating system as an individual product. It is still allowed to include, for example, its Internet Explorer Web browser or its audio and video player Windows Media Player with the basic operating system at no additional cost, if it chooses. Critics say this will make it much harder for companies offering alternative browsers or media players, such as Netscape and RealNetworks, to compete with Microsoft.
- Antitrust Trial Hasn't Dethroned the King
Most technology firms haven't had to spend the last five years in court with the federal government. But Microsoft Corp.'s legal odyssey -- a big chapter of which seems to have ended with yesterday's approval of the proposed antitrust settlement by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- doesn't seem to have weighed it down a bit.
The New York Times (reg. req.)
- For Microsoft, Ruling Will Sting but Not Really Hurt
"Microsoft may be a little bit more restrained and a little bit less aggressive because of the antitrust case," said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. "But not much. Microsoft's market power has been unimpeded by the case."
- Judge Backs Terms of U.S. Settlement in Microsoft Case
"We urged the court to look ahead, to expand the doctrine into new business areas," said Bill Lockyer, the California state attorney general who helped lead and finance the states' challenge after the federal settlement. "The court said, `I can't do that, if you want that you need to file a new lawsuit.' That obviously remains an option."
Salon's coverage:
- Settlement talk
The problems are complex, but you shouldn't expect that a firm that operates where there are network effects to be very aggressive in fighting off competitors. And it can actually be doing that to benefit consumers. If you have network effects, consumers benefit from having that network. When a threat occurs, like there was one from Netscape, you should expect the firm to do things like offer zero prices, especially when the marginal cost of reproduction is zero and the net effect can be that, to the effect that you hold the network together, you benefit consumers. - Richard B. McKenzie, professor of economics at the University of California at Irvine
- Money talks, Microsoft walks
Kollar-Kotelly defines her mission, under orders of the appeals court that sent the case back down to her, in the narrowest of terms: How do we stop Microsoft from impeding competition in this particular market ever again? The trouble here is that this market is as dead as the unfortunate parrot in the Monty Python skit, and has been for most of the five years this legal process has taken.
Dan Kegel has a line-by-line comparison of the proposed and accepted settlements Line-by-Line Comparison
WIRED - The MS Decision: Is It Over Yet? "If the parties agree, it's over," said Richard Gilbert, a Berkeley economics professor and former chief economist at the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. "I don’t see much of substance left to appeal."
C|Net News coverage:
- Judge OKs most of Microsoft settlement
Rich Gray, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based attorney who has been watching the trial closely, said the ruling represented a "huge victory for Microsoft and a bad day for antitrust law, consumers and Silicon Valley." "It's a damn near unqualified win for Microsoft," Gray said. "But as an antitrust lawyer, I find it troubling that a company could be found to have illegally maintained a monopoly and walk away with so weak a remedy."
- Rivals come up short in decision
Sun representatives took issue with Friday's ruling. "The weak steps that Microsoft has taken to comply with the requirements already show that the settlement will be ineffective in curbing Microsoft's monopolistic and anti-competitive practices," Sun's Special Counsel Michael Morris said in a statement. "We believe that the non-settling states have ample grounds to appeal this decision, and we hope that they do."
- The Microsoft case: Is it over?
In a conference call with reporters, attorneys general for the nonsettling states wouldn't say what they would do next. But in what may hint at the course of action the states are contemplating, California attorney general Bill Lockyer said, "We're all, on both sides of this fight, fatigued."
- Machiavelli meets Microsoft
When it came to her final word on Microsoft, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly turned to "The Prince," Niccolo Machiavelli's famous Renaissance treatise on power politics, for direction.
- Microsoft's multiple personalities
With nearly $40 billion in the bank, Microsoft has the financial muscle it needs to enter highly competitive arenas such as gaming and to stick with slowly developing markets such as interactive TV and cell phones. Meanwhile, the company's developers are steadily improving the bread-and-butter products: Office and various flavors of the Windows operating system. And its executives continue to dream up and evangelize emerging concepts such as the tablet PC and Web services.
Dan Gillmor - Microsoft: Freedom to Dominate If Friday's decision represents the latest in antitrust law, the consequences are unfortunate for innovation. It means, for all practical purposes, that antitrust law can't have any serious impact in a business that changes rapidly. There's no effective way to deal with lawbreaking by tech-industry predators if you can only look back, not ahead.
Dave Winer - Scripting News
Corantes' Bottom Line - The Real Microsoft Verdict
O'Reilly Network - Microsoft Antitrust Trial Decision: Who Cares Microsoft doesn't force you to buy anything as much as you'd like to believe they do. Yeah, yeah, Word(tm) docs, yeah, yeah, upgrades. You choose to buy this stuff. You alone. Microsoft is not at the box store holding your wallet and leading you to the counter. You do this all by yourself.
The Register - MS settlement rotten with loopholesAnother item of note is CKK's insistence that MS open its Windows communications protocols, to ensure that non-MS servers will work just as smoothly for Windows users as they would if they were running IIS. The loophole here is the emphasis on Windows as the locus of compatibility and interoperability. If it wanted to wiggle, MS could try to say that IE, for example, is not covered under the requirement; whatever tweaks its received to make IIS look good don't have to be revealed because it's not Windows. The company had argued in CKK's courtroom, with numerous internal inconsistencies, essentially that IE is Windows (by way of explaining why a modular OS would be impossible), but whether IE will continue to be Windows when a competitor comes knocking for the necessary technical information is another matter altogether.
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