Boycott Microsoft Website From: Jack Teh <jteh@usthk.ust.hk> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. -- Anatole France ---------------------------------------------------------------- +++ Boycott Microsoft http://www.vcnet.com/bms +++ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please excuse this unsolicited message. It was sent to you by a friend or colleague who thought you might be interested in a website of current interest. This letter is an invitation for you to visit the Boycott Microsoft website at <http://www.vcnet.com/bms>. This site was initiated last year out of concern for the future of the world's high technology industry, an industry increasingly dominated by one company and one man. The site's primary purpose is to examine how extreme concentrations of economic power can lead to the impoverishment of the marketplace, higher prices and captive consumers. The Boycott Microsoft website calls for informed and concerted consumer action against a company that is using its economic and technological clout to dominate every aspect of the marketplace falling within its ever-expanding grasp. Boycott Microsoft takes the position that: -- Free markets and spirited competition drives innovation, produces lower prices, and expands consumer options. -- Microsoft's habitually anti-competitive behavior has already dangerously distorted the marketplace, to the extent that genuinely free competition in this industry is in serious danger of being eradicated. -- The threat to competition and innovation will accelerate as Microsoft's stranglehold on the marketplace grows. -- Educated consumers taking directed action against the company is the most appropriate response. Since its modest beginning in August 1996, the Boycott Microsoft site has established a growing circle of friends and supporters, and has evolved into a far-ranging discussion of Microsoft's corporate excesses. Described in detail on the site are the methods used by Microsoft to thwart competition, including: -- Microsoft's history of using licensing agreements to artificially restrict the computer industry's ability to offer competing operating systems and software, and to coerce customers into buying and using only their products. -- Microsoft's use of its colossal financial clout to suppress budding competition and deprive the marketplace of new ideas. -- Microsoft's habit of copying products developed by others, and then running the original inventors out of business, instead of devoting its resources to producing home-grown innovations. -- Microsoft's techniques for glossing over the deficiencies of its products with inaccuracies and misrepresentations. The site also debunks some of the common myths of the computer industry, including: -- The notion that Microsoft's market success is based mainly on product quality. -- The ability of the marketplace to "correct" for corporate excesses once a virtual monopoly becomes entrenched. -- The need for computers to adhere to a single "standard," particularly when that standard is owned by one company. -- That monopolies are somehow a natural by-product of the marketplace, and are not inherently damaging to the interests of consumers. The site also provides links to alternative operating systems, and a variety of other opinions, and resources. As high technology becomes an ever more pervasive influence on our daily lives, we owe it to ourselves to understand how the industry operates, how the winners and losers are chosen, and particularly, how the monolithic control of this or any industry is unnatural and harmful to our interests. The Boycott Microsoft site takes the position that we, the consumers of high technology products, must demand that serious competition be allowed to survive and prosper. We hope you will find the site's arguments against Microsoft's conduct to be offered in an educational, factual and reasonable fashion. Thank you for taking your time to read this letter, and we hope you will find time to visit the Boycott Microsoft website. We also encourage you to forward this letter to others who also might be interested in this effort. -------------------------------------------------------- 3.18.97 +++ Boycott Microsoft http://www.vcnet.com/bms +++ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Referenced By Up