The Microsoft judge Penfield Jackson cut the electronic monster in two yesterday, and twisted the knife a little: the problem with Bill Gates and Microsoft, Judge Jackson said, is that even now they don’t admit that they’ve bullied the competition and stifled the software explosion; they’re just the sort of tyrant you can’t have stalking this marketplace.
Bill Gates, the richest man in the world and the Babe Ruth of the computer era, so far, will go to the Supreme Court with the argument that he did well by doing good for all of us. He knows that for all the monster talk, he’s a popular hero, too: the people, he believes, would rather break up the government.
He’ll insist, to the end, that you can’t have the government writing the business plans of a dynamic new economy. It’s the dynamism in that economy he’s got to worry about–all those other eager players who want to be a Bill Gates, too, on an open playing field.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Jonathan Zitrain, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University
Ron Cass, Professor at Boston University Law School
Steve Johnson
Philip Greenspun