the best justice money can buy --Lessig suspended

["Attila T. Hun" <attila@hun.org>]

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>>> the best justice money (and politics) can buy

    I really do not believe this --this is bought justice
    as appeals courts never, or at least rarely such as a 
    blatant in the case of a blatant error in a capital 
    murder criminal trial, interfere with a sitting federal
    judge.

    the damage is immense; it delays the first round of
    adjudication by at least 5 months. if I were Joel Klein 
    I would go for the jugular and file action for an 
    immediate divestiture of M$ including injunctions
    against operations and management by Bill Gate$ and
    Steve Ballmer. the appeals court would probably suspend
    the actions, but they would still be there and on the
    table. 

    Jackson at this point will be furious --hopefully he
    keeps total cool. the obvious next move on the part of
    M$ will be to have Jackson disqualified for bias. that
    will make 2 judges in the DC circuit who M$ has wasted.
    Royce Lambert refused to accept the 1994 plea bargain
    --obviously M$ would ask him to recuse if his name came
    out of the barrel; theoretically, cases are assigned by
    lottery --in reality, you can influence the choice of a
    judge as the cases are assigned at the time of filing by
    rotation. --M$ obviously is capable of shopping for a
    judge.

    at this point, I would say M$ has won the game. W98 will
    be released with IE4 as the desktop, complete with push
    channels and www.msn.com --at that point, Jackson --if 
    he is still the sitting judge-- will be forced to make a 
    bad law decision if he tries to block it on the 1994
    agreement: the product is 'integrated' --M$ had the 
    foresight to hoodwink the DOJ --Royce Lambert saw 
    through the smoke screen but the appeals court removed
    him from the case.

    so... we will have multiple choice of OS: M$ on Intel, 
    M$ on SGI, M$ on Alpha --and SUN goes down the tubes as
    they will never capitulate.  M$ will bury IBM with their 
    NT alliance with Ahmdal who clones all the IBM iron 
    --which is fading against the clustered servers. IBM 
    long since gave in on OS/2 versus M$ --it may figure in 
    their corporate strategy, but unless they are willing to
    update past Netscape 2.02 they will lose that as well
    --in fact you can no longer any of the IBM PCs with OS/2
    preloaded --except by special order: in quantity.

    Bill Gate$ for President?  might as well... maybe Lee 
    Harvey Oswald will come to the rescue.

Lessig appointment suspended
By Dan Goodin, C|Net
February 2, 1998, 6:40 p.m.  PT

A federal appeals court has immediately suspended the
appointment of a contested computer expert charged with
collecting and weighing evidence in the antitrust case the
Justice Department has brought against Microsoft.

In a ruling handed down late Monday, the U.S.  Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia granted Microsoft's
request to halt, pending further review, the proceedings
before visiting Harvard Law School professor Lawrence
Lessig.  U.S.  District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
appointed Lessig a "special master" in mid December, giving
the computer and Internet law expert until May 31 to
recommend factual and legal findings in the high-profile
case.

The one-page ruling is a significant--but by no means
final--win for Microsoft, which repeatedly has objected to
Lessig's appointment.  In briefs filed first in district
court and then with the court of appeals, Microsoft
strenuously has opposed the designation of any special
master in the case, but has argued further that Lessig is an
inappropriate choice because he appears to be biased against
the software giant.

In a sternly worded order issued two weeks ago, Jackson
denied Microsoft's request, calling the allegations of bias
"trivial" and "defamatory."  Today's ruling by the court of
appeals is in stark contrast to Jackson's order, and may
indicate that the three-judge panel assigned to hear matters
in the case sees things in a different light.

Rather than permanently halting the proceedings, today's
ruling is an agreement only to consider Microsoft's
challenge to the special master--known in legal parlance as
a writ of mandamus.  In a sign that the judges may be
inclined to agree with Microsoft's arguments on the issue,
however, they handed Redmond an additional win by
immediately halting the proceedings scheduled to take place
before Lessig while the challenge is being heard.

"It is extremely unusual for a court of appeals to reach
down and stop what a district court has ordered," said Rich
Gray, an antitrust attorney at Bergeson, Eliopoulos, Grady &
Gray.  "The court of appeals is saying, 'We're interested in
hearing more about this, and in the meantime, we're going to
put the special master on hold.'"

A Microsoft spokesman agreed.  "This is a very positive
step, but it's only one small step in a long process," said
Jim Cullinan.  "We look forward to presenting our evidence
to the appeals court as well as the trial court."

The court of appeals already had agreed to hear a separate
appeal, in which Microsoft is fighting a preliminary
injunction Jackson issued in December that requires
Microsoft to separate browser software from its Windows
products.  Today's ruling consolidates both motions into the
same April 21 hearing.  It also requires both sides to file
additional briefs concerning the special master challenge by
April 7. Moreover, the government must file its opposition
to Microsoft's appeal of the preliminary injunction by March
2, and Microsoft must respond to that brief by March 9.

Justice Department representatives were not immediately
available for comment.


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