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IP: Re: NYT -- Microsoft's Lobbying Abuses
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 11:48:47 -0500
From: poor richardThe NY Times Editorial, Microsoft's Lobbying Abuses, makes for some very interesting and thought provoking reading. http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/01mon3.htmlas loath as poor richard is to come to the defense of microsoft (particularly given that he's had to reboot his win98 machine twice before his morning paper), he feels obliged to respond. as the reporters of the nyt well know, lobbyists of all stripes often "help" write the legislation that passes through the bowels of congress (another helping of telecom reform act, anyone?). while greybeards such as poor richard might sniff at the legitimacy of this, it happens often enough that it would be unfair to term the practice uncommon. for the editors of the nyt to suggest that the actions of microsoft's lobbyists is an abuse is to turn two blind eyes to the real world. congress has the power of the purse. congress is the peoples' organ (though poor richard, being of a kind-hearted nature, declines to speculate as to which organ that is), and the process of scrutizining budgets is a time-honored way of getting the attention of all parts of the government. poor richard is quite confident that the other parties in the suit (e.g., oracle, the company formerly known as netscape, and sun) have their own lobbyists who can argue that the antitrust division's budget must be expanded (providing of course that doj agrees not to look at neo-monopolies in databases, online communities, and so on). and now, poor richard must desperately hit the send button before his "production system" crashes once more... s/ poor richard
**************************************************************************** Professor David Farber The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania 200 S. 33 rd Street Philadelphia PA 19104-6389 Off Use 1 215 327 8756 if no answer or no voicemail use 1 215 898 9508 Fax: 1 408 490 2720 ( touch 2 for fax or hit send) Home: POB 424 250 Good Hope Road (for Fedex) Home:+ 1 610 274 8292 voice; Fax +1 408 490 2720 ( touch 2 for fax or hit send) Landenberg PA 19350-0424 Primary occupation -- Tele-techno-yenta Home Page: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber My PGP Key fingerprint: B4F6 0DA4 D8C9 8C70 2012 1C6B C378 6836 F7FB 5EC9 Member of the USA President's Information Technology Advisory Committee -- PITAC Publisher and Editor of the IP List Member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Governor of the ICCC Visiting Professor of the Glocom Institute of Japan Fellow of the Cyberspace Law Institute Member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Advisor of the ASIA NETWORK RESEARCH (ANR) - Malaysia Member of the International visiting Committee of KRDL Singapore "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin, ~1784 "Photons have neither morals nor visas" -- Dave Farber 1994 "A revolution is not a dinner party." -- Mao Tse Tung "Farber is the Paul Revere of Cyberspace" -- Wired Magazine Sept 1996 "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." --- John Gilmore
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