Four states that recently said the U.S. federal judgment in the Microsoft antitrust case has done its job have made an about face, now joining other states asking for an extension of the judgment.
New York, Maryland, Louisiana, and Florida asked the court to extend the term of the judgment for another five years, according to a filing they made with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday. The states join California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia in asking for the extension.
As recently as August the states led by New York said the judgment was achieving its goal of fostering competition.
Now they've changed their tune. "An extension is appropriate to assure that marketplace participants have sufficient opportunity to establish positions to compete against Microsoft, an entrenched monopolist," they wrote in the filing.
Microsoft's "well-known difficulties" complying with parts of the judgment have hurt the chances for more competition in the market, they wrote. The filing also stated that the pace of technological development of the overall operating system market hasn't moved as fast as expected when the judgment was written, so that removing oversight of the judgment now would impair the chances of potential competitors.
The states suggest that extending the judgment shouldn't unduly harm Microsoft as the company said in a case brought by the European Commission that the settlement in the U.S. hadn't negatively impacted its incentive to innovate.
In response to the filing by the New York group of states, Microsoft reiterated its comments following the filing earlier this week by the California group. "We believe the consent decree has served its purpose," Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, said in a statement. "Microsoft has worked hard to implement the decree's requirements and has changed its practices as a result."
This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.
Download now »
Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.
Download now »
The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.
Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation
Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.
Download now »
Sign up to receive Security Resource Alerts
This white paper provides guidance on how to develop a strategic approach to managing and monitoring logs, a key function required for compliance with many regulatory mandates and a critical defense against security threats.
Download now! »
Learn about the processes and technologies that support security information management (SIM) operations, as well as the business case for SIM. The series examines different options for implementing SIM and gives you evaluation criteria for selecting the best option for your organization.
Download now! »
Learn the strategies, actions, and capabilities that Best-in-Class organizations employ and technologies they choose to obtain superior performance against various security performance metrics. This report provides guidelines for identifying which security solutions to consume as a MSS and defines best practices for choosing and managing MSSPs.
Download now! »
Recommend This
