The US Justice Department's battle with Microsoft was topic No. 1 on Thursday as Internet and political heavyweights convened at Upside magazine's conference on technology and policy in Washington, DC.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) issued a warning to the software giant to accept government antitrust measures - or else.
"Vigilant and effective antitrust enforcement today is far preferable than the heavy hand of government regulation of the Internet tomorrow," Hatch said during a speech to approximately 50 opinion leaders gathered at the Mayflower Hotel.
Hatch, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, made it clear in his remarks that he was uncomfortable, for the most part, with federal government involvement in the business of technology.
But when a "predatory" firm like Microsoft "exploits its existing monopoly to prevent new competitors with innovative technologies from becoming the new market leader," the government ought to act, Hatch declared.
The senator asserted that two high-profile instances of choking off competition -- Netscape Communication's Navigator and Sun Microsystems' Java -- are indications of Microsoft's larger efforts to dominate the biggest paradigm-shift of them all: the Net.
"As Internet technology itself vaults into new areas, so too does the Microsoft monopoly and its tried and true bag of tricks," said Hatch.
Microsoft's rebuttal came from Haley Barbour, the former Republican National Committee chairman who is now on the Microsoft payroll as a Capitol Hill lobbyist. Heavy on homilies and light on the finer points of antitrust law, Barbour told the Department of Justice to "stay the hell out of the way" of Microsoft.
The suit, Barbour asserted, was "the Clinton administration's first step to grab control of the software business" and to "create a marketplace run by government fiat, not by consumer demand." Moreover, he maintained, it is Netscape who actually has the upper hand in the browser fight, with a majority of market share and "the best distribution system."
The clash comes as US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled on Thursday that the Department of Justice can bring new evidence to bear in its antitrust case against Microsoft. The trial is set to begin 15 October.
The browser war is only one battle within a much broader war by Microsoft to control the Internet, contended Hatch in his address, noting that the next target could be multimedia, videostreaming, or set top boxes.
"If one company does exert such proprietary control over the Internet," Hatch said, "rest assured that we will be hearing calls from all corners for the heavy hand of government regulation - for a new 'Internet Commerce Commission.'"
Until recently, the Federal Interstate Commerce Commission -- long considered an example of clumsy government overreaching -- had broad control over the country's trucking industry. Hatch's comment suggests similar heavy-handedness could be barreling toward the Net.
In the afternoon conference session, antitrust expert and former US Appeals Court Judge Robert Bork, who is now a Netscape consultant, refuted Barbour. Bork said there is "absolutely no question that Microsoft violated section two of the Sherman Antitrust Act" by illegally tying together the Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system.
These tie-ins are not used to make Windows more efficient or functional, Bork asserted. Rather, they are meant to stamp out a potential threat to Microsoft's dominance.
Bork's proof: internal memos by Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and other Microsoft executives that aren't "just normal braggadocio. These statements lay out exactly how they're going to do it, how they're going to kill the [Netscape] Navigator," Bork said.
Microsoft partisans pounced on Bork for his support for the Department of Justice's case. In a statement distributed immediately before Bork's speech, Microsoft legal consultant Charles "Rick" Rule wrote:
"Can this really be the same Robert Bork who wrote in 1978, '[a] review of [antitrust] cases reveals the sterile circularity of the law's reasoning, the untenability of its premises, and the error of its most assured pronouncements?' Or was Bork a casualty in some 'invasion of the body snatchers' during the last 20 years?"
Bork, in turn, accused Microsoft of repeated fabrications. "Microsoft argues that it is not a monopoly ... that it competes against its own installed base. This is an entirely specious argument. It reminds me of 'my answers were legally accurate,'" Bork said.
