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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (12909)	12/3/1998 3:49:00 AM
From: ed	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

In a fair trial, you are not a criminal until you are proved to be with solid evidence. Unfortunately , in this DOJ against Microsoft case, your are assumed to be a criminal unless you can prove that you are not. Even the conversation in an internal meeting of company or e-mails were taken by the DOJ as evidence !!!!!!!!!!!So, if DOJ wins this case, we will lose all our freedom of speech in the corps, you can not talk anything against your competitors, otherwise , the DOJ will take this as evidence against. The freedom of free communications, such as e-mails , will all be lost !!!!!

To: nihil who wrote (12909)	12/3/1998 12:41:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Respond to of 74651

I agree that the Federal government has no special legal privileges in a civil trial. However, there are political implications to a Federal lawsuit as opposed to a private lawsuit, and one must deal with them correctly. Microsoft, in treating the Federal government as just another fly to be swatted away, did not do so. Re: business license, you're being technical where I was being rhetorical-- not fair. As far as no obligations to tell us anything and protection against self incrimination, you're thinking criminal lawsuits. In a civil lawsuit, there is no fifth amendment right against self incrimination. More importantly, and this is what people seem to be missing here, there is no presumption of innocence in a civil trial. So if the government makes a claim and offers some evidence, you have to either completely knock down that evidence, or at least offer counter evidence or you're going to lose. It's pretty clear that Microsoft has so far not knocked down all the evidence, or even most of it. So it's going to be up to their witnesses to build themselves back up. But guess what--- Gates has compromised the credibility of his employees. He's repeatedly stated that he doesn't understand the email his own employees send him. So either Gates is an idiot, which nobody believes; his employees are nincompoops, in which case they have no credibility; or they're all involved in a coverup, in which case the employees have no credibility. So as far as Microsoft showing anything about their reasons for doing this or that, well, good luck to them.