[Am-info] Re: Nader and Love letter to Judge Motz

[Erick Andrews]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001 19:43:12 +0000, John Poltorak wrote:

>On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 02:21:45PM -0500, Erick Andrews wrote:
>
>> >The concept of the Microsoft Tax has never really sunk in as far as most 
>> >people are concerned, and they generally don't even understand how the 
>> >monopoly which Microsoft operates, forces prices up and is bad for the 
>> >consumer.
>> >
>> > 
>> <snip>
>> 
>> While I whole heartily agree with you, aren't you confusing
>> this letter to Judge Motz, which is about the education/class
>> action suit with the DOJ proposed settlement before Judge
>> Kollar-Kotelley?
>
>To be quite honest, the revulsion I felt when I heard the the DOJ had 
>effectively withdrawn from the case, has left me out of touch with what is 
>going on.
>
>I have no idea who Judge Motz is and don't see where he fits in at all.
>
>Is this a seperate case altogeher? I find this very confusing...
> 
>> -- 
>> Erick Andrews
>
>
>-- 
>John
>

Yep, it is John.  

These are, in part at least, *civil* actions (tort I think is the word
but I'm no Rumpole here) that go back to 1999 (?) when private
lawyers here in the US got whiff that M$ was going to be culpable 
for overcharging consumers for their software, "M$-tax" or not,
and because of the DOJ's pursuit of M$ for many years.

But these are separate *class action* suits in Motz's federal court.

These lawsuits are in addition to the mainstream prosecutions
brought by the US DOJ over the past, what?, four years now?
Don't know where to draw the line, because before Judge Sporkin
and Bingaman in '95, history gets hazy.  The FTC started with it
even the DOJ.

It is because that the Federal Appeals Court (*en banc*) earlier
this year, that had held up the verdict of M$ maintaining an 
illegal monopoly -- decided by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson -- 
that these suits now issue...these suits are now in a Federal district
court in the Great State of Maryland.

Unfortunately, the DOJ and the class action suits are not directly,
*legally* tied to each other in terms of remedy...so far...I believe.

These recently publicized M$ suits, brought before Judge Motz
have lately been wending their way toward "buying off" the 
plaintiffs...through a proposed settlement by M$...where they
offer to give less privileged school children around the US a
hardware and software "gift" that M$'s lawyers are offering.  

The important thing in this [major] case is to understand 
that M$ is not offering any "fungibility".  Please do look up
the word 'fungible' because it's important to understand
about the objections to any class action settlement.

BTW, I downloaded (wget) 230 PDFs that you posted, about 
30Mbytes worth, and I just can't go through all the content. 
One *must* go through all the content of these Maryland Federal
District Court comments to even begin to categorize them 
as simply as NO, YES, or MAYBE.  Many are FAX's sucked
in as graphics into Adobe's PDF files.  I have lots of horsepower
here with speed and storage on my personal LAN, but only
one head:  me.

If I distributed chunks of these PDF files to everyone/anyone
here to assess them, what's our goal?  Just verification?
The Federal District Court in Maryland then should pay us!

I'll send them, chunk-at-time, if anyone wants.

Best,

-- 
Erick Andrews