Protest Against Microsoft

As the maintainer of The Lion King WWW Archive, it is my choice to use this method to protest against Microsoft Corporation for its actions regarding monopoly power and the Internet and computer industries.

The long reasons for this protest are listed below. The short reasons are as follows:

Microsoft has leveraged its monopoly power and huge financial resources in order to swallow and/or destroy its competitors in any field in which they should appear. This is most apparent in its approach to marketing Microsoft Internet Explorer, but this is only the most recent case. Throughout Microsoft's history, they have shown the same tendencies:

These are not the actions of an idealistic young programmer named Bill Gates, seeking the American Dream of success and innovation. These are the actions of the head of a corporation whose only goal is to gather all market share to itself and crush all competitors-- not to advance the computer industry. To defend Microsoft is to stand against all that the American business ideal represents, and to condone actions which will stifle all innovation in the software industry.

Since you are not using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you are contributing to the fight against the company that has committed the above reprehensible acts against American business. I thank you deeply and urge you to keep it up-- it is only through refusing to use MSIE that we can keep the future of computing and the Internet from falling entirely into Microsoft's hands.

Microsoft is playing the futures game. One might say, "Microsoft has as much right to market its products using its rightfully earned advantages as does any company." This is true, except that the Internet is not in any way the same as any commodity. It is a hugely exploding market, something growing in a way in which nothing has ever grown before. Microsoft recognizes that if it can get a hold on the Internet before it is too big to control, then it will be able to set the Internet's standards, to regulate content, to capitalize at will, in the future as the Internet continues its wild growth. No other providers of any products or services will be able to compete with the single company that gets the biggest hold on the Internet in its youth.

This is wrong. The Internet is the greatest medium for free expression that has ever existed in the history of Earth; it has never been owned or controlled by any individual or company, and therein lies its strength. If we have a single company providing the browsing and servicing software for the Net, regulating commerce and trade, providing content, supplying Internet connections, and penalizing those who do not use that company's products and services, then we will have utterly destroyed the Internet in its original conception.

It is foolish to think that Microsoft has put millions of dollars into the development and advertising of products that it gives away for free, namely Internet Explorer and IIS, solely out of the goodness of Bill Gates' benevolent heart. Microsoft sees the immense financial potential of having control over the Internet, and it seeks to gain that control through whatever means is necessary. A future in which the Net is controlled by Microsoft is a future where free enterprise is impossible; and yet it is a future toward which we are moving. Please help stop this trend and bring freedom back to the Internet. Please support this protest. Thank you.

Following are the specific grievances the maintainer of this site holds against Microsoft Corp.:

-- Brian Tiemann

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