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Appeals Court OKs Microsoft Antitrust Settlement 227

Posted by timothy from the sure-fellas-that-looks-fine dept.
mbstone writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has upheld [pdf] the settlement reached between Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department in the antitrust case filed in 1998, beating back a challenge by Massachusetts, the only state that didn't settle. Many critics, of course, believe that Attorney General John Ashcroft took a dive on the case which was originally filed by former Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno."
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Appeals Court OKs Microsoft Antitrust Settlement More

Appeals Court OKs Microsoft Antitrust Settlement

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  • articles (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rd4tech ( 711615 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:36PM (#9582842)
    From the articles:

    Court:This is a resounding victory for the Justice Department and American consumers. The Court addressed the merits of every argument raised against the Department's remedy by two industry groups and the sole remaining state plaintiff (Massachusetts), and it clearly and thoroughly rejected all of them. The Court's forceful decision confirms what the Department has been saying all along - our settlement protects the public by providing a full and effective remedy for Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct.

    MS: "We remain 100 percent committed to fulfilling our obligations under the settlement and earning the trust of our customers and the industry," Smith said. "We are excited about the potential our industry has to bring new innovation into people's lives and help them realize their full potential."

    My comments: In order to see what a real inovation is, one has to compare firefox's mouse gestures to Ie's SP2. I mean, who gives a damn about mouse whatnot, we don't want viruses, right?
    But I actually don't care since I switched to Gentoo..

    • Re:articles (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
      My comments: In order to see what a real inovation is, one has to compare firefox's mouse gestures to Ie's SP2. I mean, who gives a damn about mouse whatnot, we don't want viruses, right?

      Not meaning to stray offtopic, but have you bought or sold on eBay lately? If you did business on there, like I had, you were probably instantly frustrated and angered beyond mere contempt for the way they just threw out a whole pile of changes about a month back. Customers were furious at the way it was simply thrown o

    • Holy crap! blackmonday [slashdot.org] just might be onto something...
    • Yes, mouse gestures are a Firefox innovation... except Opera [opera.com] has had mouse gestures since 2002 [archive.org]. That's real good innovation there!
  • Now we can concentrate on SCO losing in court and Linux winning in the hearts and minds of the consumers.

  • I wonder what'll happen in the EU (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bollow (a) NoLockIn ( 785367 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:38PM (#9582870) Homepage
    I wonder what'll happen in the EU anti-trust sanctions. If they manage to get off the hook there, it'll be hard to convinve me that they didn't buy the European politicians.

  • Microsoft loses a drop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:39PM (#9582878)
    A drop in the bucket here. Overseas sales, sales here, and a lack of change in their business structure means that this settlement accomplished nothing.

    The only hope now is that the negative publicity will affect sales somehow. Stupid Ashcroft.

  • More Political Discussion (Score:4, Interesting)

    by artlu ( 265391 ) <artlu@art[ ]net ['lu.' in gap]> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:43PM (#9582934) Homepage Journal
    The anti-trust case seemed to disappear from the media very quickly once the Bush administration came in. I think Microsoft is going to get less support now because of the EU anti-trust lawsuits as well. It will be interesting to see if there is a different decision reached between the states and the EU.

    GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com] - A Free and Interactive Investment Community

  • bankrupt the state (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chris_mahan ( 256577 ) <chris.mahan@gmail.com> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:43PM (#9582938) Homepage
    I suppose after 6 years the state decided it had sunk enough money into this morass and tried to cut its losses.

    • Wrong (Score:5, Informative)

      by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:50PM (#9583008) Homepage Journal
      Nice try, but true.

      From a news article [theregister.co.uk]: "Massachusetts was the only state to hold out against the DoJ settlement. And it is still talking a good fight. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, the judgment shows that antitrust laws are not working. 'Our high-tech economy will not reach its full potential unless regulators and the courts are willing to deal with Microsoft and its predatory practices,' he said, Reuters reports."
      • Er, that was supposed to be "Nice try, but not true." D'oh! :)
      • So then why did the state settle? It's all about money. Everything is always about money.
        Stallman founded FSF because he couldn't get a printer driver, because of a license issue. The license issue was because of money.

        You know what they say: Follow the money.

        Why are people switching to OS? The Money.
        Why is M$ bitching? Again, the Money.

        What's wrong with monopolies? Money.
        Money Money Money!!!
        It's all about money.

        There's a jingle in there somewhere.

        • Re:Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I take it you have none?

          Its only about money until you have a buttload, then its about power.
        • So then why did the state settle?

          the state DIDN'T settle--they lost on appeal.

          • All states but Mass DID settle eventually. While some settled later than others, they all decided to settle. Mostly because of the costs that they incurred, and MS made some cash available as part of the settlement (settle with us and we will cover your legal fees, keep going, and we will fight you tooth and nail). Of course the political pressure they put inside the states had some effect as well.

    • Re:bankrupt the state (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wrp103 ( 583277 ) <Bill@BillPringle.com> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:00PM (#9583130) Homepage

      Unfortunately, the courts will probably never be a good place to rein in a monolopy. By the time it works it way through the entire legal process, none of the real competitors are still alive to benefit from any decision.

      Within the last year, the Dr. Dos suit got settled. Who benefitted from that? And it is unlikely that Netscape (which exists in name, but not much else) would have gotten much out of this suit if things had gone differently. And as much as I love FireFox, the biggest thing it has going for it is the fact that IE development has stagnated for some time.

      When it comes to technology, things change so fast that any delay in settling any issues means that whatever decision is finally made, it will probably be pretty much meaningless. Inertia is a powerful force, and most people don't bother to download updates to their OS, let alone download and install alternative replacements for something that already came on their box.

      • As long as it is more profitable to simply ignore (or appeal to death) the antitrust punishments and to continue their monopolistic behavior, the fines and whatnot are simply a cost of doing business. I would do the same thing if I were them.

        The billions of dollars that pour in annually from their various monopolies make even the most obscene fines look like a joke (and even the 500 million euro fine from the EU seems to be locked in appeals hell, so they're not really even getting hurt by that.)

        -fren

  • Law is like sasage (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fish_in_the_c ( 577259 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:44PM (#9582950)
    My uncle. A local politician is fond of the saying. "Law is like sausage, anyone who likes either should never watch them being made". Whoever says justice has nothing to do with politics, or claims law and its use is not always someone enforcing their morality on someone else, needs to take a look at this case.

    • Local politician? (Score:2, Informative)

      by arfuni ( 775132 )
      Your local politician must be a fan of Otto von Bismarck, who coined that phrase when he said "people who enjoy eating sausage and obey the law should not watch either being made."

  • Didn't this happen yesterday? (Score:4, Funny)

    by underpar ( 792569 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:46PM (#9582968) Homepage
    It's not really news anymore. It's not much of a surprise, anyway. I'm nore interested in the EU case. Oh.. this isn't anti-microsoft enough..

    Microsoft is like.. the man.. and I am like.. the person being oppressed by said man. Yo.

  • Of course Ashcroft went soft (Score:4, Informative)

    by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:47PM (#9582978)
    Of course Ashcroft went limp on Microsoft. After all the money that they funneled to the republican party, how could he do anything other than bend over and grab his ankles for his new corporate masters?

    From here [commondreams.org]:

    During the last election campaign, Microsoft employees gave more than $50, 000 to the Bush campaign, while the company and its workers gave $500,000 in unlimited, soft money donations to the Republican National Committee for use in Bush's battle against Democrat Al Gore. Gore did not receive any money from Microsoft, according to election commission records.

    According to data supplied by the Center for Responsive Politics, Microsoft employees also donated $22,500 to Bush's recount effort, and a Microsoft executive gave $100,000 to the Bush-Cheney Inauguration Committee.

    Of course, nobody should be surprised by this anymore.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:56PM (#9583075)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Of course Ashcroft went soft (Score:5, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:00PM (#9583127) Homepage Journal
        Wait a second, Bush was given money, and then he told the DOJ to seek a settlement as soon as possible, and you're saying this is evidence of a lack of collusion? I think it's time for you to reexamine your logic.
        • "Wait a second, Bush was given money, and then he told the DOJ to seek a settlement as soon as possible, and you're saying this is evidence of a lack of collusion? I think it's time for you to reexamine your logic."

          To be fair, this sort of logic is used all the time against Microsoft. Microsoft is so large with so many people working for it with so much money going in every which way that this sort of logic can be used to prove Microsoft is behind every evil thing that happens in this world.

          For example

        • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:35PM (#9584224)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • You're making the assumption that settling the case was something that Bush just thought should happen. I find this highly unlikely. He is not entirely stupid, after all - or at least, not entirely unclever.

            While assumptions are never entirely safe, I think it's reasonable to assume that there is more going on here than we are looking at.

            I think it's time for you to get a clue about Dubya, and perhaps another one about Microsoft.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • The fact that it was months before MS made any donations does not have any bearing on whether there was any collusion. Timing is important, and you're not the only one to understand that.

                The question isn't whether you're paranoid, the question is whether you're paranoid enough. Of course, I might be too paranoid, but I'm not saying there was, I'm just saying that you can't say there wasn't with the available information.

          • The only reason this case is any more "high level" than any other is because the defendant is one of the wealthiest companies in the world. Are you saying that whether they broke the law or not is less important than who they paid money to? In court, I think the prosecution proved its case pretty well. They caught several MS employees in lies and uncovered quite a few very incriminating emails. That combined with testimony from several witnesses pretty much sealed the case. I think that Microsoft was v

    • Re:Of course Ashcroft went soft (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      and how much did MS give to teh democrats?

      "While Microsoft donations favored Republicans (who got 72 percent of the money from 1995 to 1998), its employees were more inclined to support the Democrats. Democratic PACs received $222,100 from the company's employees, compared to the $42,875 for Republican PACs."

      you forgot to mention that. nice slant.
      • http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/contriball .asp

        Microsoft appearing among the top 20 donors for a given candidate:

        GEORGE W. BUSH (R).... $171,650
        JOHN KERRY (D) ......... 75,465
        HOWARD DEAN (D) ........ 52,122
        DENNIS KUCINICH (D) ..... 3,250
        Last updated: 6/30/2004 6:58:00 AM
    • Now I don't know where the San Francisco Chronicle gets their data, but opensecrets.org (the defacto source for Slashbots) paints [opensecrets.org] a very different picture of contributions... They still gave more to Republicans, but not significantly more... Heck, excluding the whole anti-trust thing, tax cuts are business friendly. That's enough to earn Bush support, really.

      Besides, the person who really lost the antitrust case was Judge Jackson. If he hadn't gone on about Microsoft being a bunch of evil bullies his breakup order would've stood. However, when an appeals court sees a lower Judge out spouting off belligerence in public interviews while a case HE is working on is winding through the legal system, they tend to act in favor of the person being punished.
      • I heard a great bit on NPR last week about campaign contributions that really got me thinking. The gist of it was that ALL contributions should be anonymous. That way, companies can still contribute to the candidate that they think would do the best job, but they don't have the ability to hold it over the head of the candidate/party that they contributed to. It may not be a silver bullet, but I think it would go a long way towards fixing the current "pay for influence" scenario. Of course, my preferred
      • Leave it to a bunch of computer geeks to exploit an overflow error in the legal system: when you've got nothing left to lose, you can try to piss off the judge with forged evidence, then use the judge's indignation as an excuse to throw out the verdict. It's as if once your guiltiness value exceeds 2^15, the courts wrap it around into the negative numbers again!

    • Please!! (Score:3, Informative)

      by tabdelgawad ( 590061 )
      From the same article in the parent post:

      "Overall, Microsoft and its employees were the country's fifth-largest political donor in the 2000 election -- contributing $4.7 million to politicians and their committees. Republicans received about 53 percent of that money."

      and

      '"Companies that are really toeing the 50-50 party split on donations are basically pragmatic," said Sheila Krumholz, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors political contributions. "They

    • Of course, nobody should be surprised by this anymore

      Actually, everyone should be surprised by this.

      Not that they gave money to Republicans, but that they didn't give money to the Democrats.

      The wise corporations cover both bases, so that no matter which party is in power they can still get on the horn and obtain access to legislators like the common voter cannot.

    • After all the money that they funneled to the republican party, how could he do anything other than bend over and grab his ankles for his new corporate masters?

      $50,000 doesn't buy you a single full page newspaper add in the major media markets: Advertising>Business>Cause & Appeal/Political [nytadvertising.com].

      You need about $800,000 a week to blanket a state like Illinois with TV adds: Media Costs [dailykos.com].

      The Bush campaign committees raised $193 million for the 2000 campaign: 2000 Presidential Race: Total Raised and Sp [opensecrets.org]

      • Sure, why not. Lets get real. Bush accepted over half a million dollars from a company that the government was engaged in legal proceedings against (that's no small sum, no matter what your percentages say). He gets elected, and they get let off with a slap on the wrist.

        He gets about that much from Ken Lay (remember Enron?). Mr. Lay then gets a seat on Cheney's super-secret energy commission, which puts into play the policies that allow Enron to screw consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars an

  • The cold hard truth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by arieswind ( 789699 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:49PM (#9583005) Homepage
    The truth of the matter is, even a couple hundred million dollars of fines is not that much of a hit to Microsoft, and it isnt exactly a secret that Microsoft holds a near monopoly, so, the whole lawsuit is a nonissue in the end

    • Re:The cold hard truth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mgpeter ( 132079 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:05PM (#9583182) Homepage
      It's not the fines that are a hit to Microsoft. It is the restrictions (which there aren't many). But what totally blows is that the length went from 10 years in the drafts to 5 years in the final judgement.

      What this basically means is that Microsoft squeaked Windows XP out before the restrictions went into effect, giving them an OS they can market until the restrictions are lifted in November of 2007.

      So, if you pay attention, the release date for Windows Longhorn will be November 13, 2007 - the day after the restrictions are lifted.
    • The truth of the matter is, even a couple hundred million dollars of fines is not that much of a hit to Microsoft...

      Quite true, but when's the last time a hardline republican governemnt busted up such a successful company? Was it AT&T? The ideal solution would have been to split the company into at least 2 bodies. Politiks in the last few years have demonstrated that governemnt sees the Sherman anti-trust act as more of a slot machine than something to protect consumers.

  • The government fell short in the long run (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gary Destruction ( 683101 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:10PM (#9583237) Journal
    The government is notorious for being both sloppy with its networks and being computer illiterate. The prosecutor in the anti-trust case didn't even have an email address as of late 2000.
    There was an article by Scott Hacker called He who controls the boot loader [birdhouse.org]. It mentions how the DOJ missed the real issue entirely.
    It wasn't web integration that did the damage. It was Microsoft classifying its boot loader as a trade secret that toppled competition.

  • Now that the lawsuit is done with (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nwbvt ( 768631 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:13PM (#9583266)
    Maybe we can concentrate on developing and using better alternative operating systems instead of having the courts make all our decisions for us.

  • Paging Michael Moore... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:14PM (#9583279)
    I'd love to see a nice documentary on the Microsoft case and how the Bush administration rolled over and let Bill have his way.

    Maybe he could call it "Justice 1.0," or something.
    • Justice XP has a much better ring to it. Calling it 1.0 makes it sound like it's out of beta. Or alpha.

      What a fucked up ruling.

    • If only I had mod points.

      Wait, better.... I think I'll actually e-mail Mr. Moore with your idea.

    • No thank you! I'd rather someone that is able to look at things without making snide comments every 5 minutes do it. Yes, whatever he does would likely be convincing, but this is only because people are sheep, and can't tell a logical argument from their left foot.

      In a situation like this, where there actually is sufficient logical and pertinent information (as opposed to the unassociated and unrelated information he shoves into f/911), you want as honest a presentation as possible. A movie with 30 minutes
    • Justice 1.0

      And we all know that anything that comes in contact with Microsoft is completely non-functional until version 3 arrives.

      -

  • My question is... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by N3koFever ( 777608 )

    ...how is this a victory for consumers when most of them complain that they buy Windows and then need seperate antivirus software, seperate firewall, and seperate software to do everything? Making MS not bundle WMP or IE with their software is just going to make it more difficult for Joe Public consumer and they'll probably just go to Microsoft.com and download all the MS software anyway.

    So does this mean that PC companies like Dell will be able to bundle RealPlayer with their PCs instead of WMP? How does

    • Re:My question is... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kenja ( 541830 )
      "how is this a victory for consumers"

      Its not. In fact the prosecution failed to demonstrate that consumers where hurt by Microsofts actions. Something that is required in many such anti trust cases.

  • The Computer and Communications Industry of America had Robert H. Bork and Kenneth W. Starr. Not a bad couple of lawyers . . . well, at least they've got name recognition.

    The CCIA represents a group of non-Microsoft software companies who were trying to intervene and argue that the settlement was not in the public interest. The Court let them in as a way of wrapping their arguments into its opinion.

    CCIA wanted the court to order MS to incorporate a Java platform into Windows. They also object to the pa

  • Another reason? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:42PM (#9584313) Homepage Journal
    Maybe another reason the DOJ "rolled over" was because Microsoft had already been defanged.

    At the start of the trial the common wisdom was that the Microsoft monopoly prevented competition. It was generally believed that Microsoft would simply purchase, aquire or destroy any who stood in their way, and that they would use every illegal means to do it.

    But the impossible happened. Along came Linux. From some perspectives this was inevitable. Despite Slashdot myths to the contrary, Linux was not written to be a Windows competitor. It didn't have to be Linux, it didn't even have to be Open Source. The evolution of the personal computer created a vacumn for a cheap powerful and customizable operating system, and Linux managed to be there at the right time and place.

    Now come to the end of the trial. Linux had become a household word. It had sucessfully prevented Microsoft's domination of the server market, and even managed to score higher market penetration in certain areas. Microsoft still retained its monopoly on the desktop, but it was slowly but surely being eroded. Beyond Linux, Apple was back from the dead in an time when people said no one could compete with Microsoft.

    In short, the Microsoft threat had been dulled. The primary purpose of the trial was not to punish Microsoft, but to correct a problem in the market. The situation was being corrected by market forces.
    • Puh-lease.

      Microsoft is abusing its monopoly position more now than ever to further entrench their monopoly and exterminate Linux.

      Microsoft simply had to announce to the entire computer industry that the next version of Windows will NOT properly function with their product unless their product is Trusted Computing compliant. CPU makers, motherboard makers, BIOS makers, video card makers, sound card makers, they have ALL been extorted into compliance. Any product that is "incompatible" with Windows has esse
  • Despite losing the case in court, these two leaders (from different political parties) and their staffs deserve credit for fighting the good fight while others settled and cheered from the sidelines. As a state taxpayer I'm aware that Massachusetts has a post-boom budget problem at least on par with most other states, and obviously one state taking on Microsoft in the courts was going to be at a huge disadvantage. But this fight was highly worthwhile because of the detrimental effects of Microsoft's monop

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