Re: microsoft appeal result

["Nathan Newman" <nathan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have to say, having read over the decision, the Court decision is a pretty
harsh loss for Microsoft given the hopes in the MS camp for complete
reversal.  On substantive factual and most law, the Court found that
Microsoft had engaged in illegal actions to maintain its Microsoft monopoly
in everything from agreements with ISPs, computer makers, and messing with
Java.

Where the Court was more skeptical was on the charge of MS illegally taking
over the browser market itself, largely because of the unclarity of that
"market" - not an unreasonable position - but even there, the Court did not
rule for Microsoft but only remanded the case for rehearing because the
district court had not provided full evidence of its effects on the market
but had engaged in flat "per se" liability based on the tying of the browser
to the operating system, rather than on its effects.

But on the findings of fact that Microsoft committed illegal acts, the
decision was really extremely harsh on Microsoft.  So no one in Redmond
should be pulling out the party hats.

In any case, I never thought the breakup of Microsoft was a great result,
since more "competition" won't help consumers get stable computing.  Better
tailored "conduct remedies" may be far better for consumers and the computer
industry, so the end result of the Appeals Court decision may be superior to
if they had upheld Jackson's breakup remedy.

Nathan Newman
nathan@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.nathannewman.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "ravi narayan" <gadfly@xxxxxxxx>
To: "Pen-L Mailing List" <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 12:36 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:14235] microsoft appeal result




summary: the appeals court in the microsoft case has agreed with
parts of the trial court judgement and disagreed with part of it.
the appeals court rejected the contention that microsoft illegally
attempted to monopolize the browser market and remanded the
contention that it spuriously tied two products (the OS and the
browser) to gain a monopoly. the court also used judge jackson's
crazy behaviour to set aside the remedies proposed by him and sent
the case back to trial court for remedies, particularly noting
that it go to a different judge.

rather than attach the 500k PDF file to this message i have put it
up on my web server:

http://www.streamcenter.com/~ravi/MSAppealResult.pdf

please do not distribute this message to others or pass on the URL
since i do not want my internet link brought down by downloads. i
will remove the file at the URL above after a short period of
seeing this message appear on the list.

      --ravi