Just when the "J" word seemed comfortably under the carpet, Microsoft just had to make another pre-announcement, this time for its upcoming Microsoft Network online communications service. What with their crying for "justice" (as in Justice Department), you'd think online kingpins like CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online had been pinched. Maybe they yet will be. In any event, the specter of recent battles with the Federal Trade Commission over fair trade and antitrust has again cropped up.
What Microsoft's potential competitors are yelping about is a communications service that promises to be easy, inexpensive, and directly accessible from the Windows 95 operating environment. The problem, online vendors say, is that the only way to get on the Microsoft Network will be through Windows 95--presumably, third-party communications tools won't allow access. Assuming Microsoft ships 35 million copies of Windows 95 this year and 10 percent of Windows 95 users sign up for the network (Redmond's projections, not mine), Microsoft's 3.5 million subscribers will outdistance CompuServe's 2.5 million and America Online's 800,000 users in a single swoop.
At issue is whether or not Microsoft will unfairly use its clear advantage. One measure of fairness will be how public Microsoft makes the Windows 95/Microsoft Network interface. If it is open so that third-parties can create access tools using Windows 95 facilities that enable Microsoft Network access, then there's little room for complaint. If not, then competitors will rightly keep on hollering, and authors of books on undocumented interfaces can start counting their royalty chickens before Windows 95 even hatches.
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To champions of communication networks, virtual environments such as distance learning and distributed businesses have proven to be winners. The courts, however, don't agree--at least when it comes to virtual desegregation. In part to achieve court-established desegregation goals while cutting down on the costs associated with busing public-school students back and forth throughout the city, the Kansas City, Missouri school district last year set up ShareNet, a resource-sharing network designed to electronically link inner-city students with their suburban counterparts. But the three-judge panel making up the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pulled the plug on the project, saying it appeared to show little promise of meeting desegregation goals.
Maybe not, but none of the court's ideas have worked either, at least by their own yardstick of measuring achievement-test scores. I guess it's too much to think that people in decision-making positions would be forward-thinking enough to chance new solutions to thorny problems.
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I can see it now--high-tech bounty hunters scouring the net, clutching digital wanted posters with thousands of dollars in reward money at stake. Microsoft for one is ready to pony up $10,000 for information leading to the arrest, conviction, and presumably execution of the fun-loving culprit who posted a beta version of Windows 95 on an Internet site at Florida State University. Likewise, DeScribe is pitching in $20,000 for information resulting in conviction of the person who posted its word-processing software.
As with last fall's posting of the RC4 algorithm and other such anonymous actions, irresponsible use of the networks can harm software vendors and endanger Internet hosts. We're already seeing a host of host-liability lawsuits, leading the National Law Journal to coin the term "cybertort." Prodigy, for instance, is being sued by a Long Island investment bank, which alleged libel and negligence due to postings that accused the bank of fraud and criminal activity. As part of the settlement, the online provider has agreed to help track down the person who posted the message. Then there's the case of the former Proctor & Gamble employee who was awarded $15 million in a defamation suit because of a derogatory statement posted on the company's network.
Whether or not you agree that some of this anonymous network activity has been irresponsible, you can't deny that anything putting smiles on lawyer's faces (not to mention money in their pockets) has to have a downside. Think about that next time you publicly flame on the network.
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Internet domain site-registration requests coming in at the rate of 300 per day are swamping Network Solutions, the organization that manages Internet addresses. The usual ten-day registration wait now takes weeks. Muddying the waters are spats over who owns the rights to what names. The tussles between former MTV video jockey Adam Curry and the MTV cable network over who owns "mtv.com" are well documented. Likewise, you can imagine the surprise of McDonald's when the fast-food giant found that someone already owned "ronald@macdonalds.com." Even telecommunication megacorps like MCI have been scooped, as the company discovered when it attempted to register "mci.net" and found that some prankster at rival Sprint already had.
This suggests that latter-day '49ers far-sighted enough to stake out dubious domain-name claims before selling them back to the highest bidder have mined the real gold on the Internet.
editor-in-chief
Copyright © 1995, Dr. Dobb's Journal