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Will Microsoft Shut Down Most of the Internent

Well that is the implication.

Quote:

Is Microsoft Ready to Assert IP Rights over the Internet?
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
November 5, 2004

Has Microsoft been trying to retroactively claim IP (intellectual property) rights over many of the Internet's basic protocols? Larry J. Blunk, senior engineer for networking research and development at Merit Network Inc., believes that might be the case.

Blunk expressed these concerns about Microsoft's Royalty Free Protocol License Agreement in a recent note to the IETF's Intellectual Property Rights Working Group. Specifically, Blunk suggested that Microsoft seemed to be claiming IP rights to many vital Internet protocols. And by so doing, "Microsoft is injecting a significant amount of unwarranted uncertainty and doubt regarding non-Microsoft implementations of these protocols," Blunk said.

From: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1714680,00.asp
They have a link to the poison pill if you wish to read the so called license.

What protocols is M$ trying to claim IP for?? The TCP/IP suite was developed by the US military and is free to use for anyone..

This includes FTP as well, since it is a protocol within the TCP/IP suite... which is the only thing you need to use the internet.... Microsoft doesn't own TCP/IP or DNS...

strange...

TCP/IP is the only thing you need to

Oh, please, TCP/IP was invented by Vinton Cerf, not a military at all.
The only thing the north- american militaries did was to pay him monthly during six years and deploy some cable (well, some thousand miles cable, indeed). Don't mess up things, man!

Doesn't a company relinquish IP rights to a protocol when they contribute to setting a standard. Not to the implementation, but to the protocols themselves.
Otherwise, what is produced is a private propriety standard.

I wonder how much Microsoft produced themselves and how much they aquired through buyouts.

Given the bad faith exibited by MS in this matter, the standard organizations should start telling MS to take a hike. Any contributions are not welcome because they will taint the standard.