i thought this was illegal?

[James Knott]

Christopher Browne wrote:
> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM, ted leslie <tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>   
>>  even though MS is far from a monoploy now,
>>  they do still have all the $$$$ they made from their monopoly days.
>>  but i thought that taking a product and "dumping" it just to whipout
>>  a competitor was highly illegal, and I am not sure i can see
>>  (unlike most of MS crimes) a convient excuse for this one, other then
>>  to stop linux? in other words how would they defend this in court?
>>  how can they justify this pricing model?
>>     
>
> Traditionally, "dumping" is considered to require setting a price that
> is lower than the cost of the product.
>
> Software turns out to be a mighty strange sort of product, in that the
> "cost" can legitimately be considered to be the cost of distributing
> copies, which, as it turns out, is remarkably low.
>
> For instance, I can buy DVDs for ~$0.25 apiece, so that the cost of
> distributing software might be as low as 4 cents per gigabyte.
>
> I don't think Microsoft is trying to sell XP for prices *that* low.
>
> I think they may be acting in a predatory fashion (well, when *don't*
> they? :-)), but this doesn't seem like dumping, to me, and it doesn't
> seem as though it is likely to contravene laws.
>
> The fact that it may offend you does not establish any legal context
> to consider it Actually Against The Law...
>   
I believe part of that deal was the computer manufacturers would be 
required to limit the hardware capabilities of the low end computers, 
which will also likely affect those who want Linux.  That's is restraint 
of trade, which is illegal.  In this case, Microsoft is using their 
muscle over manufactures, to limit what's available to consumers.


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