 We hereby clarify the radical libertarian stance about Microsoft and government and more generally about monopolies. We explain how the original evil behind Microsoft's monopoly is government intervention in the form of intellectual property privileges and how any solution should begin by abolishing these privileges. Forward. In the year 2000 the Clinton administration was leading a much publicised judicial prosecution against Microsoft and there was heated debate about the meaning of it all in the general public but also among free software advocates and particularly among libertarians. With the end of the Clinton administration the new US government issued a settlement largely considered to be very favourable to Microsoft as compared to the charges established during the finding of fact. Nevertheless the question of whether Microsoft is a monopoly and what government should or shouldn't do about it is pretty much as much of a current topic as it ever was. Moreover this article seeks to explain the principles upon which the libertarian stand on monopolies is built. These principles are timeless and will still hold long after the whole Microsoft mess has become obsolete and forgotten. For many, many similar cases exist and will continue to appear until these principles ultimately are recognised and made to prevail. P.S. Note that in as much as you believe in intellectual property rights you are bound by the license agreement that covers this article included near the end of it. By continuing to read this article you implicitly express your consent to it. You have been warned. Introduction. The case of Microsoft versus the US government has confused many libertarians who have come to mutually contradictory conclusions and sometimes even to self-contradictory conclusions. These conclusions seem to be based on partial or incorrect understanding of libertarianism and such a case provides a good opportunity to re-examine basic principles so as to define a proper consistent libertarian stance. First we'll debunk some myths about the libertarian stance on monopolies. Next we'll expand on the notion of monopoly and distinguish de jure monopolies from alleged de facto monopolies. Third we'll see how the notion of de jure monopoly applies to the case of Microsoft and the government. Finally we'll study what justice should be when faced with such monopoly situations. One. Misunderstandings about libertarianism and monopolies. One point one. Myth. Libertarianism as a lobby. Libertarianism is often wrongly thought of by a few libertarians and by most authoritarians as a lobby in favour of private companies. These people therefore conclude that libertarians must take sides with Microsoft, a private company, when faced with tentative intervention by government. The idea that libertarianism would be a justification for corporate lobbying, of course, appears as utter misunderstanding to enlightened libertarians. Indeed for one general thing libertarians reject all political lobbying together with all politics. They do not want privileges for some people rather than some others. They want the abolition of privileges. They do not see the world as a cosmic struggle between irreconcilable conflicting interests. They see the world as a harmonic system where people have a natural interest in cooperation. But as a more specific critique they also reject the very notions of public versus private. To a libertarian there are but individuals and no amount of rubber stamping or uniform wearing, no matter how proclaimedly official, can give any individual any legitimacy to invade the life and property of any other individual against their will. Thus the distinction among companies as well as among institutions in general is not a matter of public or private, but one of being respectful or not of everyone's liberty, property and responsibility, including those of people who fund the institution, those of people who work for it, those of people who deal with it and those of people who are unconcerned by it. All institutions are private, i.e. made of individuals who follow their private interest. Among them those institutions that respect all concerned are those that serve the public better. Not being a state monopoly is thus a necessary condition for serving the public without injustice and the best public institution is a free market of private companies. In such a market the successful civil servants will be private companies by the status standards, but not being a state-run monopoly isn't the only condition for best serving the public. It isn't always even the most compelling condition and it certainly isn't a sufficient condition and we'll see that the Microsoft case illustrates this point very well. Myth. Government as the warrant against monopolies. Another false preconception about libertarianism is to misunderstand it as an economic doctrine opposed to monopolies, one that would recommend pure and perfect competition as an economic model to seek and enforce. This is notably the gross misrepresentation of classical liberalism under which the statists from the European political institutions and other national parliaments claim that they act as libertarians when they enact a variety of laws and bills to regulate the market. However libertarianism is not an economic doctrine and it doesn't aim at promoting any kind of economic model. It is a theory of law and seeks to promote a juridic model for the relationships between individuals based on mutual consent, respect for each other's liberty and individual responsibility. It rejects the very principle of coercion by a monopolist authority that underlies any kind of government intervention and regulation. As applied to regulating monopolies, the authentic libertarian stance is that if a monopoly is evil in itself how much greater an evil is the monopoly of force that the government constitutes when it has enough power to be capable of keeping the former in check. Government intervention and regulation is not and cannot be a way to deal with evil. The proper way to deal with evil is first to identify its very principle. Only then can this evil be abolished. Intervention and regulation, instead of banishing evil, only institutionalise it and use public coercion to promote and continue this evil in official ways instead of dispelling it. If government somehow monopolise the efforts to keep other monopolies in check the urgent thing to do is not to use this government monopoly, but to abolish it. Identifying the evil behind the Microsoft monopoly will be the topic of the next part of this article. As it will turn out government is the one and only source for evil monopolies either by its action or its inaction by its very own monopoly on the use of public force. 1.3 Partial Truth The Case Against Antitrust By elaborating on the principles mentioned above many Libertarian intellectuals have indeed demonstrated how the case led by the US Department of Justice against Microsoft was unfounded, as are antitrust interventions in general. They explain one by one how each of the arguments that government used in justifying its prosecution of Microsoft and each of the arguments used to justify antitrust laws in general are fallacies. We'll expand on that below, but suffice it to say that on the one hand the government never sued Microsoft for the actual evil that it did only for legitimate and benign aspects of its activity and that on the other hand the sanctions considered against Microsoft would not even attempt to either repair any past evil or to stop any future evil. They have only been adding to the evil being done. However, just because they oppose the very principle of government intervention in antitrust cases, as well as the particular arguments used against Microsoft in the current case, certainly does not mean that Libertarians support Microsoft or any of the other monopolies that were previously sued or dismantled. As for not supporting Microsoft, Eric Raymond, for instance, explained how many Libertarians envision the way we can fight against Microsoft without government intervention or judicial prosecution. And despite the current privileges that the government enforces to Microsoft's benefit other Libertarians would add. Indeed, many Libertarian intellectuals have also openly opposed Microsoft and proposed it should be sued for its behaviour. But government isn't the right way to achieve that and in the case against Microsoft government has been more of an impediment to victims claiming justice than it has been a help in their obtaining justice. The government has stolen the case from the real victims it has led the case astray for years dismissing real evidence against Microsoft insisting on ungrounded charges and nonsensical settlements and monopolising prosecution efforts for decades thereby excluding any just resolution of the case. In other words, the government has nationalised grievances and prevented real justice from being sought by the actual victims. Even if the government prosecutor had its way the victims would feel no relief and the crime would not stop. Still making for as many new victims as it currently does. 1.4. Empty Truth The case against monopolies Libertarianism has a long-standing reputation of opposing monopolies yet this reputation seems not to be accompanied by an understanding of what this opposition is about. Indeed, the notion of monopoly that is now used by governments and statist propaganda is quite different from the notion of monopoly that Libertarians have used for centuries when defining their stance. In their usual enterprise of confusing people's minds to as to enslave them by fraud rather than by force statists have thus managed to corrupt the meaning of words to the point that Libertarians cannot express their stance without either having to spend a lot of time explaining it or else being misunderstood. Consequently, although it is true that Libertarians could once say unequivocally that they oppose monopolies the sentence is now an empty shell without substance when repeated all around by people who do not understand what it means. For instance, Microsoft has been identified as a monopoly because it has few or no competitors in its field but then it is the very characteristic of an innovator to have no competitors at all because its products are too new to have been copied yet so that alone does not prove anything wrong about Microsoft. Sometimes it is claimed that Microsoft must be a monopoly because its profit margins have been abnormally high for an abnormally long period of time but there again this could be interpreted in quite the opposite way as indicating that Microsoft is a company exceptionally well managed by a marketing genius that has an outstanding track record of serving the public with innovative products and services. Are those moaning unsuccessful competitors to Microsoft really proposing better products and services? Why not consider that the consumers have chosen Microsoft over its competitors? Who's claiming to judge such things? Who is claiming to be more responsible than the consumers about identifying what the consumers really want or what should be done despite what they want? To a Libertarian these grieves are on the wrong track. Crime and justice are not about the ends reached by any party they are about the means used whatever the end results. It is no crime being successful and it is no title of glory being unsuccessful. Crime is an infringing on someone else's property including someone else's personal liberties. Justice is in respecting everyone else's property and in paying back for damages caused to other people. Someone getting rich by honest means is a respectable gentleman. Someone remaining poor by honest means is also a respectable gentleman. Someone getting rich through dishonest means is a robber. Someone remaining poor despite dishonest behaviour is a vandal. Robbers and vandals are criminals as well. The question is not whether Microsoft has reached some market share but whether disregarding its success it is resorted to dishonest practices. Did it at any moment resort to robbery, fraud, extortion or any delusive or coercive practice to force anyone to purchase their products or to prevent any competitor from entering their market? If they did then they are guilty according to Libertarian criteria and they must pay damages and interest to their victims plus all the additional expenses incurred by victims while striving to reclaim their rights. If they didn't then they are innocent according to Libertarian criteria and those who sue them should be made to pay for all the expenses incurred during the judicial procedure. Once again, ends do not matter, only means matter. So the real issue is if Microsoft is a monopoly what makes it so? And what is a monopoly to begin with? Are monopolies truly evil? If so what makes them evil? How can we measure the damage done and repair it? More urgently what can we do to stop the evil? The Libertarian point of view will consist in distinguishing a means-oriented definition of monopoly which may justify prosecution in Libertarian law from the ends-oriented definition used by governments which may not justify any judicial action in Libertarian law.