From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Fri Nov 15 2002 - 15:23:11 MST
> (Alfio Puglisi <puglisi@arcetri.astro.it>):
> ...
> The subsequent monopoly was the result of various illegal activities, as
> found by a variety of legal courts.
>
> Because of those reasons, I don't consider the $50 billion bank account
> the consequence of any real value provided to the world. Quite the
> contrary in fact.
Most of those "illegal" activities were simply being a good businessman,
and were totally voluntary. It dismays me that the world is so quick
to condemn Microsoft for things like tying arrangements, exclusive
contracts, undermining standards, and other totally free-market
vaoluntary things, but think it's OK for them to protect copyrights
which are the use of force, just because the first is "illegal" and
the second is "legal".
Please let's not confuse legal/illegal with right/wrong. They are
completely orthoganal concepts, and I personally have no use for the
first one at all.
I am also dismayed by the fact the public and the courts have all but
completely ignored the one crime I think Microsoft did commit, which
was to breach its signed contract with Sun. Even Sun seems more
interested in supporting the government's use of anti-trust law than
in supporting their own legitimate claim.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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