Microsoft Verdict Vacated

Everyone and their brother sent in this unsurprising news: the Appeals Court handling the Microsoft anti-trust case has overturned the break-up decision. A few story URLs: CNet, BBC, ABC, AP, Reuters, MSNBC. The decision is available in .pdf format. A brief summary: the Findings of Fact (Microsoft's conduct, etc.) are still in place, but Judge Jackson's evaluation of those facts and the penalty he imposed are thrown out. A new District Judge will examine the case, starting from the Findings of Fact. Update 2h later by J : Dan Gillmor's analysis is good. So is this Washington Post column, which is insightful except it doesn't go far enough. It also shows MS CEO Steve Ballmer's attitude even before today's ruling: "Is there any limit to what you think you can put into the operating system at all?" "...as a matter of law, no, I don't think so..."

See?

This just proves me right: Good old-fashioned business sense and innovation is hardly illegal.

--

Perhaps the judge knew what he was doing.

I remember that Jackson remarked that he was looking forward to seeing his conclusions reviewed by others.

I also remember that Jackson endured a tremendous amount of beligerent behavior from Microsoft, and some outright lies (something about a video of IE being faster than Netscape, but IE was on a 33.6 modem while Netscape got a 28.8 behind the scenes).

I think Jackson realized that he was no longer in a position where it was even possible for him to be objective, so he threw the book at Microsoft, then tainted his own verdict to force a review.

He might actually be rather pleased at the moment that his findings of fact and law are to stand. I hope these documents condemn Microsoft to severe punishment, regardless of the competence of the prosecutors.

This isn't so bad

The longer this thing carries on, the longer M$ is under the microscope and news headlines repeat and affirm that they are in fact an evil monopoly. Every action that they perform will be set in that light and scrutinized before the public. The biggest success of the case has been changing the public's perception of Microsoft.

Re:Antitrust laws

DISCLAIMER: English is not my first language, if you want to correct my grammar or orthography, you are welcome.

And interesting quote, if Henry Rearden is on trial by having a monopoly, you are right, but if Henry Rearden is on trial by abusing monopoly power, it's another history.

IIRC, it's not illegal to have a monopoly, but it's illegal to abuse of monopoly power. Certainly, Microsoft did that. If they have beaten Netscape fairly, by offering a better product, we wouldn't have been discussing this issue, but MS Internet Explorer became a better product than Netscape much, much after they began giving it away for free, cutting one of Netscape's main revenue streams. Without research money and distribution channels, of course that Netscape's browser will fall behind, just like happened.

About EULA's, how would you refuse to use Windows or Office, if your clients, providers, etc. Require you to do so? It's like if you want to build a house, and need steel, you can only buy steel from Henry Rearden, like it or not, or would you live in a tent instead, just because you don't want to give jour money to him?

Anyway, I agree with you that it's a better remedy to educate people to think and evaluate choices, more than just being following the leader.

Microsoft knew how to play the game

The ruling to split up Microsoft was overturned because the Appeals Court decided that Judge Jackson was biased, broke codes of conduct, and "motivated by a desire to punish the company."

I briefly read through the Appeals Court decision, and I found very little in it actually defending Microsoft's market practices.

Microsoft won because they knew how to play the game. This isn't about right or wrong, it's about Lawyer Vs. Lawyer. Microsoft only had to do three things:

1. Drag the court case on as long as they could, and postpone any verdict as long as they could.

2. Never EVER admit to even the slightest wrongdoing. Vehemently protest even the merest suggestion that anything they did was at all improper.

3. Flaunt the judge at every opportunity. Remember Bill Gates not being able to remember business decisions he made, not knowing the meaning of simple words, and trying to say that Netscape wasn't a competitor? Remember the faked videotape?

The first two tactics worked well for a long time. (Note that even Bill Clinton used these tactics to some success.) But it's the third tactic which cinched the win for them: by basically giving Judge Jackson the finger in court, ANY reaction Judge Jackson had as a result could be blamed on him being biased against Microsoft.

This will have a devastating effect on the software industry, since it's been proven that Microsoft has the money and the resources to buy any market they want to own, and the political power to get away with it. Even if you had the Next Big Idea and a million dollars to start with, how could you even hope to compete with Microsoft once they got wind of your idea and copied it?

We're only now seeing Microsoft begin to notice the free software industry. I don't think it will be long before they find a way to 'embrace and extend,' lock customers into Microsoft-only solutions, and make free software become irrelevant. Nobody thought it could happen to Apple, nobody thought it could happen to Netscape, nobody thinks it'll happen to Linux...

Now, perhaps this dystopian vison will come true

Leslie Walker (of The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] ) has written a recent column on A future according to Microsoft [washingtonpost.com].

An excerpt: I tried AOL Time Warner's competing "You've Got Lackeys" a few years ago, but found its virtual agents a bunch of weenies. Not their fault. Microsoft wrote code into Internet Windows that tripped them up when they attempted Web chores. No wonder nine out of 10 professionals today subscribe to Microsoft agents.

By replacing competent attorneys with buffoons

It's well known that the Bush administration replaced the entire team of lead attorneys at the justice department with junior lawyers who had never tried a significant anti-trust case. So, while the Justice Department didn't drop the case at executive request, they did manage to replace all competent staff associated with the original investigation with complete incompetents. That's how one kills an investigation behind the scenes. --M

Re:Of equal importance..

Exactly -- they're still guilty. Its only the penalty of being broken up that was overruled.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)

Re:Antitrust laws

The scene is a courtroom, where Henry Rearden, a steel industrialist, is on trial for the sale of his own metal:

Ah yes, Hank Reardon, the character who gave an exclusive distributorship agreement to his mythical metal to the business partner he slept with. That's ethical. Perhaps a little better than Roark, who blew up a building over a creative difference in the design, but still not quite the lily-white archetype of perfection Rand would like her characters to have been (too bad, really, flawed heros are a little more believable). Speaking as both a skeptic and a capitalist myself, you can do far better than Rand, who based her entire philosophy on empty tautology (A is A) and nothing more than ad hominem against her opponents. I prefer Robert Ingersoll for the atheist arguments, James Randi for the skepticism... still looking for a good capitalist apologist, but economics was never one of my main interests.
--

Double standard

What amazes me is the double standard we seem to have here about what the courts are "allowed" to be biased towards. Judges often gloat about or cite their "tough record" on crime, occasionally singling out their record of sentencing minorities to harsher penalties than caucasians (*cough*Philadelphia*cough*).

Or what about the 2600 DeCSS case? For anyone who has even read a few minutes of any of the preceedings, it is blatantly obvious that the Judge is severely biased against the defendants. Yes, I know that may get 2600 somewhere in the appeals court, but I can't possibly see a unanimous vote to remand a majority of the case to a lower court.

Yes, *gasp* god forbid we actually say bad things about a corporation or businessmen!! Even if they did blatantly lie on the stand and even bring forth false evidence. MS essentially admitted to perjury (sp?) with their false demos. But how dare we say this aloud?

It's a sad, sad, day when libertarian actually whole-heartedly supports the DOJ is a case against a corporation. Bah.

-jdm

Re:Can someone please explain to me...

Trading of a companies stock is always halted directly after a large news story is released about them (this is why most companies release earning reports after the market closes). The reason they halt trading is so that investors are given some time to think about what they're going to do before they go off and buy or sell.

look out, here comes the innovation!

It will be nice to see a whole slew of new consumer-friendly products from Microsoft now - after all, they're entirely free to "innovate" now. I wonder how many other markets they'll get to consume before the government comes to its senses? If Microsoft is allowed to use the capital amassed from its past crimes to stroll into new markets, almost no industry in the U.S. is safe. It's just a question of "Where does Microsoft want to go today?"

This really was Judge Jackson's case to lose, though - I'm as pissed of about Microsoft as anyone, but you'd think a federal judge would have the sense to keep his mouth shut about his personal opinions of the defendant, and follow the legal procedures entirely by the book. This was only the biggest trial of the decade or so. More than anything, this appeal overturns his handling of the trial rather than the facts of the matter or Microsoft's guilt.

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

Summary of the ruling

Summary of the summary: Almost all of the findings of fact, and the most damning conclusions of law, stand. The remedy is thrown out. All of the unresolved issues go to a lower court. Have a nice day.

• The court is not buying the argument that antitrust laws are less relevant in the "new economy". (11-13)
• It upheld the finding that Microsoft is a monopoly -- you may think this is obvious, but Microsoft's lawyers tried very hard to redefine "monopoly" in a way that excluded Microsoft, and the appeals court didn't buy it. (19-25)
• It upheld the findings that Microsoft tried to illegitimately maintain its monopoly through its exclusionary contracts with OEMs. The court said that one of Microsoft's arguments in its defense -- that it is merely exercising its rights as the copyright-holder to Windows -- "borders upon the frivolous". However, the court said that Microsoft did have the right to require OEMs to make their machines display the Windows desktop when first booting up a Windows machine. (25-35)
• Microsoft's removal of IE from the "Add/Remove Progams" utility and its commingling of IE code with non-IE code in the same DLL were anticompetitive. However, Microsoft provided a valid technical justification for causing Windows to use IE instead of the user's preferred browser for certain browsing-related tasks, and since the plaintiffs did not try to rebut those justifications, that aspect of Windows/IE integration was OK. (35-40)
• It was OK for Microsoft to offer the "Internet Explorer Access Kit" to ISPs to induce them to support IE. However, its exclusive deals with ISPs that required them to support only IE were not OK. (40-47)
• Microsoft's exclusive contracts with third-party software developers that tied them to IE were anticompetitive, and Microsoft did not give any justification for the contracts that outweighed their anticompetitive effect. The same is true for its deal with Apple, in which Apple supported IE and Microsoft continued to provide Office for the Mac. (47-51)
• Microsoft's promotion of its incompatible-with-Sun JVM was OK. Its deals with developers requiring them to exclusively promote Microsoft's JVM was not OK. (Are we seeing a pattern here?) Likewise, Microsoft's attempt to deceive developers about how using their Java development tools would create applications that only ran on Windows was not OK. And its threats that led Intel to stop developing its own JVM were not OK. (52-58)
• The district court found that aside from these specific acts, Microsoft's "course of conduct" violated the antitrust laws. The appeals court thought that the district court didn't provide enough evidence to support this claim, and overturned it. (58-59)
• Even though we can't prove that Microsoft's actions were the only things preventing Netscape and Java from becoming serious competitors to Microsoft's monopoly, the appeals court said, we don't need to meet such a standard of proof to impose liability on Microsoft. (59-62)
• For the same anticompetitive behavior, the district court tried to make Microsoft liable for both illegally maintaining a monopoly (on the x86 PC OS market) and illegally trying to obtain a monopoly (on the browser market). However, the district court never proved that one company could monopolize the browser market, because they neither defined the market for browsers nor proved that barriers to entry would allow a monopoly browser to maintain its position. Therefore, the appeals court completely reversed the district court's verdict on this aspect of the judgement. (62-68)
• After a long discussion of "tying" in antitrust law, the appeals court decided that a lower court should analyze the question of whether bundling Windows with IE was illegal, and gave instructions for what the lower court should take into consideration when making its judgement on this issue. (68-90)
• Microsoft had complained on appeal regarding both the speed of the trial and the lack of any evidentiary hearings between the finding of guilt and the determination of Microsoft's penalty. The appeals court said the first complaint was groundless, but the second complaint was valid. Furthermore, the appeals court said, the district court hadn't explained how breaking up Microsoft would actually restore competition to the market. The appeals court provided guidlines for a lower court to use in deciding an appropriate remedy; it didn't flat out say "you can't break up the company", but it pointed out that divestiture is usually not the appropriate remedy for this kind of antitrust violation. (90-106)
• Judge Jackson said things in interviews that made him appear biased against Microsoft. He embargoed these interviews until after his judgement was entered, so that Microsoft's lawyers couldn't have challenged them in court at the time they were made -- but at the time he entered his judgement, he was still talking about a pending legal case. Because of this impropriety, the appeals court disqualified Judge Jackson retroactively to the point where he entered his breakup order, but the court did not throw out his earlier findings of fact or conclusions of law (except where the appeals court specifically found an erroneous finding or incorrect conclusion). Microsoft had wanted to throw out the entire decision and start a new trial from scratch. (106-125)

--

Re:Of equal importance..

Sigh. Some people just didn't read the appellate finding, apparently. From the document:

In sum, for reasons more fully explained below, we affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand in part the District Court's judgment assessing liability. We vacate in full the Final Judgment emobdying the remedial order and remand the case to a different trial judge for further proceedings consistent with this opinion (Page 7, end of Summary)

Specifically, they reversed the DC's judgment that Microsoft violated part 2 of the Sherman Act, or in other words that they didn't illegally attempt to monopolize the internet browser market. They also remanded to the DC the finding that Microsoft violated part 1 of the Sherman Act, or the unlawful tying of the browser to the OS. The only part they did affirm, and this only partially (with the rest reversed, not remanded) was the violation of part 2 of the Sherman Act by using anti-competitive means to maintain it's OS monopoly. To see what exactly they affirm and what they reverse on that, feel free to dig deeper into the decision.

What this means is that the appellate court DID NOT uphold that Microsoft is guilty of defending its monopoly, and in fact actually REVERSED an important decision necessary to the monopolization case. They've also REMANDED the second Sherman violation back to the district court.

Re:Damn George Bush

Damn strait! I will probably get modded down here, but what is it with this guy? Is he completely out of touch? Every morning I pick up the paper there is some other reason for me to become more and more disillusioned with the current president. He:

1) Appoints a lumber lobbyist to head the forest service.

2) Appoints an extractive industry lobbyist to head the department of interior.

3) Is pushing to reinstate nuclear testing.

4) Appoints John Ashcroft as A.G. Someone who spent a good part of his career fighting against desegregation.

5) His nominee for dept of agriculture one said that that farming areas that are not ethnically diverse are more productive.

6) Backed out of the Kyoto treaty giving even more reasons for other countries to hate the US

7) Is Backing out of the nuclear dis-armament treaty.

8) If any of you have ever been to the unspoiled beauty of Alaska, you will realize why it is completely insane to want to drill there.

9) Repealed the public subsidy against logging roads in national forests. Have you flown low over the west lately? Roads everywhere already!

10) Heres one for the Slashdot crowd: he eliminated protections for those with repetitive strain injuries.

11) Whats with the income tax reduction? The only ones its helping are those that are already loaded. And it is going to make it much more difficult for me to get my portfolio up to where I am loaded with the deficit problems that are going to crop up.

I could go on and on here without even mentioning foreign policy screwups, But that's enough venting for now.

Re:Microsoft knew how to play the game

The ruling to split up Microsoft was overturned because the Appeals Court decided that Judge Jackson was biased, broke codes of conduct, and "motivated by a desire to punish the company."

This is untrue. According to the judgement no actual bias was found or even alleged by MS. Smart move by their lawyers, as appearance is much easier to prove.

The District Judge 's conduct destroyed the appearance of impartiality. Microsoft neither alleged nor demonstrated that it rose to the level of actual bias or prejudice.

The judgement also does not state that he was "motivated by a desire to punish" MS. In fact they were in agreement with most of Jackson's findings. The brunt of the problems came in the remedy phase, where the desire to punish should be implied. His major failing was to publically chastize MS before his remedy had been issued. If he would have kept his mouth shut, MS would have had a much harder time winning this appeal.

Cliff's Notes for the court's ruling:

Here's a quick guide to the ruling as I've read it...

• Upheld MS is a monopoly and abused monopoly powers.
• Stated that the IE intergration claim by the DOJ was unfounded
• Upheld that MS aggreements with Internet providers violates the Sherman Act.
• Upheld exclusive dealings with Apple are excusionary and violate the Sherman Act
• Upheld MS threats to Intel regarding Java support were in violation of the Sherman Act
• Reversed conclusion that MS' course of conduct separately violates Sherman Act
• Found that the plaintiffs did not sufficently define a relevant market
• Reversed finding of liability for Attempted Monopolization
• Heeded Microsoft 's warning that the separate-products element of the per se rule may not give newly integrated products a fair shake.
• Found that DOJ's Tying argument cause severe problems for product innovation.
• neither the use of the summary witnesses nor any other aspect of the District Court 's conduct of the trial phase amounted to an abuse of discretion.
• The District Court erred when it resolved the parties 'remedies-phase factual disputes by consulting only the evidence introduced during trial and plaintiffs 'remedies- phase submissions,without considering the evidence Micro- soft sought to introduce.
• Vacated final judgement and ordered a remedies-specific evidentiary hearing.
• Found that the District Court did not have adequate reason for the remedies it imposed.
• Found that Jackson created an appearance of partiality, particularly during the remedy phase.
• There was not proof of bias, only an appearance, so the entire ruling was not overturned.
• Finally the Conclusion: The judgment of the District Court is affirmed in part, reversed in part,and remanded in part.We vacate in full the Final Judgment embodying the remedial order,and remand the case to the District Court for reassignment to a different trial judge for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Umm... It doesn't work that way...

There is this little thing called checks and balances. This was the Judical arm (over which the president has no control) vacating a ruling, because of improper contact between the judge and the media (from what I have read, this is a fairly no-brainer. you have no business as a judge doing media interviews during a trial).

Re:Of equal importance..

Well, that's what it is. If you follow the law and someone else doesn't, they've got the advantage. So you take them to court... They punish them for their law-breaking, AND make them follow the same rules as anyone else.

Everyone loses if this crooked company wins, because nobody will be able to beat them without being crooked, and they'll end up with a monopoly and be ruthless about enforcing it.

Much like a big software company we're all familiar with.

Re:Of equal importance..

Sure there is. Just no flat fee that will affect them.

Let's take the Dr. Dos case as an example. Let's say that they increased their immediate market share by 5% by converting DrDos users. Then, they prevented more from switching by continuing this sort of thing. Figure out from similar markets, how much of their user base they gained only by unfairly eliminating the competition.

So, fine them n% of their earnings from their OS.

Then do the same with Office, etc. See how many people use Office because MS tweaked the OS to hurt competitors. Then see how many people use Office because Microsoft removed OS competitors (and thus the office suites that ran on those other OSes).

Fine Microsoft n% of their office-suit sales.

Etc.

It wouldn't kill them, but a fine based on their ill-gotten gains would be a great punishment. It'd not only hurt them, but it'd be a great incentive for other companies to play fair.

It'd also be a HUGE slap to all the assholes who own MS stock and support them, not because they're right, but simply because it's the best thing for their stock portfolio. I'd *LOVE* to remove immunity, for people who knowingly invest in a company involved in illegal actions.

(Man, just consider the Rambus investors, especially the ones who invested a year ago, when they announced their plans and it was public knowledge how they got their patents... those people deserve a bit of jail time along with the officers of the company, the lawyers advising them, and the employees putting this into effect.)

Re:Of equal importance..

Nope.

I can't point to anything to prove it, but they've done this in many ways. They tweaked Windows 3.x to not run on DR-DOS (Thanks Ethereal for the nitpick).

They broke Lotus Notes in NT4 SP6.

They added delay loops in MS Office for the Mac to prove that Windows was a better OS (See, it runs Office faster).

The deliberate changes to sabotage a competitor are fairly common knowledge. Check google.

Microsoft strategy

Several people have correctly stated that the ruling was vacated versus being overturned. While this is true, it matters little.

Microsoft has always played delaying tactics while they bring other guns into play. For instance, when OS/2v4 shipped with voice recognition software, MS execs went on record as saying that it was just a toy and not ready for the real world (despite others and myself doing a lot of useful work with it). Meanwhile, they are investing boat loads of money into voice recognition software.

Gates has simply taken a page from Kirk's play book. If you can't win under the rules, change the rules.

The ruling has been vacated. How long will it take for another judge to be selected? How long until that judge has reviewed all the documents and issued a ruling? How long before that ruling takes effect? YEARS!! And by the time it's played out, Microsoft won't care because we'll all have been long since forced into paying them to authenticate our Internet accounts through their .NET servers in order to even register to vote.

I can see the seen on that yacht last year like it was yesterday:
Gates: Look, Thomas, I mean, ...uhh, Mr. Jackson, sir. You're retiring in a few years, right? Government service hasn't been all that lucrative for you. I'm not asking for you to throw the case. I'm just asking for you to say a couple things that would cast a shadow on the decision.
Jackson: I will not have you get away scott free, Gates.
Gates:You know we're guilty. We know we're guilty. Hell, everybody knows we're guilty. Your finding of facts were rock solid. There is no way we're going to win this case. All we're asking you to do is make a couple comments so that the Appeals Court will have the case reviewed a little longer. We're trying to get out of the OS business. That should make you happy. We just need a little more time...
Jackson stares at the floor, deep in thought...

Stallman / New terms of punishment for Microsoft

Hopefully now they will give more consideration to implementing some of the measures outlined here ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft-antitrust. html [gnu.org] ) -- more similar to IBM's punishment for unfair practices than to the Bell System's (breakup).

Unfortunately the essential.org article (which was *VERY* good, as good as the Stallman article itself) is no longer there, the staff is working on tracking it down again.

Umm... yes it does work that way...

Checks and balances are all well and good...

Until you realize that the US Government is a litigant in the case. The DOJ is the plaintiff in this case, and the DOJ is part of which branch?

<church lady>
Could it be EXECUTIVE?
</church lady>

Sure, "W" couldn't poke his nose into a case between IBM and Microsoft, but as the plaintiff, the government can decide to forego prosecution any time they want to. If not in fact, then in spirit for certain.

I assume that this won't happen in part because of the consolidation with the 29(?) States' cases, but as they say... I am not a lawyer, so I could be wrong on that count.

Misleading headline

OK, folks, I know you're all just jumping to flame George W. Bush and any other right-wingers you can find, but slow down a second.

What really happened is that the appeals court says that the original judge gave the impression he was biased against Microsoft, due to the nasty remarks he made about the company and the secret press conferences he held. The appeals court then overturned the sentencing portion of the verdict, and remanded the case to a different judge, to craft a new sentence. Nobody's saying Microsoft isn't guilty, they just want a judge who's not biased to sentence MS.

If you remember some of the comments Judge Thomas Jackson made about MS, you'll probably agree he was about as biased against MS as the average Slashdotter. As much as we may think that he was biased "the right way", a judge is supposed to be unbiased, and to allow otherwise is to corrupt the judicial system. This is justice being done (slowly), even if we don't like all the steps along the way.

Besides, who here thinks that just splitting MS in half is the best remedy? Each half will just be as bad as before... I'd much rather see carefully tailored prohibitions against some of the nastier anti-competitive elements of .NET and their new licensing system, and a ban on the embrace-and-extend strategy.

Maybe you think splitting MS is suitable "punishment". But who does it punish? Microsoft itself is a name and some legal documents, and can't feel pain or unhappiness. The executives won't mind, because, with a split, there will be twice as many positions, and all but the most senior execs will probably get promoted. Does Bill Gates care? It would probably hurt his pride a little (about as much as a cream pie in the face), but it's not like he'll end up homeless on the street. Shareholders might get burned. Before you get excited, remember that your grandmother's pension (or yours, or your teachers') may be heavily invested in MS, without their knowledge. Burning MS might also send the tech economy even farther down the toilet. How many more of you want to be unemployed?

Seriously, folks, this is probably just justice being done (very) slowly and carefully, and it's probably for the best, even if it means we don't get the satisfaction of seeing MS split in two.

Somebody is going to mod me down as a troll, because they think that no person in their right mind could be anything but foaming-at-the-mouth anti-MS. Before you do, ask yourself, what contributes more to a debate, a hundred people agreeing with each other, or rational disagreement?

Re:Of equal importance..

Exactly -- they're still guilty. Its only the penalty of being broken up that was overruled.

The problem is that to a corporate entity it dosn't matter if they are tried, it dosn't matter if they are found guilty, it dosn't matter even if a sentence is passed. The only thing which matters is for any sentence to be carried out.
Criminal law is one thing which makes a nonsense of the idea of corporates as "people". A real person would await trial either or in prison or subject to bail, they would have to bring their entirity to court too.
But for a large corporation they can just carry on as usual. A real person couldn't do this, even a moderatly sized business...
So what is the solution; strip corporates of "person status"; halt their operations and freeze their assets as soon as charges are filed; charge Microsoft instead under RICO; etc?

Re:Is Microsoft at all relevant anymore?

Its just illegal to abuse it. So yes, you should care because they matter. The DOJ was real stupid not to go after the OEM deals. But no OEM for some odd reason wanted to testify agaisn't them. Hmm I wonder why.

The whole OEM thing is basically the kind of racket organised crime would love to have.
A legitimate business would say "you can buy our widgets at X amount each, if you buy a lot or buy regularly then the price goes down" (The reason doing that the latter situation means that the suppliers costs are actually less.) It would become a dodgy deal if supplier were to start saying "The price is X if you only buy widgets from us, otherwise the price is Y" or the supplier starts telling you what you can and can't do with them once you bought them. (The MS OEM agreements probably also contain a "if we catch you talking to the cops we cut off the supply" clause.)
The thing with software is that it's not actually a "widget", but suppliers like to sell it as though it is one (the actual cost being very low, especially if it's the OEMs who are printing manuals and pressing CDs.) Whilst at the same time claiming to sell some kind of abstract entity (generally immune to laws governing trade.) You also get things which on analysis are utterly bizare, such as Client Access Licences. Not even the "running a program is copying, therefore copyright applies" kind of logic makes any sense here.

Re:This is a great decision!

Yes, they try to make money. Yes, they try to gain market share. But THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO in a free market!

If you have a company which breaks the law they will always appear to do better then honest businesses. If they are not weeded out PDQ then you cease to have a free market.

Re:hypocrisy

Also:

• We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality.

So do stock market investors not RTFA? MS's stock is up 5%. It doesn't seem like MS is that much better off.
--

Why does everyone think this is bad?

Various analysts - myself included - were not happy about the breakup anyway. It actually seemed to allow MS some extra potential for market stranglehold, and on balance - except for legal costs and stock price fluctuations - they would end up pretty much the same either way.

At least they are just one big monopoly that everyone can watch closely, as opposed to a few smaller monopolies in various markets.

They are doing themselves out of business anyway with the rules surrounding XP - all my corporate clients use Ghost for system backups Enterprise-wide and started getting worried when MS discussed unit-specific licensing, yearly software charges and similar issues, not to mention the appalling uptime you get even from an OS as supposedly solid as W2000. Quite a few of them are already rolling out Star Office, and some are seriously considering Linux as next upgrade (even one client with >4000 desktop users)

I use most major OSes for business reasons, and MS for games. It's just not robust/cost-effective/secure enough for today's world.

Not a troll/flamebait - the facts I get from corporations every day support my viewpoint.


Frog51

feel sorry for Americans

Exactly, my thoughts and if you look at history when justice is not done in the courtroom its done on the streets, so the American courts have now given yet another reason for the Tim McVies and Osma Bin Ladins of the world, America is going the way of Rome before it, as a non American I feel very sorry for all the innocents who will be the victims today and tommorrow, goodbye America...

Re:not really

From the decision (pp 10-11):

What is somewhat problematic,however,is that just over six years have passed since Microsoft engaged in the first conduct plaintiffs allege to be anticompetitive.As the record in this case indicates,six years seems like an eternity in the computer industry.By the time a court can assess liability, firms,products,and the marketplace are likely to have changed dramatically.This,in turn,threatens enormous practical difficulties for courts considering the appropriate measure of relief in equitable enforcement actions,both in crafting injunctive remedies in the first instance and reviewing those remedies in the second.Conduct remedies may be unavailing in such cases,because innovation to a large degree has already rendered the anticompetitive conduct obsolete (although by no means harmless).And broader structural remedies present their own set of problems,including how a court goes about restoring competition to a dramatically changed,and constantly changing,marketplace.That is just one reason why we find the District Court s refusal in the present case to hold an evidentiary hearing on remedies to update and flesh out the available information before serious- ly entertaining the possibility of dramatic structural relief so problematic.

The court seems to be directly expressing concern of the effectiveness of either conduct remedies, or structural remedies in such a rapidly changing market. I wonder if the new judge reviewing the case will look at this, and interpret it as, "Hey, find a solution that really does prevent Microsoft from continuing to be a monopoly."

One can hope!
--

This may be more about the punishment than the...

comment made by Judge jackson. On pages 10+11 of the brief is this paragraph:

What is somewhat problematic,however,is that just over six years have passed since Microsoft engaged in the first conduct plaintiffs allege to be anticompetitive.As the record in this case indicates,six years seems like an eternity in thecomputer industry.By the time a court can assess liability,firms,products,and the marketplace are likely to have changed dramatically.This,in turn,threatens enormous practical difficulties for courts considering the appropriate measure of relief in equitable enforcement actions,both in crafting injunctive remedies in the first instance and reviewing those remedies in the second.Conduct remedies may be unavailing in such cases,because innovation to a large degree has already rendered the anticompetitive conduct obsolete (although by no means harmless).And bro