----- Original Message ----- From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: Is Judge Jackson backing away from Microsoft breakup?
Judge Jackson's comments from last week: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/09/30/0150210
Quote from article above: --- Trying to undo his reputation as a ferocious supporter of high-tech regulation, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson on Thursday revealed the real reason for his ruling against Microsoft. It didn't have anything to do with Microsoft's market share or Jackson's apparent disdain for Bill Gates. The reason, according to Jackson, was "Microsoft's intransigence." Huh -- Microsoft gets slammed in the stomach by the long arm of the law for being stubborn? Since when were judges supposed to take things personally? At least Jackson admitted that his decision may be far from reasonable. "Virtually everything I did may be vulnerable on appeal," he told a conference. Thank goodness for checks and balances. ================================= This case stank to high heaven: The "fast-tracking" it was put on made that obvious. IBM's '69 case took 13+ years before it was killed. Interestingly, the subsequent 10 years proved that far from being an unassailable monopoly, IBM's hold on the market was fleeting. I think we'll discover that the only purpose of the MS case was to twist a few arms in order to get government leverage on the computer market. Didn't work. Jim Bell