IP: Re: Replies to DoJ's Joel Klein and breaking up Microsoft

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

[ I agree djf]

>Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 14:06:38 -0400
>From: Lee McKnight <lmcknigh@tufts.edu>
>Subject: Re: IP: Replies to DoJ's Joel Klein and breaking up Microsoft
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
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>
>Dave,
>
>Saying there was no innovation at AT&T is nonsense; where did the 
>transistor and
>Unix aka Linux these days among other cool things come from?  Saying the IBM
>anti-trust case had no impact is also nonsense; the DOJ and European 
>competition
>policy authorities forced IBM to stop jerking everybody else in the industry
>around with vaporware product releases to freeze buyers, and by making them
>release their API specs so competitors could interface with IBM products. 
>The pc
>revolution comes straight out of political and legal actions in Washington and
>Brussels.
>
>Microsoft could easily get off the hook by promising to pull an IBM or 
>Intel, that
>is, by promising to behave in a responsible manner given their potential 
>to squash
>competition advertently or inadvertently.   Instead, Bill and Steve insist 
>they
>will remain boys behaving badly, so they are getting a possibly very 
>painful slap
>not across the wrist but upside the head.
>
>Those counting on Bush to pull Microsoft out of the fire are again forgetting
>history - the Reagan White House would not touch the IBM or AT&T cases for 
>fear of
>the repercussions, and instead delegated to the DOJ antitrust chief to 
>transform
>the telecoms and computer industries. For AT&T, a sword through the firm 
>was the
>instrument of choice; for IBM, only the threat was needed to gain the desired
>result. Want to bet that a Bush administration would not act the same as
>Reagan's?   Now Microsoft has a choice: do they want to die by the sword 
>or grow
>up?
>
>Lee McKnight