From the Dark Side--Comment on the Proposed Microsoft Settlement

from this Justice Department (DOJ) web page. Under the Tunney Act proposed settlements of a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act with a court consent decree must be published in the Federal Register and the Justice Department must take comments on it from the public for 60 days. The DOJ has to publish the comments with responses to them 30 days later and submit both to the court which will hold a hearing. The comment period is now open and closes by early to mid-January. We could not find the specific date when the comment period closes on the DOJ web page nor a link to the Federal Register notice. Send DOJ your well-reasoned comments at this email address. We plan to do so. We think there are two principal issues: the proposed penalty for Microsoft's violations is entirely prospective and the predictability of the penalty to effect a sufficient diminishment of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior is completely inadequate, including being overly complex and to vague, especially in light of published comments by Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer after Microsoft's conviction that he does not even know what a monopoly is.