🚀 go-pugleaf

It is a shame that people have problems with arguing that a law is bad. 
 Somehow it has to be unconstitutional, un-american, or some other 
extreme statement.

The antitrust laws are constitutional.  Some laws stretch the commerce 
clause beyond belief.  Antitrust does not.  Nor do they inherently 
violate the bill of rights.  These rights are not absolute.  It has 
always been held constitutional to prohibit activity that harms other 
people, even when that activity would otherwise be protected by the bill 
of rights.  When properly enforced, antitrust only comes into play when 
there is harm to others.  In this particular case there is clear harm by 
Intel to others.  So, depending on the details of the case, the bill of 
rights protections might not apply.

Antitrust laws also fall into a long american tradition of government 
intervention in commerce.  Not a pretty tradition, corruption rarely is, 
but still a tradition.  Sadly all too american, not at all un-american.

But antitrust laws have shown themselves to frequently be:
 - wrongheaded
 - biased in favor of entrenched traditional powers
 - harmful to the general public
 - harmful to individuals.

so lets forget this other nonsense.  We have some bad laws that are 
causing public harm.  (Hardly new.  Old laws often become bad laws as the 
situation changes.)

The track record of anti-trust activity in the computer industry is 
rather poor.  Most of the time it has been a strong trailing indicator, 
with regulators taking action rather late in the situation and just in 
time to introduce new problems by interfering with the competetive 
markets' response.  In the telecom industry it has had a more favorable 
effect, but in the telecom case much of the antitrust activity has been 
the removal and unwinding of extensive government interference.

This particular decision could easily have the negative effect of 
entrenching Intel's monopoly position.  Instead of triggering the 
realization that a dangerous single vendor situation has been created, it 
makes this single vendor situation tolerable to the customers.  Companies 
that might otherwise have taken action to ensure alternative vendor 
viability can relax.  Companies that might have demanded the support for 
a non-proprietary open socket can relax their demands.  This does 
substantial harm to the market prospects of Intel's competitors.  The 
short term pain of a schism between an open socket solution and the Intel 
proprietary socket solution might have been much less than the long term 
pain from destroying some of the competetive attractiveness of the open 
socket vendors.

The decision could easily be a minor short term gain for a few companies, 
with a large long term price being paid by Intel's competitors and the 
general public.

R Horn  rjh@world.std.com