http://www.independent.org/tii/news/000628statement.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 28, 2000
Contact: Rob Latham
(510) 632-1366
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
STATEMENT FROM THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE ON ORACLE'S SPONSORSHIP OF
SMEAR CAMPAIGN
OAKLAND, California -- The Independent Institute released the
following statement from its founder and president, David J. Theroux,
regarding stories in
the June 28, 2000 editions of The New York Times and The Wall Street
Journal that software maker Oracle Corporation hired investigators to
use
clandestine tactics to try and smear the Institute's work.
"We were disappointed to learn that our San Francisco Bay Area
neighbor, Oracle Corporation, hired Investigative Group International
in an unsuccessful
attempt to smear us by calling into question the legitimacy of our
14-year scholarly, public policy research program.
"Instead of being willing to address the issues openly, Oracle has
apparently felt the need to employ back-alley tactics, subterfuge,
and disinformation in
order to achieve its aims.
"We challenge Oracle's executives -- and renew our invitation to
Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein -- to publicly debate the
central economic, legal, and
social issues of antitrust, competition, and high technology.
"Evidently, Oracle's clandestine campaign was triggered by the impact
of the Institute's research findings and public discussions resulting
from our Open
Letter on Antitrust Protectionism -- which criticizes the antitrust
prosecution of Microsoft and other high-tech firms as having nothing
to do with consumer
welfare and everything to do with corporate welfare.
"To set the record straight, the Open Letter was organized, written,
and promoted entirely at our initiative. Two hundred and forty of the
nation's leading
economists and other scholars signed the Open Letter, none of whom
was paid for his or her involvement. The Institute used its general
funds to publish the
Open Letter on June 2, 1999 in two national newspapers as a public service.
"The Open Letter was organized as part of the Institute's
long-running work in this field. Our research and work in this area
predates the Microsoft case, the
"browser wars," and even the Internet industry itself. Research by
professors Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis, culminating in our
widely-acclaimed
book, Winners, Losers & Microsoft, draws upon the authors' systematic
research of independent software reviews from computer magazines over
the past
15 years.
"The fact that Microsoft has been a member of The Independent
Institute for the past two years has not altered any aspect of the
substance or conclusions of
our consistent and indeed independent work, stretching back over ten
years. Microsoft's support constitutes a gift, which any first-year
lawyer can tell you is
insufficient to support a legally-enforceable contract. Unlike Oracle
and Investigative Group International, The Independent Institute has
never performed
contract research and never will.
"All of our work is strictly based on the excellent, scholarly
standards of peer-reviewed science, for which we will not accept
contract funding, and there is
no aspect of government policy nor social or economic issue that we
might not address.
"Here we have a federal court case that will affect the future of
global markets in a field that is producing the single greatest
economic revolution since the
dawn of the industrial age. Pursued at the behest of a group of
multi-billionaire business leaders, this case is based on a
fundamentally flawed economic
theory ("path dependence") that has no empirical evidence to support
it and no evidence of consumer harm.
"Meanwhile, opinion polls show that the general public is
overwhelmingly opposed to the case and ranks Microsoft at the highest
order. We shouldn't let the
sideshow of public relations campaigns and corporate espionage mask
the real story in this case -- the pervasive existence of corporate
welfare and corporate
statism in the U.S., of which antitrust protectionism is one major aspect.
"Since its publication, Winners, Losers & Microsoft, has received
glowing reviews from top economists and other scholars in the field.
It would appear
that perhaps the inconvenient, timely, and well-received findings of
our work might not have exactly set too well with some of those at
Oracle, and perhaps
elsewhere, who have a special-interest stake in the outcome of the
Microsoft case.
An Open Letter to President Clinton on Antitrust Protectionism
Winners, Losers & Microsoft: Competition and Antitrust in High
Technology, by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis
Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure, by Dominick T. Armentano
Is Microsoft a Monopolist? by Richard McKenzie and William Shughart
[Article from The Independent Review (pdf or html)]
Antitrust and the Commons: Cooperation or Collusion? by Bruce Yandle
[Article from The Independent Review (pdf)]
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