People in general don't like Microsoft. They don't like Bill Gates. They don't like the way he gets off and never apologizes for any wrong. The company now has two months to make a formal response to the E.U. case. If the commission rules against Microsoft, it could levy a fine of up to ten percent of the company's annual global sales.
Most observers expect years of legal wrangling before the case is settled.
In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace. Attorney General Janet Reno acknowledged today that the Department of Justice is moving too slowly to review privacy concerns raised by the FBI's electronic mail surveillance system called Carnivore. A federal court has ruled that the Bureau has ten days to lay out a time table, outlining when it plans to release information about the system agents use to monitor the e-mail of criminal suspects. Marketplace's Stephen Henn reports. But the agency's clearly not at all eager to make the inner workings of its email surveillance system public.