Hiring Bork was definitely a major coup, whose importance cannot be understated. As much as I personally do not care for him, I admit he is intellectually honest and analytically rigorous. He wrote "the" book on antitrust law Chicago style, "The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy At War With Itself." So Microsoft arguing with Bork about antitrust is going to be a lot like, say, Clinton arguing with James Madison about the original meaning of the Constitution. Bork will carry a lot of moral weight with the conservative judicial audience to whom the antitrust case will more than likely be addressed.
But there is one chink in the armour. Bork's no technology guru.
Check out these comments from Wired ( wired.com ):
As for Bork, he admits to being less than savvy on high-tech matters . . .
And then there's:
But before Bork sits down in an attempt to rewrite the law, he will need to brush up on his knowledge of the Internet.
"I am going to have to analyze something about this technology," he said at Monday's news conference. "My wife gets on the Internet, but she'll have to teach me about it."
And, he probably has even further to go in understanding the process and economics of software development, which in my view is essential to analyzing barriers to entry in the OS market and whether Microsoft has monopoly power.
Of course, Bork is sharp, and I'm sure he'll move quickly up the learning curve. And whether his having greater knowledge of these issues would in any way help Microsoft is debatable, to say the least. |
