[90899] in Cypherpunks
RE: Microsoft's compelled speech, compelled marketing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Paul Spirito)
Tue Nov 25 21:09:13 1997
From: "Paul Spirito" <berezina@qed.net>
To: "Fight Censorship" <fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu>
Cc: <cypherpunks@toad.com>, "James Love" <love@cptech.org>,
"Declan McCullagh" <declan@well.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 20:21:24 -0500
In-Reply-To: <v03007815b0a0bd483d3b@[204.254.22.197]>
Reply-To: "Paul Spirito" <berezina@qed.net>
Declan,
All of your examples are of antitrust actions *stopped* by political =
pressure. Of course, monopolies tend to have lots of cash, & that buys =
influence -- but this is just one more reason to bust them: the =
disproportion in economic power within the industry corrupts the =
political system.
There are plenty of ways government fucks with commerce & harms =
competition. I've seen little evidence that monopoly-busting has done =
anything but promote competition -- on the rare occasions it succeeds. & =
the less-rare occasions when the threat influences behavior.
Unlike Lizard, I'm genuinely self-interested. I'd hate to see what would =
become of the computer industry if Microsoft had no fear of the DoJ.
Paul
P.S.
James & the Naderites ought to take a closer look at MS's Win98 =
strategy. IE4 is genuinely integrated into the OS, & new MS apps (e.g. =
Outlook 98) will share much of its code. This isn't bad in itself -- =
they launch quickly & run smoothly -- but it gives third-party =
developers a choice:
1) Also live off the IE4 code, making it nearly impossible to port your =
app to another OS.
2) Write independently & fight with the MS code for system resources. It =
can't be turned off.
It also makes running Navigator, in particular, ridiculous. You open a =
folder & bam! there's IE4. Netscape is right to focus on the backend.
P.P.S.
Despite all that, I don't support breaking up MS. The industry is too in =
flux. MS isn't able to assure victory.
