No fault antitrust

[Tim May]

On Wednesday, August 8, 2001, at 05:47 PM, georgemw at speakeasy.net wrote:

> I'm not disputing that Microsoft had a monoply BTW.  I think it's
> a perfectly reasonable position that Apple's competition is
> sufficiently meager to say that Microsoft has an effective monoply
> on personal computer operating systems.  I'm just saying that
> refusing to consider it because it gets its cpus from a different
> vendor was completely fucked up reasoning on the part of the judge.

Anyone who doesn't wish to use Microsoft operating systems is perfectly 
free to use the Macintosh OS, as I do, or one of the many flavors or 
Linux, or one of the three flavors of BSD, or to buy a machine running 
Solaris, or AmigaDOS, or whatever.

The fact that most of the sheeple pick Windows is not a criminal act by 
Microsoft.

> I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.  Who can say what
> possible choices you might have in the future,  and when those
> possibilities might be foreclosed?  If AMD died off,  Intel might
> not have quite as strong an incentive as they do now to keep
> coming up with improved chips,  but they'd still have a strong
> incentive,  because much of their sales come from people
> upgrading their systems from an old Intel CPU to a new one.
> (Or buying a whole new Intel CPU system to replace the old one).
> This is even truer in the software industry;  square cut or pear
> shaped,  programs never lose their shape,  programs are a girls
> best friend I mean forever.

I happen to know a _lot_ about Intel, for historical reasons, and I can 
tell you that Intel is in a vastly stronger "monopoly position" than 
Microsoft is. Lots of reasons. I can write a short article explaining 
why if there's sufficient real interest.

Do I argue that Intel should be sanctioned? Far from it. In fact, I 
argue that anyone who tries to interfere in Intel's ability to sell 
products has earned killing.
>
> Oh,  one other thing I just thought of.  I'm not comfortable with
> the idea that trademarks are priviledges that can be revoked.  It
> seems to me that a trademark essentially is a way of attaching
> a reputation for quality to a product,  and that "revoking" the
> trademark and allowing any random bozo to use it is
> essentially defrauding the consumer.


Nonsense.


--Tim May