I understand the argument, but aren't we focusing on an ancillary point?
Let's unbundle the issues:
- "Microsoft is being punished for competing, and that's the American way". Agree with the second part of the proposition. Disagree with the first part. More important, both the much-reviled Thomas Penfield Jackson and the Circuit Court disagreed with it, too. Its been a basic tenet of anti-trust law for almost 100 years that certain practices are illegal, even if they are motivated by an otherwise-laudable desire to establish primacy in the market. The issue in MS 1 was whether MS had forced unwanted/unnecessary applications on consumers - essentially like a tying agreement where you can't buy Product A unless you buy Product B. The US disproved the MS defense - that these applications and the OS were mutually interdependent and couldn't be unbundled. MS was 'punished', if that's the word, for dirty dealing and then lying about it. That's what the incriminating emails were all about.
And that's what the State AGs are pushing in MS 2 - the same approach of piggybacking other unrelated applications on top of Windows, and justifying it by claiming they're joined at the head, like Siamese Twins.
"MS chills competition by denying service, support and data to other companies with competing programs." Maybe - I just don't know enough about what actually happens inside companies like MS to say anything intelligent. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between JimH and iclontz. If you're not a blood brother, or an important customer, you'll cool your heels for a while.
Is that nice? No, but there are lots of things that happen in the real world that are un-nicer. Doesn't shock my conscience, absent clear and convincing evidence that it is established corporate policy to deny access to specific customers based on a desire to drive them from the market. And even that - 'refusal to deal' - isn't necessarily the basis for a legal action, though it might be cumulative evidence that MS committed some other foul deeds.
"MS apps are generally pretty so-so, and that's proof that MS isn't using data access as an offensive weapon, because if it knew how to de-bug programs, it would do a better job itself." Hope I quoted that accurately.
Give it some reverse English. If as suggested MS isn't terribly creative, and can't match products being put out by entrepreneurial program developers, maybe the refusal/inability to provide support establishes an attempt to level the playing field by refusin assistance to programs that are inherently superior. So, where does this take us? Refusing to deal by itself isn't nice (see above) but it isn't illegal either. However, if it is part of a concerted effort to create unavoidable obstacles for competitors, say by programming in material that impedes the operation of Brand X but not the MS equivalent, that may be another story. Don't know if anyone has claimed that, so this is mere speculation. I mention it only to underscore that certain behavior in and of itself may not be illegal absent special circumstances, but under those other circumstances may well be.
I don't see the anti-trust proceedings as an attack on the free enterprise system, and I'm a believer in the great value of American enterprise. Remember, anti-trust theory wasn't formulated by Lyndon Johnson or JFK; its not reflective of any particular set of political values. Teddy Roosevelt was profoundly committed to the free enterprise system, and yet he was a first mover in the anti-trust area, precisely because he saw that certain practices stifled creativity. This has continued down through administrations as different as Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. People aren't supposed to be punished for being over-competitive; they're punished for turning competition into a one-sided knife-fight in a dark alley, and unfairly impeding the ability of other entrepreneurs to enrich the market for consumers.
With all of that, I do share the concern that the remedy may be destructive, particularly as applied by non-experts to an industry that moves on very unusal principles. We'll have to watch that closely.
HTH
Author
Topic: Smoking gun? (Read 2357 times)