Re: poly: An idea for a Microsoft Antitrust case remedy

From: Peter C. McCluskey <pcm@rahul.net>
Date: Mon Apr 03 2000 - 19:56:32 PDT

 CurtAdams@aol.com (CurtAdams@aol.com) writes:
>I don't think the judge has the power to make this decision.
>I think you'd need an act of Congress.

 I expect that if the judge tried to enforce such a decision by himself,
it would raise some unusual legal issues which would not be resolved easily.
What I had in mind was an agreement between Microsoft and the Department
of Justice (which I think makes some pretense of representing the entire
government). I'm fairly sure that if the DoJ convinced the president that
the solution was important, he could get most of the government to obey
the agreement.
 Of course, this assumes that the government cares about solving the
problem rather than just about getting credit for doing something (a
questionable assumption), or that people who actually want to fight the
monopoly power could observe violations and do something about them (it's
unclear whether someone who noticed that an obscure agency was ignoring
the agreement would be able to get enough attention to hinder the
government's attempts to get credit for doing something - maybe if Sun
were actively publicizing the extent of compliance it would have some
hope of succeeding).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter McCluskey | The US Idea Futures Exchange: speculate on
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Received on Mon Apr 3 19:58:26 2000

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