The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that Microsoft Internet Explorer represents a monopoly corporation's criminal intent to eliminate consumer choice, stifle innovation, and protect its technology dominance.
Associated Press reports that, "The judge added that some innovations 'that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self interest.' He said harm to consumers was 'immediate and easily discernible.'"
The Plaintiff has responded with a Statement by Bill Gates on Findings of Fact where he says that "We respectfully disagree with a number of the Court's findings, and believe the American legal system ultimately will affirm that Microsoft's actions and innovations were fair and legal, and have brought tremendous benefits to millions of consumers."
The developer of this website respectfully disagrees with the first part of that quote from the statement, and agrees with the last part. Microsoft's innovations have brought tremendous benefits to millions of consumers, myself included. But their meddling on the web has been negatively felt by developers and consumers who don't even use their browser, and by millions of people illegally forced to use it.Unpaid web developers don't like having their workload doubled checking for browser compatability in a software environment supposed to be composed of cooperatively reached open standards.
There's a lot of speculation about the sanctions if the government ultimately prevails. Hopefully the settlement of this matter will involve a penalty for the Plaintiff commensurate to the result of their actions on the closest competition, namely, the public release of Explorer's source code as Netscape did with Communicator5 (aka Mozilla). If the browser can't be separated from the OS then they should release the source code for the entire Windows operating system (cough, cough). Seems to fit the crimes better than breaking the company up, as the papers are saying.
The following is from the "Consolidated civil antitrust actions alleging violations of the Sherman Act, �� 1 and 2, and various state statutes by the defendant Microsoft Corporation".
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant.
Civil Action No. 98-1232 (TPJ)
Selections from the court's - RESET
FINDINGS OF FACT
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