The Legacy of Microsoft's Trial nytimes.com
With emphasis on the recently published work of guess who. Another take from the NYT's digerati, before the book review types get to take a crack at it yet.
In a new book about the relationship between software and law, a leading constitutional scholar argues that as far as technology is concerned, we have been dangerously indulgent, corrupt and irresponsible. Our best option now, he says, is to do no more harm and try to puzzle through the problem before we do any lasting damage to either the free market or the constitution.
Hey, I resemble those remarks. Some of us have been worried about the pending Microsoft world takeover for a while now.
Though this fact was not so terrifying when the software running the global Internet was built on open standards, the situation has become significantly more ominous as the code has become commercialized and thus private and not open to public scrutiny. And despite the freewheeling and libertarian nature of the Internet, Lessig says, when commercial code begins to determine the Internet's architecture, it creates a kind of privatized law that must be regulated if the public interest and public values are to be democratically represented.
Some of us find it ominous, others glorious. Remember the old "Microsoft, the new Roman Empire" arguments, Gerald?
For example, shortly after the original findings of fact were made public, Jean-Louis Gassee, the chairman of Be Inc., an operating systems company, posted a column -- "All Pros and No Cons? It's a Con." -- on his company's Web site. "When I hear Microsoft's carefully orchestrated refrain -- all we ask is the freedom to innovate, we'll never renounce our freedom to innovate -- being sung by top executives and paid consultants," Gassee wrote, "I wonder, do they really believe this? Or is it a calculated bet on what our emotional response to an appeal to higher principles will be?"
Personally, I think it's a calculated effort to induce vomiting, but of course I'm a little cynical on the matter.
In fact, Gassee believes that Microsoft is strident about innovation because linking the Windows operating system with Microsoft's Web browser is how the software giant can gain proprietary control over Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, the basic code of the Internet.
By tying its browser to Windows, which is likely to remain dominant for years no matter what the outcome of the government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, Microsoft can create software modules or plug-ins that can be read only by a merged Windows-Explorer operating system.
This coerces both Web site designers and users to continue to buy Microsoft's operating system upgrades or lose the ability to function fully on the Internet.
Well, those issues have been raised here before, he notes dryly. But earnest open standards guy and naive civic virtues guy don't post much anymore. It's mostly entertainment these days.
Cheers, Dan. |
