Re: Microsoft's compelled speech, compelled marketing

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

I am very amused to see the Naderites on the warpath again. Better yet is
their claim that the Microsoft DoJ action is divorced from politics. This
is an excerpt from a message I posted to another list. Might be interesting.

-Declan

---

>     "Fundamentally, I think it's a legal issue," says
>Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications
>Industry Association. "But to say whenever the
>wealthiest man in America and one of the most powerful
>companies in America is challenged by a cabinet
>official, you can't say there's no political impact.
>You're in a political world at that level."

And if we look at the history of antitrust we see that the political world
is often the most important one:

-- Nixon intervened in an antitrust action against ITT in 1971 in exchange
for a bribe: a hefty contribution to the 1972 Republican convention. "I
don't know whether ITT is bad, good or indifferent," he said on April 19,
1971, the White House tapes reveal. "But there is not going to be any more
antitrust actions as long as I am in this chair...goddam it, we're going to
stop it."

-- Bush's assistant attorney general derailed a criminal investigation of
Georgia Power. This after the U.S. attorney in Atlanta had issued more than
five hundred subpoenas and two hundred witnesses were called to testify
before the grand jury. Why? Months earlier, the company's CEO raised
millions of dollars for the Republicans in 1988.

-- AT&T and its manufacturing subsidary were engaged in a
billion-dollar-a-year price fixing scheme, the Justice Department claimed
in a complaint filed in January 1949. AT&T persuaded a slew of high Defense
Department officials to oppose the action on national security grounds. The
Defense Secretary himself opposed it because of the "Korean emergency."
They forced the DoJ to settle the case without getting what it wanted: AT&T
to sell Western Electric.

-- Teddy Roosevelt (who Jamie might recall was widely reported to be a
"trust buster") headed off a DoJ antitrust investigation of the electrical
industry. Roosevelt wrote: "I feel very strongly that the less activity
there is during the presidential election, unless it is necessary, the
better it will be."

Former NY Times and Newseek reporter David Burnham writes in his book about
the Justice Department: "The record is clear. Political campaign
contributions, personal bribes and other direct and indirect favors have
frequently influenced important Justice Department disions about the
enforcement of law... Virtually every administration has demanded that the
Justice Department bend the law..."

-Declan