Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (15111)	12/19/1997 11:56:00 AM
From: Dermot Burke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Regimond, Not directly affect one single cent of MSFT revenue? The whole Monopoly/Bundling/Integration method of doing business(and the gross/grotesgue margins) at MSFT is about to be Ceased and Desisted.In the words of your dear friend John Dowd"What have you been inhaling?" Your attempts to spin this DOJ intervention in a monopoly as some threat to the US Software industry is ludicrous!

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (15111)	12/20/1997 2:55:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

>Your right about the Lessig guy. BBUUTT, the industry will not let him go but so >far. You as a trained attorney know taht this is not contrained to the MSFT case. If >the judge accepts a rogue recommendation from teh master adn rules accordingly, >precedence is set, for everybody, not just the evil empire. No one in the industry >wants the government to be able to design software in the private sector, even the >NOISE. If it hurts MSFT, it hurts the industry, therefore from a relative U.S >perspective MSFT is really not that much worse off. Sorry, Reg, but this argument's not going to fly. Obviously, the people who got DOJ to do this do not see things this way. Microsoft is an alleged monopolist, so its case is sui generis. The only reason a tying arrangement is illegal is because it represents an attempt to leverage monopoly power, either in the monopolist's existing monopoly market or in some other market. If the others ever get monopoly power, they can worry about it then (of course, if I were Intel, I might be a little concerned now). The other thing that needs to be straightened out is this: in the eyes of the Special Master (and, at least in the short run no one else's eyes matter except maybe the Judge's), I would guess that it's not perceived to be a battle between the "free market" and regulation by government bureaucrats. The issue is whether, as a matter of regulatory policy, you go with the market mechanism because the market maximizes consumer welfare or whether some other regulatory regime, such as direct government intervention in the software design and development process is best suited to maximize it because of some unique characteristic software has that other markets do not. DOJ obviously thinks government intervention is necessary, and from his writings, I would guess that the Special Master would go with that for two reasons: First, as an academic, it's natural that he would be skeptical of private and market-based power. Second, if its a contested discourse (which it is), he'd be inclined I think to have the Court defer to the more democratically accountable branch of government, in this case the DOJ. (Query whether the Court's order really represents the position of the democratically accountable DOJ, or is an undertaking by the court to push this contested discourse into new, even more controversial territory and, if it's the court acting on its own, how that would fit into Lessig's theories -- of course, the DOJ seems to have adopted the court's position as its own) . All the investment arguments about how software is a natural monopoly and how it will remain so because we need uniform standards for it to function fit very nicely into the case for pervasive government intervention and regulation on a long-term basis. On the other hand, DOJ also seems to think that distributor/OEM choice is the same thing as consumer choice, an assumption whose validity has not been proven, at least not to my satisfaction.