19 Jun 2004
Microsoft Sues Brazilian Official for Defamation

Methinks M$ is showing it's True Colors here - green, as in the "color of money", and not red, white and blue, as in our national colors of freedom from tyranny. I guess their thought is that, if you can't beat them in the marketplace with logic, bludgeon them in the courts with law.

Some might come back at me here and say, "Ah, but isn't that what we (in the form of our antitrust suit) did to them?", and to a certain extent, it was. But we certainly never tried to prosecute Bill G. for saying his product was superior, only for certain accounting and business practices that we have found to be not in the best interests of the market (rightly or wrongly). Here, M$ is literally attempting to silence the opposition. "Excess of freedom", indeed.

Larry Lessig is reporting that Microsoft is threatening a defamation lawsuit against Sergio Amadeu, President of the National Institute of Information Technology (ITI) of Brazil, for comments he has made about Microsoft's business practices. Microsoft's complaint claims that this is "an excess in freedom of speech and freedom of thought, by means of the dissemination of information."

(link) [Slashdot]

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