|
Legal Issues
Newsletters
Information
Industry and Innovation
 |
How to contact the FIN:
Microsoft Freedom to Innovate Network
16625 Redmond Way
Ste. M-447
Redmond, WA
98052-9724
call us at
1-888-321-3999
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
DOJ Case: Klein Lobbies Ms Competitors For Breakup
For those who believe that the United States Department of Justice should protect consumers rather than private special interests, a recent Wired article by reporter John Heilemann will prove a disillusioning read.
"Two weeks before Christmas," the story began, "a handful of Silicon Valley's most prominent executives and financiers held a secret meeting whose leitmotif was that rarest of concepts in the world of business: guilt…. [T]he gathering … was the product of a different brand of guilt: a guilt trip, to be precise; a guilt trip laid on the Valley by the government's trustbuster-in-chief, Joel Klein….If the DOJ were going to pursue severe sanctions against Microsoft, he would need the backing of Silicon Valley's leaders. Not backing for himself, but for serious remedies. And not subtle, clandestine, backstage support, but up-front, vocal, public support. The kind that shapes media coverage and editorial opinion; the kind that gets through to the man in the street; the kind that changes minds, and moves votes, in Congress. Klein knew that the remedy phase of the trial would be intensely political. He needed the Valley to make some noise."
[Read the full story at http://www.wired.com/wired/
archive/8.03/deepthroat.html]
Do you find this kind of activity by the Department of Justice unseemly at best? Many FIN readers agree; some are taking action. As the DoJ antitrust suit against Microsoft plods forward, now approaching its 4th month of settlement talks, Freedom to Innovate members are finding that their voices are being heard - and listened to. Here's what happened when Brett Schulte of Atlanta, Georgia sent his opinion to his Attorney General via the FIN, and then wrote to tell us the result:
Dear FIN:
I don't remember how I stumbled upon your site but the idea of voicing my opinions on the Microsoft antitrust case appealed. As a result of mail sent from your site I was invited to meet with the Attorney General of my state in a private meeting to discuss the case and Georgia's stand on it. I wanted to share this with you to let you and others know that this kind of thing really does happen and that it's worth the time to get involved and let your voice be heard.
Brett Schulte
Atlanta GA
Elected officials can't respond if they don't know what their constituents are thinking. If you agree that breakup of Microsoft is an extreme and reckless resolution to the government's antitrust suit and must be taken off the table as an option, now is the time to tell your elected officials. There are several ways you can let them know how you feel:
- Follow Brett Schulte's lead and just click on the FIN's letter-writing page to e-mail your elected officials. Your letter is confidential-only you and the recipient see it.
- Join the Freedom to Innovate Network, and encourage others to join. You'll receive regular updates about the DOJ case and other issues important to Microsoft and the high tech industry, and you'll add to the number of supporters who want their voices heard on this issue.
- Sign a petition to President Clinton from Americans for Technology Leadership (ATL), a broad-based coalition of technology professionals, consumers and organizations dedicated to limiting government regulation of technology and fostering competitive market solutions to public policy issues affecting the technology industry. The online petition asks the President to make sure that the future of technology is determined by consumers and entrepreneurs, rather than lawyers and government agencies. You can add your name to the petition at: http://www.techleadership.org
For further information on the DOJ antitrust suit, go to Microsoft's PressPass website at
http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/trial
Back to top
Colorado Joins California, Nevada In Setting Anti-Piracy Policy,
The state of Colorado and Gov. Bill Owens have established a strong government policy to prevent software piracy in Colorado state agencies. Colorado is the third state to issue a state executive order requiring all state agencies and recipients of state funds to use and acquire legally licensed software. President Clinton issued a national executive order against software piracy in October 1998. Gov. Owens signed Colorado's order March 13 at a meeting of The Governor's Commission on Science and Technology in Aspen, Colo.
Nearly 27 percent of the software used in Colorado - more than one out of every four copies - has been illegally copied, according to a 1998 study by International Planning and Research. Therefore, it is not surprising that software piracy presents a significant drain on Colorado's high-tech industry and economy. In 1998, piracy cost the Colorado economy more than 3,000 jobs, $136 million in wage and salary losses, $337 million in retail sales, and nearly $25 million in federal and state taxes. In total, software piracy caused losses of nearly $500 million to the Colorado economy.
Microsoft works closely with government agencies around the nation to help prevent them from inadvertently acquiring Microsoft software and licenses. It has become increasingly easy for customers, including government agencies, to be deceived into believing that they are acquiring genuine software, often because many counterfeit software manufacturers advertise their products over the Internet where it is more difficult for consumers to distinguish genuine and counterfeit software.
Back to top
Microsoft Views Piracy As One Of Greatest Threats To IP Rights
The following is excerpted from a speech given recently by Bill Guidera of the Microsoft Government Affairs department. It outlines the company's position on piracy and counterfeiting.
-The Framers of the Constitution recognized that copyright fosters the dissemination of knowledge, encourages investment, and spurs the creation of works. That is why this nation has always protected intellectual property (IP) as a means to encourage innovation and foster economic growth. President Lincoln recognized the relationship between IP and economic dividends when he noted that patent protection "added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things."
Today, knowledge is the capital and intellect is the means of production that drive our economic growth and global leadership. Recent estimates indicate that the core copyright industries annually contribute $348 billion to the U.S. economy, which accounts for 4.3 percent of our GDP. And during the last two decades, growth in this area averaged nearly twice the annual growth rate of the U.S. economy as a whole, and recent studies estimate the current rate to be five times the overall economic growth rate.
Yet digital IP theft grows as well. Copyrighted material can be digitized, uploaded to a website or distributed on a CD, thus enabling a perfect copy to be installed or downloaded onto another computer anywhere in the world. Indeed, 1998 estimates indicate that 38 percent of the installed applications software worldwide was illegal, and this stolen software had a market value of $11 billion.
This theft impacts Microsoft, and it also impacts innovators at small software startups around the nation. The long-term health of our digital economy will turn largely on the ability of the public and private sectors to work together to protect IP rights against technology theft.
First, we need to address the continued growth of counterfeiting, particularly by organized criminal enterprises that are stealing and manufacturing CD products worth billions of dollars per year. They target software, electronic games, sound recordings, and movies, and they pose a mounting threat that should be countered before it grows larger and before illegal profits are invested in what may well be its next target - the penetration of electronic commerce through fraud and financial theft.
Second, we need to address the rapid proliferation of piracy on the Internet. There are over 2 million web links to illegal software on the Internet today. These web sites exist in countries with relatively low piracy rates such as Japan and the U.S., and in piracy "havens" such as Russia. Pirated works are also appearing with increasing frequency on otherwise "legitimate" services such as auction sites. On these sites, pirates often give the appearance of legitimacy and make it much more difficult for purchasers to know whether they are buying legal or illegal products. Although some auction sites have begun taking measures to delete clear cases of pirate sales, a great deal of illegal software remains available.
Most importantly, piracy means lost jobs, lost wages, reduced tax revenues, less investment and less innovation. In 1998, software theft cost the U.S. economy 109,000 jobs, $4.5 billion in wages, and $991 million in tax revenues. By the year 2008, unless software piracy is reduced, these losses will increase to $1.6 billion in tax revenues and over 175,000 jobs.
So what do we need to combat piracy effectively in the digital age? In the U.S. we already have a very powerful arsenal of federal enforcement tools to combat piracy, including:
- The NET Act of 1997, which extends criminal copyright liability to persons who knowingly barter infringing copies of copyrighted works
- The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which imposes criminal penalties on persons who circumvent systems designed to protect software and other copyrighted works
- The Anti-counterfeiting Consumer Protection Act of 1996, which amended RICO to treat counterfeiting offenses as predicate acts
- The Electronic Espionage Act of 1996 (EEA), which creates federal criminal liability for economic espionage and trade secret theft, including theft of software code.
Yet, federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies have been slow to take advantage of these laws. For example:
- Three years after the enactment of the Anti-counterfeiting Consumer Protection Act, the federal government is just beginning to take action to target organized counterfeiting enterprises through RICO.
- The NET Act has led to only two convictions of Internet pirates - and those were announced in the last 6 months.
- There are no known prosecutions of software piracy under the EEA, even though the statute clearly criminalizes acts of software-related theft and provides powerful remedies and penalties.
In order to win piracy and counterfeiting battles and maintain U.S. leadership in the Information Age, the U.S. Government must recognize IP theft as a major form of crime. It must dedicate the resources necessary to mount an aggressive federal enforcement campaign. And it must take advantage of existing laws to prosecute IP crimes and impose adequate penalties to deter future acts.
Over the past year, the United States has demonstrated a new, important and welcome commitment to anti-piracy enforcement. In July 1999, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Customs Service announced the establishment of an "Intellectual Property Rights Initiative" aimed at combating domestic and international IP crime through increased enforcement, training and penalties.
We support this and feel it is critical for the U.S. to commit the resources necessary to fulfill the enforcement objectives outlined in the Initiative, and explore avenues of mutual cooperation with other nations' law enforcement agencies and prosecutors through existing multi-lateral or bilateral treaties or other cooperative agreements. No longer can one government simply enact a law and rely on it to address IP theft. Instead, governments need to work together across borders to address a technology that recognizes no geographic boundary.
This will be a challenge. Many countries do not treat IP theft as a serious civil or criminal offense. Minimum criminal penalties are often inadequate, and judges have proven reluctant to impose long prison sentences or substantial fines.
The WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPs, requires WTO members to do better. TRIPs requires enforcement procedures that permit effective action against infringement, including expeditious remedies that prevent and deter infringements. As TRIPs elaborates, this means remedies and penalties that actually work in practice, including criminal penalties that truly deter copyright theft; civil damages that measure the copyright owner's real loss and deter piracy; and full recovery of costs and attorneys' fees in civil litigation.
The U.S. Government has a vital role to play in monitoring and assessing how WTO member countries apply their IP laws and in ensuring that they devote adequate resources to this task. The U.S. Government should continue to instigate WTO dispute-resolution proceedings against countries that fail to fulfill their TRIPs obligations, and the recent WTO proceedings against Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and Greece for TRIPs violations are important steps in this direction.
In addition, the U.S. Government should urge other governments to ratify the WIPO Copyright Treaty and enact legislation that ensures protection of copyrighted works on the Internet as soon as possible. As more types of works are produced in digital form, and as the Internet makes these works easily accessible to billions around the world, it is essential that countries enact strong and consistent standards for online IP protection to encourage global electronic distribution of copyrighted works; to prevent Internet fraud; and to afford copyright owners a clear legal basis, worldwide, to fight Internet piracy.
Back to top
Your Comments
"The DOJ suit against Microsoft is wrong for the marketplace and the
consumer in every possible way. The fact is that Microsoft has consistently
produced products which are technically superior to others in the
marketplace, and those products have been offered at a substantially lower
price. The answer is for the competition to do a better job of product
design, not attempt to use the Government as a tool to eliminate competition
and help their market share." ~ R.H.J.
"The crux of this matter, from my perspective, is CEO's who are jealous of
Microsoft's success and I suggest that they spend the same amount of energy
in developing superior products rather than bashing Microsoft." ~ Christy
"As a struggling African American female who is trying to make it in the
business world, I would be appalled and furious at anyone's efforts to stunt
my success after I've worked hard to get there! I truly admire bill gates et
al for the hard work and, I am certain, hard times he and others have had to
endure without the help of the government." ~ Unsigned
Back to top
Tell Us What You Think!
This Newsletter is for you, the readers. We want to know what you think about The Freedom to Innovate Newsletter. What would you like to see us include in this newsletter? What areas should we expand? What should we leave out? What questions would you like to see this publication answer? E-mail our editor, Kim, to leave your comments at:
msfin@microsoft.com
Back to top
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Click here to join the FIN!