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From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com> To: "Attila T. Hun" <attila@hun.org>, cypherpunks <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net> Subject: Re: Making them eat their words... (while they watch!) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 11:56:54 -0800

At 05:15 PM 12/21/1997 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote:

...

there is only one solution to organizations like M$ which are operated without ethics: treat them to the pleasures of not only the antitrust laws but the exquisite delights of RICO.

Nonsense, and I'm surprised to hear this from you.

No, Bill. it's not nonsense... 1) when a true market monopoly exists, society _is_ entitled to intervene. I wrote my Harvard thesis on antitrust and the effect on society of a monopoly, regulated in the public interest as in AT&T v. the industrial monopolies. this may have been 35 years ago, but the principles are even more imperative now with the increasing concentration of real wealth both individually and corporately in the hands of a few. 2) why should you be surprised to hear this from me? sure, I would prefer anarchy per se, but have absolutely no faith that the vast majority would do anything except rape, pillage, and plunder. and, I think I have made my beliefs more than plain over the history trail of cypherpunks. anarchy is nothing more than an isolationist theory; as a political system it does not work --never has, never will. ergo, there is a need for some government in the interest of the people (sheeple, if you prefer). man has not proved his worth on this planet, and whether or not you believe in God is irrelevant. the last several generations have bequeathed a wilting, dying polluted earth to their children and grandchildren. therefore, I am neither your revolutionary anarchist nor your "lost in the clouds" libertarian idealist; I am just a pragmatist who wishes we could govern with an enlightened electorate in the manner of a New Hampshire town meeting; a pragmatist that I believe limited regulation is essential, but a foolish dreamer to hope for an enlightened electorate.

Treat them to the pleasures of the free market - if you don't like them, start a Boycott M$ campaign, and see if people stop buying their lousy software.

no, Bill, there is no alternative in the mass market. A perfect example is Gate$ buying _both_ WebTV and their competitor to make sure he has _all_ the action. another is EnCarta. Gate$ gave it away until the other vendors dropped out of the market; now M$ charges for the encyclopedia. Gate$ is the perfect example of not only a pure monopoly with 90% of the OS market, but also a constructive monopoly who has leveraged the first position to force monopolies in other areas: 95% of word processing, 95% of spreadsheets, and approaching the total domination of the browser market. Secondly, Gate$ is spreading into the control of the means of distribution in cable, networks, etc. and likewise into media content. Gate$ current actions are those of a spoiled four year old child who sees nothing wrong with demanding it all.

The direct democracy of the free market is far more appropriate than government here - it's $1/vote, and if enough people vote against M$ they'll get the hint, and it enough people vote _for_ M$, it's none of your business.

WRONG! when 90% of the voters are dependent on M$, M$ has bought the vote. to the average user, to vote against M$ is to vote against a free v. a not-free browser, etc. WRONG AGAIN: the OEM computer group has no choice either; software is available from virtually every software house for M$ --and only M$. therefore the OEM has no choice of operating system. without the software, any competing OS is useless. M$ has also intimidated and constrained the software houses. Corel is a good case in point with M$ threatening to withhold critical information on Windows 95 if Corel delivered their 32 bit product to OS/2 first. WRONG AGAIN: M$ has required OEMs to load Explorer as part of the "privilege" to be able to load the OS. That is restraint of trade. when they try to exercise total market control through their customers with their own marketing policies. WRONG AGAIN: M$ is forcing Explorer on totally non-related software vendors. Why should the accounting software vendor in MN be required to load Explorer to be able to distribute the OS --and, most additional M$ packages in networking, etc required Explorer for essential DLLs. this is "binding" in FTC unfair practices regulations.

It _is_ funny to see the Feds hiring a big corporate lawyer to run their case; I guess they don't think Federal Prosecutors are good enough. Surely if a low-level prosecutor can't hack it, they should use their boss, and on up the hierarchical chain. If Janet Reno can't do it either, they should replace her with someone who can :-)

GRIN? Bill, I'm surprised you would say this. Reno is not an anti-trust specialist. just how many of them are there in the country as a whole? not many? why? --not much anti-trust action; usually the FTC has been able to block mergers, etc. before they become a menace to society such as M$ has become. this is where the failure of the free market comes in: few companies manage to attain the total monopoly position; _none_ to date have done so with clean hands. frankly, Gate$' hands are dirtier than Cornelius Vanderbilt's hands were in his heyday; and Cornelius Vanderbilt made John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan look like angels. Gate$' literally has not only violated the anti-trust laws and the FTC rules on fair competition, but he has done so deliberately in what can easily be defined as a conspiracy to limit or prevent access to the market --and that can be construed as a RICO offense --and should be. Neither Gate$ nor Ballmer show the slightest interest in backing off what they consider their God given rights in a free market to rape, pillage, and burn; they feel that M$ is entitled to tell the American (or world) buyer what he wants to buy. monopoly eliminates freedom of choice. I do not usually have much use for Jesse Berst, whom I generally consider a senseless and shameless M$ schill, like the rest of Ziff-Davis; however, this is what Jesse had to say Monday: Jesse Berst, 22 Dec. "I'm a fan of its [Microsoft's] accomplishments and its great products. More than that, I'm a fan of personal computing. That's why I can say that it's better for us -- and better for Microsoft -- if the DOJ forces the company to play fair. Only intense competition can keep a company from the hardening of the attitudes that eventually damaged companies such as IBM, Digital, Wang and Data General." to engender that competition, M$ needs to be forced to divest either operating systems or products. despite any imagined gains of their increasing integration, the market can not fall to a monolithic line and then expect further advances with no-one nipping at M$' heels unfortunately, M$ idea of competition has not been to be just the market leader --it has fostered an attitude that it can be the only player. and like all monopolies, M$ has fallen into the Al Sloan mode ("What's good for General Motors is good for the country"). more Jesse Berst, 22 Dec. "That's why I can say with all sincerity, the more you like Microsoft, the more you admire its accomplishments, the more you appreciate its products, the more you should root for the DOJ to win its latest case. Anybody who thinks otherwise should be forced to attend every single match of the World Wide Wrestling Federation next year. That will give them an up-close-and-painful taste of what happens when you do away with competition. Jesse, the Microsoft schill, is now at least as strident as I have been since the late 80s when the uncontrolled direction of Gate$' marketing and operating system leverage over office products became more than evident. the DOJ should have broken M$ into separate companies in 1994. instead, the DOJ made a deal with a "Joe Stalin", who, true to Lenin's manifestos, would sign any treaty which bought him time to develop the prohibited weapons --then he broke it. M$ violated the consent decree before it was certified in court and. in reality, applied even more onerous terms to the hardware OEM vendors; we are reaping the results of Gate$ incredible arrogance today. Gate$ also broke the public trust by arrogantly usurping by whatever means more of the market --his actions today are untenable in a civilized market. any suggestions that if you do not like M$, you should not buy M$ products are hollow inanities --to the public, there is no alternative --economies of scale and market dominance have wiped out all but a few niche market vendors. the sheeple never revolt; they just follow the Judas goat to the abattoir happily enjoying the free software while Gate$ builds his tollGate$ (nice pun --guess I will add that to my lexicon). the sheeple will not be happy when they find themselves being nicked for every transaction, on or off Gate$' networks. --and if Gate$ actions over the past 3 years were not enough, his ridiculous, affrontive, and offensive response to the Judge's order is prima facie evidence of not only a monopoly, not only a constructive monopoly, but a tyrannical, maniacal monster who is still a spoiled four year old brat with absolutely no conscience or sense of social responsibility. the fact Steve Ballmer, et al, echo this dictatorial policy in violation of US law is prima facia evidence of an ongoing criminal enterprise which employs extortion --yes, literally extortion-- in the furtherance of its business plan --and this is a RICO offense for which Gate$ and his henchman certainly appear to have deservedly earned the right to 3 hots and a cot for the 20 years minimum on the lesser RICO charge, or mandatory life imprisonment on a conspiracy of greater than 6. Secondly, none of Gate$ lieutenants and captains can claim they acted under orders; it wont fly any more than it flew at Nuremberg. Esther Dyson (with Margie Wylie of CNET) But it is big government that's watching them, not ... Yes--and that's why we need to keep...I mean, God bless the Justice Department for fighting Microsoft; God bless Microsoft for creating good products, and the customers for keeping everybody in line. This is what I want: I don't want anybody to win. I want the game to keep going. I want little guys to keep on coming up and tweaking the noses of the big guys. I've always been a believer in antitrust. It's the concentration of power that bothers me, not whether it's "for profit" or "for government." And I've never claimed to be or not to be a Libertarian. People put labels on things and stop thinking. a good clear statement from Dyson on the public interest. do you think M$ should be permitted to behave in their autocratic and callous manner towards software developers who have no need for Explorer? Brian Glaeske, a programmer/analyst with Fargo, North Dakota-based Great Plains Software, complained to the US Justice Department last month that Microsoft effectively requires him and others to provide its browser in his accounting software, which has nothing to do with the World Wide Web or the Internet. "Microsoft should not be permitted to force third-party developers to redistribute Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to use [new] features," Glaeske wrote to Joel Klein, the Justice Department's top pursuer of antitrust allegations. is not Glaeske's position reasonable? the real point however, does not relate to the browser; the bottom line is that Glaeske, and most of the software developers, do not have an alternative to Microsoft as an operating system. Oh, sure, some clients will run Unix flavours and there are vendors for most high profile applications on unix and OS/2, but the vast majority (90%) of the clients take the easy way out and go Microsoft --M$ is what the employees have at home; M$ is what the "trained" employees have used before.... there are millions of arguments, after WinTel being cheaper, why they should not change --starting with "why should we be different?" a pure free market is anarchy; anarchy may be a wonderful idea for utopian people; the human race is far from being anything except a selfish, greedy collection of individuals who are constrained either by the threats of fire and brimstone from the church, or the laws of the land which punish transgressions of socially acceptable behaviour --fair or not. even Teddy Roosevelt wrote that anarchists should be hunted down and exterminated like vermin. William H. Gates III is just another robber baron who really believes the statement: "What's good for Microsoft is good for the country." Al Sloan never realized his monopoly with General Motors, although there have been periods where GM was over 50% of the market (when Chrysler was close to failing). Bill Gates has created an effective monopoly _world_ _wide_ which far surpasses any monopoly ever created by one individual or company; even John D. Rockefeller did not come close to Gate$' power. John D. was also rather benevolent. IBM never approached Gate$' level of monopoly. Gate$ has proven, and is proving while the very litigation is going on, that he is not a benevolent monopolist; there is only one way: Bill's way, and everyone will think like Bill, or they will be the vermin to be exterminated. and, that, my friends, is why there is such a thing as the public interest; and it should have been exercised on BadBillyG in 1994. my vote goes to prosecute Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, at the very least, for violations of the Sherman Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Robinson-Patman amendments (FTC, etc.) to the full extent of the law, including criminal violations as warranted under those titles; and prosecute under the RICO statutes for an ongoing racketeering (extortion is racketeering) and criminal enterprise. frankly, I am disappointed that it has come to this, but Gate$ greed and lust for power has not only exceeded his common sense, it has transgressed the boundary of baseline social responsibility. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. 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