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1.
Feature Story /
tviNews CSN news director,
Pete Allman says "Yes90 reporters response to the
LA Times editorial, dated: Sept. 20, 2007,
regarding: "A computer monopoly" -- "Microsoft vs.
Europe," -- was very enlightening."
Back in the post war years
of 1864, 1918 and 1945, it would have made sense to
bleach out the names of the inventors and sinister
corporate monopolies that controlled the world of
TeleComunications, RF-300 signals, (radio
spectrum), and the use of radiation in creating
mass destruction.
But today . . . it's no
longer justified. The publishers of printed history
books that fed the misinformation to the general
public - - are now finally being exposed by the
likes of Google, Wikipedia, and Smart90. It was
Winston Churchhill who said, "History is written by
the victors." See
Wikipedia Article,
2005. /
Churchill
Quotes
The Civil War, World War I
and World War II, made the inventors of the
Wireless Telephone and the electromagnetic
radio RF signals, Stubblefield, Marconi --the big
losers in those wars.
Nathan Stubblefield was from
Kentucky, U.S.A. Marconi was an Italian citizen,
and Tesla was considered a potential misfit in
1942. -- Scott Danuals,
Texas.
Institutional memory seems to have lapsed at The
Times, writes -- Robert Merrilees, of Camarillo,
California.
Does anybody there remember Lotus 123, WordPerfect,
dBase and/or Netscape?
These were the innovators of the PC-based
spreadsheet, the text editor, the database and the
Web browser, respectively. All were pirated,
marginalized and eventually eliminated (for all
practical purposes) by Microsoft's predatory
practices.
In fact, that was the 1999 finding of Judge Thomas
Penfield Jackson in the Times-cited case, United
States vs. Microsoft, and affirmed by the Court of
Appeals. In 2001, however, the
big-business-friendly Bush Justice Department told
the court that it was no longer seeking to divest
the monopolistic Microsoft of either its operating
system (by then it was Windows) or its applications
(Word, Excel, etc.).
During this period, Microsoft's mantra was that the
U.S. government was seeking to penalize success and
"chilling innovation and discouraging competition,"
a crock that the Justice Department and The Times
apparently bought into.
Has The Times even noticed that if you're not among
the 5% of us using a Mac, you are probably using
all Microsoft applications? Is that competition?
The Europeans were not so willing to buy into this
and appropriately dinged the boys from
Seattle.
Part
02
/ Taking aim
at the EU and the NBS 1908 USA Patent887. If the EU
would have been in existence in 1908, would they
have fined NBS $600-Million for Anti-Trust
violations?
In 1910 it was the creation
of anti-trust laws for the regulatory seizure of
the Wireless Telephone system, trademark, and
design monopoly, granted Nathan Stubblefield in
1908 vs the radio landline AT&T controversy.
Today it's the creation of international anti-trust
laws for the seizure and software control for
Microsoft's assets vs Google, the
"nutralitor.
In the EU, the enforcers is
Neelie
Kroes, a high-profile member of the EU president's
Cabinet."
The position Kroes holds, is roughly as prominent
in the EU, as the secretary of State is in the
United States.
Kroes drew even more attention last week as she
stood before TV cameras in Brussels and defended
the court ruling against Redmond, Wash.-based
Microsoft.
"I think it's totally unacceptable that a
representative of the U.S. administration
criticizes an independent court of law outside its
jurisdiction," she said. She was responding to
public comments by Barnett, head of the Justice
Department's antitrust division, who had complained
that the ruling could hurt consumers "by chilling
innovation and discouraging competition."
Legal experts widely agree that the Bush
administration has not pursued antitrust cases as
aggressively as previous administrations. The prime
example is the Justice Department's handling of its
own case against Microsoft, launched by the Clinton
administration in 1997. Justice officials have
supported ending much of the oversight stemming
from the settlement of that case even as Europe
continued to pursue the software giant.
But antitrust experts say the divergence with
Europe goes beyond Republican versus Democratic
ideology. Rather, it stems from differing basic
philosophies on competition, its effect on
consumers and how to protect them.
"In the U.S., antitrust law is based more on the
effects. If you commit an illegal practice, that
practice has to have an effect on the market," said
Juan Delgado, a research fellow at a Brussels think
tank and a former economist at the European
Commission's directorate concerned with
competition. "In Europe, you don't need to go so
far. To prove you've committed an illegal practice
is enough to punish your company, irrespective of
the impact."
Last week's ruling by the European Court of First
Instance in Luxembourg spotlighted the difference.
The court upheld the finding by antitrust officials
that consumers would be harmed because Microsoft
had improperly tied its Windows Media Player to its
dominant Windows operating system and did not
adequately disclose software code to other
companies so their products would work with
Microsoft's.
The court noted that European law covers "not only
practices which may prejudice consumers directly
but also those which indirectly prejudice them by
impairing an effective competitive structure."
U.S. antitrust regulators rely more on economic
analyses than assumptions of how consumers will be
affected, antitrust experts say.
Part
03 / The experts
say:
/
UCLA law
professor, Mark F. Grady says that, "the United
States, which has been dealing with antitrust
issues for more than 100 years has learned from its
share of mistakes, (in regulatory seizures)." The
U.S. is more sophisticated than the younger EU.
"They have not been dealing with it long enough to
understand the danger of accomplishing with
antitrust the exact opposite of what antitrust is
supposed to accomplish," he said of European
regulators. "Too often, they're concerned with
protecting competitors, when the inevitable effect
will be to disserve consumers."
Protecting competitors would seem to help consumers
by ensuring more competition, which could drive
down prices.
But as evidence to the contrary Grady cited a
lawsuit, brought in the 1970s by U.S. manufacturers
of televisions and other consumer electronics,
charging their Japanese rivals with conspiring to
drive them out of business by undercutting
prices.
In that case, he said, competitors clearly were
being harmed. But the Supreme Court ruled against
the U.S. companies in 1986. Although the decision
led to the end of U.S. TV manufacturing, the market
still has enough competition to keep prices
down.
"The economic system operates for the benefit of
consumers, and competitors are going to be harmed
by their competitive struggles," Grady said. " 'Do
no harm' has become the dominant theme of antitrust
jurisprudence in the United States, and the
Europeans will catch up."
In the meantime, those different systems mean the
Europeans will remain more active on antitrust,
experts say, even if a Democrat is elected to the
White House in 2008.
Donald M. Falk, a partner at Mayer Brown in Palo
Alto who represented trade groups opposed to
Microsoft in the U.S. antitrust case, said the
European Commission had broad leeway to take
aggressive action against companies that dominate
their markets.
"The dominant single firm needs to be considerably
more cautious in Europe than in the United States,"
he said.
4.
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Respectfully
Submitted
Josie
Cory
Publisher/Editor
TVI Magazine
TVI
Magazine, tviNews.net, YES90, Your Easy Search,
Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, LA Times, NY Times,
VRA's D-Diaries, Industry Press Releases, They Said
It and SmartSearch were used in compiling and
ascertaining this Yes90 news
report.
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