‘Over to you’: Can Europe restrain Microsoft's threat to freedom of musical expression in computer-mediated communication?

Abstract

The United States Supreme Court characterised the trend toward the convergence of the communication, music and computer worlds as ‘a promising new medium that could empower citizens and promote democracy in the next millennium’. Yet inquiry into United States vs Microsoft, the case that may determine whether ‘the free and open nature of … computer-assisted communication’ will remain ‘free and open’ has been lacking. This study focuses on the antitrust and First Amendment implications of Microsoft's disputed strategy of marrying its Web browser to its operating system (OS) software.

The study argues that rulings on the legality of this strategy have ramifications for Microsoft's subsequent move to suture its streaming audio and video software to its OS product. Implications of this case – and the European Commission's similar inquiry into such suturing – for popular music as an industry, as an industrialised technology, and as a form of communication are discussed. Scholars, practitioners, and fans must be ever mindful that when one firm dominates a human enterprise as central to contemporary life as personal computing, the opportunity for abuse exists.