WASHINGTON - Ralph Nader, fellow consumerists, anti-monopolists, Net activists, and assorted allies simply primed for a fight with the biggest guy on the block gathered this morning in what they're convinced is a deepening twilight.
The darkness, they said, is the shadow cast by software superpower Microsoft as it extends its dominance from the desktop operating-system market to another sphere: the Internet.
Gary Reback, a Palo Alto, California, attorney who has represented many of Microsoft's rivals, charged that the company is trying to hijack the Internet to convert it from an open information highway to a private toll road.
Showing the audience a slide of a Warner Bros. Web site, Reback said: "It says you can only get to this content if you use the Microsoft product."
That, he said, is in defiance of open standards for the Web - so any manufacturer can create so-called browser software needed to view its contents. Reback charged that Microsoft's goal was to use monopoly power to force its own standards onto the Web, with the ultimate goal of controlling content.
As an example, Reback noted that Microsoft gave away a free encyclopedia several years ago. But now that Encarta has become dominant and the once-powerful Encyclopedia Britannica is near bankruptcy, Microsoft has started charging for updates to its encyclopedia, he said.
He also noted a content change. When Encarta first came out, it described Microsoft CEO Bill Gates as "a tough competitor who seems to value winning in a competitive environment over money."
But the newest update says Gates "is known for his personal and corporate contributions to charity and educational organizations."
Said Reback: "Not where I come from."
The conference convened as Microsoft is locked in a legal battle with the federal government, which has alleged the company is illegally using monopoly power to force computer-makers to highlight its Web browser instead of one from rival Netscape. The government wants to fine Microsoft US$1 million a day.
Microsoft sent a letter to Nader today protesting the lineup of Microsoft critics and competitors, and explaining why it had chosen not to send a representative to the conference.
"For us to participate in this kind of environment would be like walking into an ambush with sharpshooters on every hilltop," wrote Robert Herbold, executive vice president of Microsoft.
Nader issued a statement in response, noting that Gates had been invited to speak and that he and other Microsoft executives had turned down invitations.
Nader said Microsoft had "mistakenly determined that its narrow mercantile interests are best served by denigrating - and inaccurately at that - a genuine effort to facilitate a debate over some of the central issues of our time."
