CDR: Is Judge Jackson backing away from Microsoft breakup?
http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/04/1714217&mode=nested Is Judge Jackson Backing Away from MS Breakup? posted by cicero on Wednesday October 04, @12:07PM from the so-much-for-a-quick-and-dirty-breakup-eh? dept. Erick Gustafson writes in about a Valley News article on the Microsoft antitrust case: "Evidently Jackson is on a speaking tour to distance himself from the breakup remedy. Jackson seems to be deliberately lessening pressure for the appellate court to uphold his decision. What do you think?" Gustafson works for Citizens for a Sound Economy, a free-market group that opposes the lawsuit. He may have a point: Judge Jackson recently said similar things at another conference last week. The Valley News (a New Hampshire paper) article isn't online, so we'll include an excerpt below. The Valley News article excerpts: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/04/1714217&mode=nested Judge Jackson's comments from last week: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/09/30/0150210
----- 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
At 5:39 PM -0700 10/4/00, jim bell wrote:
----- 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.
And to increase campaign contributions from high tech companies, including MS, to algore. This also didn't work. A handful of simp-wimp feminista techies contributed to the Dems. Oh, and Microsoft's market rivals...state capitalism at its best. But the tech heavyweights are only contributing token amounts to the Dems. Why should Cisco and Intel donate money to the inventor of the Internet? Now the Dems are seeing that a "breakup of Microsoft" will, if it goes through, be remembered as the act which destroyed a U.S. company for being too successful and handed the market to others. So now the Dems are back-pedalling. Janet Reno and algore will soon be reprising their Wen Ho Lee words: "We are very troubled by what our subordinates were doing. We shall begin an investigation. Pay no attention to your earlier comments. Those statements are no longer operative." --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
participants (3)
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Declan McCullagh -
jim bell -
Tim May