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One reason Seattle was chosen to host the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization Nov. 28-Dec. 2 is that the city and its suburbs are home to Boeing and Microsoft. These two transnational corporations symbolize the ruthless, predatory greed of the new global capitalist world order. Nov. 5, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson handed down a finding that Microsoft is a monopoly that engages in predatory pricing and other practices outlawed by the Sherman Anti-trust Act.
The lengthy finding is blunt in describing Microsoft as a school yard bully that uses threats and intimidation to force other companies in the computer industry, as well as retail customers to bow to their diktat. It included "bundling" Microsoft's Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system to force rival Netscape Navigator out of the browser market.
Controlling how people access the Internet will give Microsoft immense power in mushrooming on-line banking and finances. If Microsoft has its way, they will collect a nickel, dime, dollar, or hundred dollars every time a customer makes a purchase in the "virtual mall" or the "virtual auto showroom."
Microsoft has engaged in a sleazy, underhanded campaign to destroy the open standards that made the Internet a quasi-public system open to anyone with a computer, modem, and gateway to the system. Often this was a public library or a university that provided the gateway free. Microsoft seeks to impose its own proprietary standards on the Internet so that users will be paying customers of Bill Gates, still unsatisfied with his $97 billion personal fortune.
No corporation should own or control the Internet or access to it. It should be a free public utility. If Gates tries to steal it, then we should nationalize Microsoft and put it in the public domain along with the Internet.