IP vs anti-trust
I'm about as anti-MSFT as they come (and as a former employee, I get extra cred). Still, stories like
this one boggle the mind:
The consumers say Microsoft unlawfully and willfully maintained a monopoly that artificially drove up the price of Windows 98. The company violated the state's 1976 Competition Law, the plaintiffs allege. That law says monopolies are illegal because they exclude competition and fix prices.
That's fine, except that "
[s]oftware is automatically protected by federal copyright law from the moment of its creation." And, see, copyright is a
grant of monopoly.
The
whole point of having a copyright is so you can
exclude competition and
fix prices. That's how Steve Wolfram can charge $45 for
a book which
costs $12 a copy to print. It's how Eminem can charge $13
for a CD which costs
approximately a dollar to produce. And it's how Microsoft can charge $250 for
a CD and book that cost a few bucks to manufacture.
Now, you can think copyright is a good thing, or you can think copyright is a bad thing. But for one arm of the government to try to penalize monopolies which were created
by another arm of the government seems wholly nonsensical.