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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael P. Michaud who wrote (2941)	10/24/1998 1:36:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 29970

No. They certainly can't. To attempt to do so would go against legal precedent stretching back through the 19th century. Intuitively, you can't force anyone to pay for anything regardless of its perceived social good. No doubt our society is rife with counter examples. In specific, cable tv requirements on carriers to broadcast special, or educational programs without compensation because they are deemed in the social good, are all unconstitutional. They exist because no one challenges the legality of such ruling. They don't challenge because they don't care. The cost to cooperate with nonsense is cheaper than the cost to contend. But the FCC can create impediments to the merger. Once that merger is in the bag, AOL can forget it. They are waging a publicity blitz in order influence the FCC in the same way the DOJ was manipulated to launch unfair business practices suit against MSFT. The DOJ will totally lose. It is an affront to the legal community that that charade has gotten as far as it has. It has evolved to the point of egos only. The DOJ can't back down because they think that would look weak, would look like they are caving in to corporate power. When you have illiterate people in government trying to show how they can pull down the evil corporations and thereby appeal to a great American tradition, you have a disaster in the making. The only possible escape from ignominy for the DOJ is to distribute the case over time in the way the case against IBM was handled. The government lost against IBM, but they wasted 20 years of time thereby relegating the issue to a non-event which hid the appearance of government ineptitude. The same can happen with T-TCI. I might add though that T-TCI can operate as though they were merged while government fiddles away. This keeps the true competition at bay enabling T-TCI to become MSFT II. Thank you government for making me filthy rich.