U.S. Won't Extend Microsoft Antitrust Sanctions
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| The U.S. Department of Justice said it will not seek to extend the
| restrictions placed on Microsoft Corp.'s business practices
| following its antitrust settlement with the U.S. government in 2002.
|
| Many of the restrictions are due to expire Nov. 12, and last week
| several U.S. states filed motions in favor of extending them for a
| further five years. Four of those states -- New York, Maryland,
| Louisiana and Florida -- had previously said they opposed an
| extension.
|
| The DOJ had also opposed the extension, and on Friday it made it
| clear that it would not be making a turnabout like the four U.S.
| states.
|
| [...]
|
| The DOJ didn't explain its decision Friday. In August it said it
| felt the judgment had been successful in preventing Microsoft from
| continuing its exclusionary behavior.
|
| The states who favor an extension disagree. They say operating
| systems haven't evolved as quickly as people thought they would in
| 2002, and that Microsoft could still use the dominance of Internet
| Explorer to choke competitors in the emerging Web 2.0 world.
|
| A status hearing that will likely address extending the
| restrictions is scheduled for Nov. 6 with District Court Judge
| Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.
|
| The other states pushing for an extension are California,
| Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts and the
| District of Columbia.
|
| Separately last month the DOJ raised hackles in Europe by
| criticizing the European Union's decision to reject Microsoft's
| appeal of its antitrust decision there.
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138727-pg,1/article.html
Big surprise, the DOJ under the Dubya dictatorship doesn't think
Microsoft's monopoly is a problem. Well what can you say about a
country that has just deliberately destroyed Net Neutrality?
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
| make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
| - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
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Fedora release 7 (Moonshine) on sky, running kernel 2.6.22.1-41.fc7
05:23:38 up 75 days, 4:18, 3 users, load average: 0.20, 1.07, 0.98
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