Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 16:24:30 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why anti-trust law? Message-ID: <15218.65422.812160.575351@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20010809150404.C92172@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <20010809150404.C92172@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> types: Are you trying to generate discussion on the list? You're certainly hitting questions that would do that. > How would you argue to someone that we *need* anti-trust legislation, and > that controlling monopoly power is not just punishing the successful? I wouldn't, because I think they are generally a bad idea. I've as yet to hear of an example where a corporate monopoly was broken up and the public benefited. On the other hand, being a monopoly - or collusion between competitors - makes some business practices possible that aren't available without monopoly power. Some of those - economy of scale, for instance - are generally a good thing, and taking advantage of them can benefit everyone. Others allow a company to hurt or destroy competition without doing without benefiting the public, which is pretty much bad for everyone. A good example from the MSFT case is the ability to provide alternative "shells" for users. MSFT forced everyone who wanted to sell MSFT operating systems to sell it with the shell MSFT provided. By doing so, they killed an entire market, most notably a Netscape product. However, they also forced HP to drop their custom shell, which resulted in a serious increase in HP's support calls and costs. People having fewer problems with the custom shell is a strong argument that taking it away from them does them damage. The findings of the current case are full of instances of this kind of behavior. MSFT has been punished for this kind of behavior in the past. Since they can't seem to stop this, something needs to be done to take that ability away from them. Personally, I like the idea of forcing them to open-source all OS development, but that doesn't seem likely. To use their sports analogy, we're going to force Tiger Woods to play with a blindfold because he's repeatedly been caught using non-regulation balls in tournament play, and the warnings and fines haven't made him stop. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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