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  • From: Heather Hesketh <heather AT hesketh.com>
  • To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: The list isn't blowing up yet?
  • Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2001 12:38:40 -0400


At 12:20 PM 9/8/2001 -0400, Steven Champeon wrote:
>
>No, he's saying that if your company is successful and then goes on
>to protect its success through illegal means the reward is
>litigation.

I'd like to add that I'm surprised at how so many people get in such an uproar about this case. They take it so much further than the government stepping in to try to protect the consumer and our economy against a monopoly that abuses it's power. The rules that a monopoly has to play by are more strict than the rest of the world. A monopoly is on top, which means that they can affect the market in such sweeping ways by just being that we've put into place laws to protect from that. Monopoly cases like this aren't about companies not being able to use hardball tactics to compete. It's about companies that are already "there" abusing their position to squelch competition and, therefore, according to our capitalist system, squelch innovation and the "natural" mechanisms for controlling price.

The question to ask yourself is, "Should the queen be able to do this?" The question is *not*, "Should someone who wants to be queen do this?" If you want to be queen, you do the things Microsoft has done to become queen. Once you have that position, then you act befitting a queen. You protect your power, but you don't abuse it. If you abuse it, the only power bigger (supposedly) than you in our country, our government, has the right to tell you to behave and to enforce this behavior.

Heather

--
Heather A. Hesketh http://www.hesketh.com
CEO vox: 919.834.2552 x12
hesketh.com/inc. fax: 919.834.2554

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