That video – the full transcript

There are two videos that were played after lunch on 1 February, shortly before Allchin was offered for cross-examination. Ominously, Judge Jackson remarked, perhaps bored by some video sales pitches that morning, that the defence should remember "it's just after lunch". Jim Allchin, for Microsoft, said that the videotape was prepared under his supervision and at his direction. FIRST VIDEO Yusuf Mehdi [director of marketing in the personal and business systems division of the platforms and applications group] was apparently the prime mover in arranging this videotape. This is a demonstration of the effect on Windows 98 of running Dr Felten's program that allegedly removes Web-browsing capabilities from Windows 98. I will demonstrate two things. first, after running the program, Web-browsing capabilities are still present in Windows 98. in fact, all the key components of Internet Explorer remain in Windows 98. Dr. Felten's program attempts to hide these components from users and to disable Web-browsing functionality, but it fails. Users can still browse the Web from Windows 98 in several ways after the removal program is run. Second, after running the program, the functionality of Windows 98 has been significantly degraded even for functions that do not relate to the Internet. I will also demonstrate other ways in which Dr Felten's program has adversely affected and impacted the experience of using Windows 98. This is the Windows 98 desktop after Dr Felten's program has been run, which I will refer to for convenience as the government version of Windows 98. We have not made any other changes to this computer or Windows 98 except to run Dr Felten's program as he describes in his expert report and his written direct testimony. as you would expect, he's removed the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop and the Internet Explorer icon from the quick launch bar. but there are many vestiges of Internet Explorer that remain on this computer. Let me show you just a couple of them. first, in the settings control panel, there is an icon here with the Internet Explorer logo labelled "the Internet." If I click on this icon, the control panel for configuring all the settings for Internet Explorer appears, everything from the security settings, the type of content, to the type of Internet connection and other things including programs and advanced settings. If all Web-browsing functionality were removed by Dr Felten's program, this control panel would be very confusing to users. In fact, as I will show you in a minute, the government version of Windows 98 can still be used to browse the Web. Next, if I click "start settings active desktop," you will see that there's an option for view as Web page. This is another remnant of the Internet capabilities in Windows 98. finally, let's look at what Windows 98 itself says is present on the computer after the removal program is run. I will open up the Windows update feature and click on the "help about Internet Explorer." The computer tells me Internet Explorer 4.0 technologies are still here in the government version of Windows 98. I will now demonstrate there is web-browsing capability in the government's version of Windows 98. First, let's look at the Windows update feature. When I click on that icon, we'll connect to the Internet. You will see that Internet Explorer browser window comes up and displays the Internet address that we have reached, "Windowsupdate.microsoft.com." We are now on the Internet. As you see, at the bottom of the page here, we're actually connecting out to the Internet and fetching that data. It's taking a very long time, however--unusually long--to access that Web site. That's a result of the performance degradation that has occurred because of running the Felten program. So, go ahead and give it a minute here. It will eventually display all of the web page. So, Dr Felten chose to let customers access this one web site which is done using the IE code in Windows 98 including mshtml, urlmon and Wininet among other files. However, Dr Felten's changes make access very slow. Dr Felten's changes also break the user's ability to use the Windows Update web site once it is accessed and displayed on screen. As you will see, when I click yes and attempt to view a catalogue of the available updates that I might download to improve Windows, I get this "please wait" message, and the program just hangs. let's look at another example of Web-browsing functionality that remains in the government version of Windows 98. I will go to help system. As you will recall from an earlier demonstration, integration of the Internet Explorer system services in Windows 98 resulted in improved help features. The Internet functionality of Windows 98 displays graphical information coded in html from both the local computer itself and from Web pages. so, as you can see here, we've a split-pane view of the help system. I can certainly continue to use Web-browsing technology like a single click on these hotlink topics to get help information. In addition, there is a Web help option. Now, the Web-access functionality of this particular button has been disabled by the Felten program, but the underlying Web-browsing capabilities of the help system are still present and available to users. As I will now demonstrate, I will click on an html link that comes with Windows 98, drag it and drop it in this right pane. Windows 98 will now render that html page. This page has links that will allow us to navigate the Internet right here from within the help feature. So, for example, this is an html page that has a listing of business channels in the active channel guide. If I were to choose the Microsoft channel guide, Windows 98 will take us to that site. This is now a Web page on the Internet. this site has a number of links which I will use to demonstrate that a great deal of Web-browsing functionality exists in the government version of Windows 98. for example, I can download a screen-server program. I will enter "save as," and you will see Windows 98 connect out to this web site, "Www.Windowsmedia.com," grab a screen saver program and download it to the hard disk of my computer. It asks me to save it on the desktop. I will go ahead and say "yes." As you can see here, we downloaded data. Now the download is complete. I can browse a world wide web from this location. For example, I can choose the Lycos link here, and the Internet functionality integrated into Windows 98 will take me to the Lycos search site. Here we are now on the Lycos search site. now I can freely navigate the Web by typing in the search. We get the Internet security permissions window because we are using the security systems services provided by the Internet Explorer technology in Windows 98. now we will go ahead and execute a search for Ford. As you can see, we have a list of companies that have to do with automobiles and information on Ford. We are browsing the Internet from within the help window using the Web-browsing capabilities that are integrated into Windows 98. Those capabilities were not removed by the Dr Felten's program. The government version of Windows 98 does not successfully hide all the Web browsing from customers. Let me show you a third example of Internet capabilities that remain after the Felten program is run. I will open the "my computer" feature of Windows 98. Let's look at the toolbar here and zoom in to look closely. Windows 98 provides several buttons that include cut, copy, paste, undo, delete, properties, and views. I will zoom back and type in here, "in about navigation cancel," just a standard error message. I could have typed in a Web site address. notice that when I typed in "enter," the toolbar that I just showed you is going to change. Watch the buttons as I hit "enter." The toolbar changes, and it's now the Internet Explorer toolbar. We now have new buttons: stop, refresh, home, search, favorites, history, channels, full screen, and mail. In fact, we now have the Internet Explorer browsing window provided by the shdocvw systems services integrated in Windows 98. I could do a number of things from here. I could check history, for example. Here in the left pane is a list of the web pages and Internet sites that we just visited; namely, the Windows update site, the Lycos.com site, and the Windows media site. Each of these are links to Web addresses that we just visited. The Web-browsing functionality of the history list is still present. I click on one of these sites and visit it again. The web address, or URL, is displayed to the right in the pop-up dialogue box. Now we are back on the Internet at the Web site we visited before. so, as you can see, there is, in fact, a great deal of Web-browsing capability in the government version of Windows 98 even after the Dr Felten program was run. Windows 98 can still access the Web, use security privileges, download data and programs like a screen saver or an ActiveX control, and browse and conduct searches on the world wide web. To further illustrate the full Web-browsing capability that's still present after the Dr Felten program has been run, I will now demonstrate how a user can, with just a few steps and without adding any software or code whatsoever, restore full Web-browsing capability to the "my computer" feature of Windows 98. let's take a look. I opened up the "my computer" window. You can see that the user is unable to access the Web because the phone program has hidden Internet functionality. As the user tries to enter a URL address, they are presented with this error message. I will now show that using standard features in Windows 98, the user can re-enable full browser functionality with just a few steps. I will go ahead and open up the Windows registry and re-enable Web browsing within Windows. Think of the Windows registry as something that is similar to the circuit breaker panel in your home. When the lights go out due to a storm or power hit, you can essentially flip a few switches on the circuit breaker and re-enable the lights in your house. I'm going to do the same thing for Windows. If you recall the error message that we just saw that says the computer did not recognize http as a registered function, I'm going to basically re-establish that function and flip a switch to turn it on. That's essentially what I'm doing here on this screen. Let me go ahead and tell Windows there is a function called http, as I'm typing in here, and I will go ahead and flip a switch by essentially changing a value from zero to one, as I will do here, and that will re-establish Web-browsing functionality within the "my computer" window. and with just those few steps, we have now enabled full web-browsing functionality in Windows 98. Let's come back to "my computer" and take a look. I will come back to the address bar, and I will go ahead and enter a URL address for a site on the Internet; for example, site about sailing. and as you can see, I can fully read and view all of that information from the Web site. for example, I will go ahead and show one other site, the disney.com site, and you can see here the full Disney site with animation as well. and finally, you can see that we have also re-enabled the seamless navigation between the Internet and "my computer." The backward and forward button functionality is now reestablished, and I can move between Web pages and between the Internet and "my computer." So, for example, for "my computer" to the Internet and then back with a single click. So, in summary, the Felten program fails to hide all user access to the Web-browsing code in Windows 98. That code can be accessed, and the user can browse the web in several ways after the Felten program has been run. In addition, by using standard features of Windows 98, it is possible to reactivate full Web-browsing functionality from the "my computer" feature without adding any new software. This further demonstrates that the Felten program only hides Web-browsing functionality in Windows 98. it does not remove it. Next I will demonstrate how running the Felten program impairs the functionality of Windows 98 in a number of areas not related to the Internet. The government version of Windows 98 does not work as well as the Microsoft version. First, as I have already demonstrated in showing how slowly the Windows update site loaded, the performance of the government version of Windows 98 is much slower. Second, as I will now demonstrate, some applications that use the integrated Internet system services in Windows 98 do not operate properly on the government version of Windows 98. the changes made by the Felten program break features of those programs. To demonstrate that, I have two computers. I have a Microsoft Windows 98 computer and a government Windows 98 computer that has had the removal program run on it. I'm going to show you three applications that now do not operate as intended on the government version of Windows 98. First program I will demonstrate is software that Prodigy distributes to make it easy for users to sign up for its online service. I will show you how that software runs on Microsoft Windows. this is the Windows 98 desktop. It is marked here, so you can tell the difference between the two computers. Here is the Prodigy Internet software icon. I can double-click that, and the Prodigy signup process starts. There is a welcome. The software uses the Windows 98 Internet capabilities to display some dialup boxes and to facilitate the signup process. Now let's look at the government version of Windows 98 and run the Prodigy software on that computer. Again, here is the Prodigy icon on the desktop. When I click on the Prodigy icon, the computer will hang here for about 30 seconds, and then we will get an error message. The Prodigy setup program will not be able to complete as intended. first we get this message that says, "Prodigy Internet registration." The error message says, "your Web browser has failed to open. Please try to launch your Web browser manually and close it and retry Prodigy Internet registration. If you still have a problem, call us at 1-800-213-0992. So, the Felten program has deleted for Windows 98 functionality of Prodigy relied upon. the program will not work to the detriment of Prodigy's customers, even if the Netscape Navigator is installed on the government Windows 98. This program and the others I'm about to demonstrate will not work properly. let's take a look at a second example: the Microsoft Plus product that includes a program that provides a deluxe audio CD player for playing audio CDs on the computer. on the Microsoft Windows 98 machine, when I insert a music CD, the music player will pop up. it allows us to play audio on the computer. in addition, this program can play music from the Internet. Here you can see the name of each song on the CD, which is information that Windows 98 automatically downloaded from the Internet. That was done by clicking on the Internet button here, which offers the option to download track names, which we have done. there's also several other options to go out to the Internet and get other information about the music CD I am playing, so I could get information in this case on the CD I have loaded which is called "hunter." now I will demonstrate how the enhanced CD player operates on the government version of Windows 98 after the Felten program is run. Here is the desktop. The CD is inserted, and the CD player comes up. We get a dialogue box that says, "do you want to download information now?" and always download. I will go ahead and click okay to download now. The computer will respond that the album was not found on the Internet. Now, in fact, as we have just demonstrated, the information is actually on the Internet, but because the Felten program has disabled some of the integrated Internet capabilities of Windows 98, this enhanced CD player will not operate as designed. notice here that many features which work on the enhanced CD player running on Microsoft Windows 98 are disabled after the Felten program has been run, so the customer misses out on some features of this music CD player. let's look at a third example of how the Felten program breaks the features of applications a user may run on Windows 98. In this case, I will demonstrate a financial management and investment program, Microsoft Money98. Again, I will first demonstrate Microsoft Money on the unchanged Microsoft Windows 98 computer. This is the Microsoft money program. one feature of the program is "smart financial decisions made easier." I can click on this icon, and money goes out to the Internet and gets information; in this case, on how to choose between a Roth IRA, a regular IRA, and a bunch of other information. Similarly, I can check here and get information about a home offering. Money provides users with seamless access to a great deal of information located on the World Wide Web. Now let's run Microsoft money on the computer with a government version of Windows 98. I will click on Microsoft Money 98. It will launch. As you can see, it will look very much like the other screen that you saw, but now if I click on the information links, we get this error message that says, "unable to open this Internet shortcut. The protocol HTTP does not have a registered program." So again, this product that was working properly under Microsoft Windows 98 that would be expected by customers to work well under Windows 98 does not operate now because the removal program deleted integrated Internet functionality that the money program expected to be present. once again, even if Netscape Navigator were installed on the government version of Windows 98, all of these programs would still be disabled as I have demonstrated. In summary, I have demonstrated the following deficiencies in Dr Felten's program for removing Web browsing from Windows 98: first, after the program is run, Internet Explorer system services and Web-browsing functionality still remain in Windows 98. All of the code that does the work of Web browsing is still present. The technology has just been partly hidden, leaving some Internet web-browsing functionality available to customers. Second, the program degrades the functionality of Windows 98 even in ways not related to browsing the Internet. finally, Dr Felten's program breaks some applications designed to run on Windows 98 harming consumers who expect those programs to run and have full functionality on Windows 98. SECOND VIDEO A second video was apparently produced during the evening of 26 January, after Allchin had been deposed again. "My name is Jim Allchin, and I'm going to demonstrate that in the DoJ version of Windows 98, it is still very easy to access Web browsing even after Dr Felten's program has been run on the system, proves that Web browsing is still fully enabled, simply hidden in some cases. what you're seeing before you is the screen of the Compaq Presario, a machine that we purchased brand new on Monday, the 25th, and I personally set this machine up and connected it. I went through the installation as defined by Compaq.” If Maritz is a Microsoft mastiff, Allchin turned out to be a tenacious terrier with a soft under-belly. His legal minder was Steven Holley, a lawyer who has himself been compromised in an earlier episode of the US versus Microsoft saga, when he was caught making inappropriate remarks about the former antitrust chief, Ann Bingaman. Holley wanted to create the impression that Allchin's testimony was correct to the very last detail, and made a great point of a change to what he called a hexadecimal notation – except that the location of a patch was not a hexadecimal number. Holley wanted to show a series of videotaped demonstrations, but David Boies successfully objected to extracts from one by Gates from the 7 December 1995 Internet strategy day. Boies pointedly noted that "Gates, obviously, is not available for cross-examination" as to the truth of what was said, so the whole tape of Gates' remarks had to be submitted. Microsoft also wished to submit part of an email chain, and was told by Judge Jackson to offer the whole chain. Likewise, a redacted (censored) exhibit was not allowed. The video demonstrations were no doubt intended to propagandise Judge Jackson, but as things turned out, they became the demos from hell. So far as the Gates' extract was concerned, it was perhaps an attempt to rehabilitate the great leader after the appalling extracts from his deposition, but it was doubtful if he was yet eligible for parole. The remaining demos were of Windows 98, by Joe Belfiore; "integration" by Dave Fester; an item on Caldera and BeOS by "Vinod "Halloween" Vallipoli (yes, him again -- it turns out that he is the technical assistant to Allchin, so that the Halloween documents were from Allchin's stable); Yusuf Mehdi on third-party developers; and the last video by Mehdi on Felten's removal program. The crux of the messages was that "Internet Explorer is a set of operating system components deeply integrated with Windows." The demonstrations of searching using Navigator, Caldera's Linux distribution, and BeOS by Microsoft staff were truly bizarre: they should have been undertaken by the staff of each vendor. In the demos, Microsoft made a point of gloating that Netscape could not create a short-cut so that there could be automatic re-dialling if the line went down. But as Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale pointed out many times in his testimony, Microsoft withheld the technology out of spite for not agreeing to Microsoft demands that Netscape move out of the Windows browser war – but of course this was not mentioned in the video. Microsoft tried to make a big issue of the browsers included by Caldera and Be being "integrated", but what other companies do is not an issue in the present case. The issue is whether it is anti-competitive for a monopolist to tie products in this way. Microsoft's continual "they all do it" defence is solely aimed at an audience beyond the courtroom, because the judge will not be taken in for one moment by it. Microsoft used a fallacious argument in trying to suggest that if Microsoft did not include IE code in Windows 98, a developer would have to "develop all the code that does this work". Microsoft could equally make the code available to developers if it wished (and it does in fact do so in some cases). The most contentious demo was of the Felten prototype program to remove browsing capability from Windows 98. There was no question that Microsoft deliberately misconstrued the purpose of the program, by pretending that it was unable to achieve an objective that was not claimed. It is still not wholly clear what has happened, although events in court recently point very strongly to Microsoft producing false information to the court. Boies appears to have had some advanced warning that there was something fishy about the videos. Maybe the DoJ has a mole in Redmond. More likely, the DoJ had a copy of the videos and Felten and his boys had looked at them. In any event, he wanted all the drafts or versions of the videos, which were produced in-house by Microsoft Audio-Visual. Allchin admitted that Microsoft lawyers had been involved in preparing the scripts. Boies replayed short extracts and quizzed Allchin mercilessly. His first extract was where Allchin was describing "the rich experience that comes from integration". Allchin wasn't sure if he remembered the section, which proves that hype not only does not work, it is also very forgettable. Time after time, after an extract of some vaunted feature, Boies asked Allchin "If you took a Windows 95 machine without any integrated IE technologies, and you added a stand-alone downloaded off of the Web or bought at retail IE 4, you would get the same rich experience that you say you got here?" Each time Boies posed a similar question, and for a total of twenty times, Allchin had to agree that the same functionality could be obtained by loading Windows 95 with IE4. Boies savoured the phrase "same rich experience" each time, and made his point very well indeed. Boies had his victim eating from his hand: Boies: And am I correct, sir, that a user with the original version of Windows 95 to which IE 4 was added, the retail version of IE4, would get the same experience from this deep integration as the windows 98 user that is described here? Allchin: Of course, because IE replaces all those files. It becomes almost Windows 98. Boies: And that's what you mean by "deep integration"; correct sir? It was an ambush. Judge Jackson undoubtedly got the message, since he asked his own confirmatory questions. Allchin responded to one by repeating that Windows 95 with IE4 was "almost Windows 98". They'll love him in Redmond for that. It does not seem to have been stated that Microsoft's way of updating Windows (and providing bug fixes with as little information as possible) by distributing code with IE, provides evidence for IE being a separate product. There is no more devastating way to destroy the credibility of a litigant than to extract a confession in this way. Legally these colloquies were far more valuable to the DoJ case than the probable misrepresentation of the Felten removal test. It was strange that Allchin did not know if IE4 was sold at retail, which indicated that his knowledge of Microsoft policy ("forever free") was wanting, but at least he did step around the trap that Boies had set. Having done with the videos game, Boies went to the toy cupboard and found some emails. The most devastating one from Allchin, which has been trailed extensively, was "My conclusion is that we must leverage Windows more. Treating IE as just an add-on to Windows which is cross-platformed loses our biggest advantage: Windows market share." It was misleading for Allchin to suggest that the O'Hare work "by a small team" became IE1, without mentioning that Microsoft had failed in its own effort to produce a browser, and bought the rights from Mosaic. Allchin was not the only person blurting out things that did not suit later policy. Ben Slivka (who replaced Philip Barrett who subsequently testified that in October 1994, Microsoft had no plan to add a browser to Windows 95) was deposed: Question: Was it your testimony last night that the Web application platform was a threat to the Windows operating system? Slivka: Absolutely. Q: Was integrating the browser into Windows a response to that platform threat? Slivka: Yes. Boies pointed out that Felten's work was concerned with proving a concept, not producing a commercial product. Microsoft has erred by treating his program as some rival code when it should have thought laterally. Boies said he wanted to test the assertions on the tape for accuracy. Boies asked Allchin if Be had approached Microsoft about porting IE to BeOS, but Allchin said he did not know. At the end of the day, a worried John Warden, Microsoft's lead attorney, asked the judge to rule on his motion about conversations with witnesses under cross-examination. Warden's reason for asking was extremely clear: Allchin was blowing it, and Warden wanted to do some damage limitation. Judge Jackson was brief: "Insofar as it involves the testimony of the witness, the motion is denied." It would have been a career-threatening move for the Microsoft legal team to disobey this order, and there was a danger that the DoJ might secretly attach its own minder to Allchin overnight, or Allchin might break down and confess under cross-examination that he'd chatted to lawyers. Witness protection is a two-way street. The next day, Boies started quietly, getting Allchin relaxed by feeding him easier questions about a problem of running Microsoft Money after Felten's program was run. Be and Caldera were also discussed. Boies then fed Allchin some more questions about the Felten program testing, in which performance degradation was put down to the result of having run Felten's program. With some freeze-frame shots, Boies got agreement from Allchin that frames with "Microsoft Internet Explorer" in the title bar showed that Felten's program had not been run, whereas if the title bar had "Microsoft Windows Update - Windows 98", the program had been run. The hopeless Holley even helped his client into the trap that Boies was springing by reading one of the problematical title bars. Allchin had to confess: Allchin: But from what I'm seeing here right now, I believe that that was done on a pre-Felten system, although the point still stands. He has performance problems and the Windows update doesn't work, but I believe, from what I'm seeing here, they filmed the wrong system. Boies: And when they were filming the wrong system and they were purporting to show the degradation and how long it took, they were showing how long it took on a Windows machine without the Felten program being run, correct? Allchin: I can't be 100 per cent sure. I'm going to have to go back and look at it. Boies pressed home the point as to how Allchin had vouched for the accuracy of the video demonstration, and pointed out that any slowness was due to Windows 98. Allchin's lame excuse was that "They probably just filmed it several times and they ended up filming it – you know, grabbing the wrong screen shot." Allchin unwisely said: "To some degree all this doesn't matter..." to which Boies flashed back: "Mr Allchin, you say it does not matter. You do understand you came in here and you swore that this was accurate?" Things moved from bad to worse, and there was a rumour of a fat lady waiting in the wings. Allchin had testified that the tests were carried out on virgin machines with just Windows 98. He blundered on: "I mean, the truth is that, you know, having Office installed, or whatever, I consider to be, you know, not a big deal." Well, Office is a good deal too big, and PC s running it are known to be sluggish. There was more to come. Allchin was forced to admit that Microsoft had run tests several times and had altered the Registry settings, so that the machine was no longer a virgin. Boies then went on to Windows "integration" with IE, asking what proportion was IE. After some fumbling, Allchin thought it was about 17 per cent, and it was strange that he knew this since IE is supposed to be totally assimilated. Allchin did think that most of the code was shared, but this seems questionable in view of the size of IE. As the cross-examination continued, it seemed as though Allchin meant that the most frequently executed instructions might reference shared code. Boies started questioning Allchin about the spreadsheet that had caused a legal tussle earlier in the week. Judge Jackson admitted it under seal, but Boies was able to ask some questions that suggested that it was a list of files in Windows 98/IE with some details as to whether they were common functions or specific to "my computer" or to browsing "home.ms.com". No wonder Microsoft had been so disturbed about the document. It was the recipe book for disintegration pie. Allchin confessed about an email to Paul Maritz: "What I wrote here was wrong." It seemed likely that at an earlier stage, Allchin had advocated IE4 being separate, but was overruled, so he hastily toed the party line. He volunteered he had discussed the email with Microsoft attorneys. 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