Microsoft's morality play news.com
So, we start off with a variation on an old joke.
To make a long story short, St. Peter gives Gates a choice between heaven and hell, and even allows him to visit both places. Heaven is pretty much what you would expect--but when Gates visits hell, it turns out to be an alluring beach. When it comes time to choose, Gates decides on hell.
But the hell to which Gates is sent is, as the story goes, no beach party. Instead, it is the traditional hell of fire and brimstone. Later, when St. Peter visits, Gates asks what happened to that beautiful beach he had been shown earlier. "That was Hell 3.1," St. Peter replies. "This is Hell 95."
I've never used Windows 3.1, so I don't know about that part, but I've had my problems with Windows95, of course. I had it was all part of the integrity and uniformity of the Windows95 experience, though.
This is Jeffrey A. Eisenach, president of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, apparently his idea of progress and freedom is something other that Microsoft's freedom to "innovate", aka standard Microsoft business practice. Probably a commie, though I thought that the Mitch Kapor things were all sort of libertarian. I guess Microsoft is causing this massive rightward shift, where anything other than purest Objectivism becomes leftist.
Jeff also takes another shot at the much dreaded "Chrysler car radio" defense.
But the car/radio analogy--like Microsoft's other arguments--is fundamentally flawed. A better one is cars, trailers, and minivans. Assume, for a second, an automobile monopolist. Along comes a company that makes trailers. Further, it seems likely that technological innovation soon will kill the market for cars and replace it with a market for minivans--an "integrated" car and trailer combination. Should our automobile monopolist be allowed to force all car buyers to also buy her new trailer--thereby killing off the trailer company before it even has a chance to start making minivans? Judge Penfield Jackson has, for the time being, said "no." Microsoft still says the answer should be "yes," and is appealing Jackson's decision.
Serious people can disagree about whether Microsoft's marketing practices are anticompetitive. Among economists, including those at the aforementioned conference, there are as many theories and answers as--well, as there are economists. To an even greater extent, antitrust enforcers can disagree about whether the cure--any cure--is worse than the disease.
What no one can plausibly argue, however, is that targeted, narrowly defined antitrust scrutiny of Microsoft's marketing practices, with clearly defined, limited remedies, constitutes a government takeover of the software business. Yet that would appear to be Microsoft's position.
And the oft stated position of innumerable fellow travelers around here. Standard Microsoft business practice vs. the law and earnest civic values, which side are you on, boys?
By turning a complex antitrust case into a morality play about the role of government, Microsoft has, as Sen. Hatch suggested, raised the stakes. It seems to be opting for an "alluring beach," a de facto exemption from the antitrust laws. What lies on the other side of that choice may turn out, as in the story, to be an Internet Commerce Commission.
By holding to his position that Microsoft is not a monopoly, Bill Gates is still bent on going straight to hell.
No comment, I retired the wealth and taste thing.
Cheers, Dan. |
