Fighting back in closing arguments in the anti-trust case and exposing what it calls a worldwide Internet scam make for a busy Wednesday for Microsoft.
The company's lead attorney in the Justice Department anti-trust suit told a federal judge hearing closing arguments that the government's case was "meritless" when it was brought and is still meritless now.
Meanwhile, Microsoft says it's starting a crackdown on spammers and counterfeiters, ZDNet News says, after logging over two thousand consumer complaints on its anti-piracy hotline and going from there to hire professional investigators to unravel a tangle of such activity.
Lead Microsoft attorney John Warden told the federal court the Justice Department sued Microsoft for reasons having nothing to do with consumer interests and everything to do with trying to shield "huge companies" from "the rigors of competition."
He portrayed Sun Microsystems, IBM, and rival browser maker Netscape as a kind of cartel which all but colluded in a coordinated attack against Microsoft, ZDNet says. And he says Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer into Windows software not to try freezing Netscape out but to give computer users a better computer experience.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has filed legal action against three businesses charging them with a scheme to deceive customers and distribute counterfeit software online, says News/Broadcast.com. The action says they spammed over 25 million customers around the world and conned thousands into buying fake Microsoft software.
Arizona, Missouri, and North Carolina courts turned up thousands of copies of counterfeit software in surprise searches. Software piracy is said to have cost 100,000 American jobs and $4.5 billion in lost wages last year along, says News/Broadcast.
