[link|http://news.com.com/2100-1001-861562.html|This fight only gets bigger]

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON--In three separate legal briefs filed Friday, a total of
34 states opposed a Microsoft motion that a federal judge should
dismiss the remaining portion of its antitrust case.

Nine states and the District of Columbia return to court Monday to
determine a remedy for the company's antitrust violations. But Microsoft
had asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to dismiss the states'
litigation, arguing that the states should not be allowed to set antitrust
policy over the Justice Department. The Justice Department and nine other
states settled the case in November.

Twenty-five additional states rallied Friday behind the nine litigating
states--California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts,
Minnesota, Utah and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia--in
an attempt to protect states' jurisdiction over antitrust matters.

Twenty-four of those additional states--Arizona,
Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana,
Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi,
Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota,
Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and
the Commonwealth of Kentucky--filed a joint
brief, saying they "take no position in this
Memorandum on the merits of the underlying"
antitrust case. New York filed a separate brief. The
nine litigating states filed a brief of their own.

In their brief, the 24 states argued that the Clayton Act grants them the
authority to continue a case "even when the federal government has
proposed to settle a case. Congress has granted the states clear authority to proceed independently under Section 16, despite the fact that the federal government has chosen not to act, has proposed to settle a case, has in fact settled a case, or has taken the matter to trial." New York raised similar concerns.

I say:

Looks like Microsoft really stepped in it when they said states shouldn't have a say. They just keep making enemies, and this all keeps getting bigger.

Me, I'm doing my part. Running Linux at home, and sneaking open source into work wherever I can. Let the state AG's and would-be competitors do the frontal assault in the courtrooms, while us smart-but-little guys do our end run.