hello,

microsoft, the great access friend of the blind, gets it's hands dirty
with obstruction of justice.  read forwarded message below and ponder:

> http://www.redherring.com/insider/1998/0902/witness.html
>
> EXCLUSIVE: MICROSOFT WITNESS ADMITS TO DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE
>
> By Wendy Goldman Rohm
> Red Herring Online
> September 2, 1998
>
> A key witness in the antitrust suit filed by Caldera against Microsoft
> (MSFT) has admitted under oath that documents were deleted from
> computers
> in a Microsoft office during the federal investigation of the software
> giant, sources close to the deposition said.
>
> The documents in question illustrated Microsoft's predatory sales
> activities in its attempts to restrict the success of Digital Research's
> DR
> DOS, a rival of MS-DOS, sources said.
>
> During their probes of Microsoft, Federal Trade Commission and Justice
> Department attorneys had long suspected that evidence might have been
> withheld or deleted -- a charge which Microsoft has consistently denied.
>
> This marks the first time that testimony exists under oath that
> information
> was destroyed while the company was under investigation. The Justice
> Department has now begun its own investigation into this matter, and has
>
> just begun talks with this witness, sources confirm.
>
> A further investigation would now be needed to determine whether these
> activities resulted in obstruction of justice in both the Caldera case
> and
> the Justice Department's antitrust investigation, said antitrust
> experts.
>
> Microsoft über alles
> The former Microsoft employee, deposed under oath last week, asserted
> that
> between 1991 and 1993, documents were deleted from computers under
> instructions by the head of Microsoft's OEM accounts at the company's
> German headquarters in Munich.
>
> Some of these documents mentioned alleged efforts by Microsoft to
> squeeze
> competitor DR DOS out of the operating system market in Germany.
>
> Whether Microsoft used anticompetitive methods to beat DR DOS, an
> alternative to Microsoft's operating system, is at the heart of the
> antitrust suit filed against the software giant by Caldera, a small
> operating system vendor that now owns DR DOS.
>
> "I can confirm we took the deposition of a former Microsoft employee
> last
> week," said Steve Hill, an attorney representing Caldera in its
> antitrust
> suit against Microsoft. "We consider [this person] to be a key witness
> in
> our case. We can't comment on anything that went on in a deposition."
>
> Kick 'em out
> Eliminating Digital Research was important to Microsoft's European
> business.
>
> During the early 1990s, Vobis, Germany's largest computer manufacturer,
> shipped all of its computers with DR DOS. At one point, Microsoft vice
> president Brad Chase sent an email to VP Jeff Lum expressing Steve
> Ballmer's concerns about Vobis. Mr. Ballmer, then a senior vice
> president,
> is now president of Microsoft.
>
> "Steve told me to eat, sleep, and drink Vobis, so I will be on everyone
> to
> let me know what's going on with this account," he wrote.
>
> Like IBM in the United States, Vobis had enormous influence in Europe.
> Other Microsoft memos suggested that winning Vobis over to MS-DOS would
> "lead other OEMs" to support Microsoft's product. In January 1991, VP
> Jeff
> Lum was urging Joachim Kempin, Microsoft's vice president of OEM sales,
> to
> "kick DRI [Digital Research, then the maker of DR DOS] out" of Vobis.
>
> Among memos the Justice Department has in its possession is one Mr.
> Kempin
> had written as early as October 1990, when Microsoft was plotting to use
>
> per-processor licenses to lock out Microsoft competitors. (In 1995,
> Microsoft signed a consent decree with the Justice Department agreeing
> not
> to use such contracts, which charged PC vendors seeking to license
> MS-DOS
> and Windows a fee for every computer sold, whether or not a Microsoft
> operating system was installed on a computer.) The memo reads, in part,
> "This will block out DR [Digital Research] once signed."
>
> The material now being collected in the two court cases against
> Microsoft
> -- Caldera's antitrust suit, and Sun's contractual dispute over
> Microsoft's
> license to the Java programming language -- is fueling Justice
> Department's
> concerns that Microsoft is withholding evidence in the government's case
>
> against the software company.
>
> Microsoft offered no comment in response to these new charges. "We can't
>
> comment on anything that may have occurred in a deposition," said
> Microsoft
> spokesperson Mark Murray. Mr. Murray noted that Microsoft has given
> Caldera
> "access to the entire library" of documents produced to the Justice
> Department.
>
> Statutes of limitation do not apply to obstruction of justice cases,
> sources said, and the Justice Department's next step, if the witness's
> statements are found to be substantial, could be to consider the
> appointment of a grand jury to further probe the charges.
>
> The memos quoted above were among those discovered by the author in the
> course of researching her book, The Microsoft File: The Secret Case
> Against
> Bill Gates, published by Random House in September 1998. Ms. Rohm's
> articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune,
> Financial
> Times, Wired, Information Week, and PC Week, among others. Write to her
> at
> [log in to unmask]
>
> © Herring Communications
>
>
>
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