A Microsoft employee has responded to my post on how Norway is providing a gigantic public subsidy to Microsoft by naming it the sole controller of technology for playing back the Norwegian national video archive.
The employee in question calls me a Communist and a liar, makes reference to nonexistent copyright laws, and fails completely to address any of the substance in the post. If I were a Norwegian looking to show his MP why Microsoft shouldn’t be given control over the national video archives, this post would be exhibit number one:
The world would descend into chaos without dependency on the American empire. The last sentence is more than anti-Microsoft, it is anti-Capitalistic (read: anti-freedom). Yes, now that I have a SAAB my dealer can charge whatever they want for service and Gillette me to death with bait and switch pricing. Maybe they are and service is super profitable for them? humm. It seems ok so far. Last time I went in they fixed for free while i waited. Wonder why? If I were Cory would I be living in fear of their evil Capitalist leverage? Sucks to be you man.
I’ve also posted a rebuttal on his blog, but MSN Spaces can’t handle large blocks of text, so it garbled my response. You can get the full text here.
: This is Soviet thinking. God forbid you drive a car manufactured
: elsewhere or use technology from overseas. It takes a villiage
: (sic) Cory. A global village. Yugoslavs should only drive
: Yugos, and to not do so is unpatriotic. Forget about buying the
: product best adapted to your needs. Everyone use technology from
: your own country. Unless you are in the states and that
: technology is Microsoft.More straw-men. No one is talking about the freedom of Norwegians
to choose to consume foreign goods. We’re talking about a
government granted monopoly on supplying infrastructure for the
use of public goods. To use your car analogy: what if the law was
that Norwegian highways could only be driven with American cars?
Or that all cars in Norway could only run on American petrol?…Norway could have picked
H.264 or another open standard for delivery of this video and
allowed Microsoft and all its competitors to compete in the
marketplace. Instead, they’ve delivered sole-vendor status to
Microsoft. You don’t want a market where the winner emerges
through competition: you want a “market” where the winner is
chosen by the government.