Novell: SCO's wrong about SuSE deal

TalkBack 6 of 35:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

OK

1. Monopolies are not illegal in America. Microsoft was never convicted of being a monopoly. It was found guilty of abusing the monopoly power given to it by the buying public to wrongfully exclude competition. There is a difference.

2. As far as the precidents cited in my "rant" a good backgrounder for all of my examples is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/business/2000/microsoft/635257.stm
Standard Oil became the largest company in America and its abuses of its monopoly position lead directly to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. The US Supreme Court in 1911 (Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. U.S., 221 U.S. 1 (1911)) in its decision on the case stated that "The Federal law allowed and allows each of the individuals to compete freely for the interstate and foreign traffic in oil and its products. He may use all the weapons that his ingenuity and skill can suggest, to wage a successful warfare. His rights to compete are not limited to merely such means as are fair or reasonable, but are only limited to such as are unlawful and directly tend to the violation of the Sherman Act. The Federal law also allows and assures to each competitor whatever share, however large, of the interstate or foreign trade in oil he or they may win provided his means are not unlawful. The Sherman Act was passed to protect trade and further competition. It makes such restraint and monopoly a crime and inflicts, on conviction, severe penalties for such offense. It permits one set of competitors to purchase the property of other competitors solely to avoid further competition. The mere size of the competing corporations or combinations is immaterial"

You can read the entire decision here http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/antitrust/Standard_Oil_case.htm

IBM was under investigation for 18 years (!) because of its practices of controlling the IT industry. In 1956, it signed a consent decree with the DOJ to limit its predatory practices because of the control it exercised in the IT industry.
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/press_releases/1996/324-at.html

AT&T was permitted to be a monopoly by the US government. The Graham-Willis act of 1921 specifically exempted telecommunications companies
from the Sherman act of 1890. It was only in 1982 that it too signed a final Consent Decree with the DOJ to divest itself of "certain properties", the seven regional Bells we have today. http://www.tele.sunyit.edu/case1.html

It is interesting to note that in the very same year that the DOJ went after IBM for being too dominant in the Information technology field, it prevented AT&T from entering it.

The point being in all of this is until Sherman and his act came along, it wasn't a crime to be in a *****predatory***** monopoly in America. After the act came into existence, it was a crime. I have also shown that in some cases, US law has been written to allow monopolies to exist and it still does so today if it benefits the country. If a monopoly exists in America and it is not predatory, the DOJ will leave it alone. It does not violate Sherman.

Did you get this far?

Posted by: John Dulles   Posted on: 11/20/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Key Strategies for Federal Agencies - Safe and Cost Effective Migration for Legacy Hardware GovConnection The federal government has mandated that federal agencies reduce energy ... Download Now
• Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria VMware Of the many approaches to x86 systems virtualization available in the ... Download Now
• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now