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T A B L E__T A L K

Riven and Myst fans discuss their passion in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

A doctorate in "Doom"
By Moira Muldoon
For students at the world's first video game university, it's all math and little play
(02/25/98)

Let's Get This Straight
By Scott Rosenberg
The case of the hijacked haiku
(02/24/98)

Schools of hard knocks
By Andrew Leonard
"Lock ups" for "defiant teens" use questionable tactics -- on the Web and off
(02/23/98)

21st Challenge
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
Challenge No. 6: Find-and-replace goofs
Plus: results of our "Ticklers" challenge
(02/20/98)

Caught in the headlights
By Aaron Weiss
What if we were as paranoid about cars as we are of the Net?
(02/19/98)

BROWSE THE
21ST ARCHIVES

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THE SENATOR SAYS MICROSOFT DEMANDED HE ADD MORE SYMPATHETIC VOICES TO NEXT WEEK'S HEARING -- OR BILL GATES WOULDN'T SHOW.

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BY MARCIA STEPANEK
WASHINGTON -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has, in recent weeks, emerged as one of Capitol Hill's most outspoken critics of Microsoft -- and one of Washington's most strident advocates of government regulation of the Internet.

In a speech Feb. 5, Hatch urged the formation of an "Internet Commerce Commission" to regulate online commerce -- if Microsoft were to achieve "control" over the medium.

Now, Hatch wants Microsoft to answer to Congress.

Next Tuesday, Hatch will convene a hearing by his powerful committee to probe allegations by Microsoft rivals that the company exploits an operating-system monopoly to reduce choice in the marketplace. The software giant has also been fighting the Justice Department in a dispute over its compliance with a 1995 antitrust settlement.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and his arch rivals, Jim Barksdale, president of Netscape, and Scott McNealy, president of Sun Microsystems, are scheduled to testify at the hearing, to be titled "Market Power and Structural Change in the Software Industry."

In an interview outside Senate chambers with Salon, Hatch said Gates threatened to boycott the hearing -- unless Hatch allowed two other pro-Microsoft witnesses besides himself to defend Microsoft before the committee: "Gates complained the original panel was too unbalanced against Microsoft," the senator said.

According to committee sources Wednesday, Gates has requested that Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer, and Doug Burgum, chairman of Great Plains Software, appear with him before the panel to defend Microsoft against the complaints.

McNealy, Barksdale, Gates, Dell and Burgum would make up one of the wealthiest panels ever to appear before a Senate committee. The value of Gates' Microsoft stock alone approaches $44.4 billion; Dell is a multibillionaire too. The anti-Microsoft contingent isn't quite in the same league: In a survey conducted last September by a Forbes publication, McNealy's fortune was estimated at $417 million, and Barksdale's at $198 million.

The Judiciary Committee has been collecting documents from Microsoft as part of an investigation of anti-competitive practices in the software industry. Hatch's home state of Utah is home to Microsoft competitor Novell.

Salon interviewed Hatch Tuesday, outside Senate chambers.

The Justice Department has been investigating Microsoft for months. Why are you holding these hearings, and why now?

We have the oversight responsibility of antitrust, and we've had many complaints from the various software producers in Utah, Massachusetts and California. Many people are intimidated to speak out against Microsoft publicly, and this hearing is simply to lay things out in the open and give oversight to the whole antitrust matter.

Why, in your view, are these people intimidated?

Because Microsoft owns the underlying computer operating system, so therefore some feel Microsoft has used that monopoly to unfairly prejudice competition in other ways. Now, I'm not sure that is so. But the antitrust division of the U.S. Justice Department is certainly concerned about it, and we're naturally concerned about it, too. So we're going to have a hearing where basically three people will testify, basically, for Microsoft's position -- which we're happy to do -- and two will testify, I presume, against Microsoft. I don't know exactly what they'll say, and I'm not precisely certain of who the two other people besides Gates will be to testify on Microsoft's behalf.

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N E X T_P A G E | Gates asks for some more friends in the room