Let's see those Bill Gates movies, says judge

Judge Robert Bork has called for the release of the videos of Bill Gates' testimony to the Department of Justice, arguing that if one Bill has to endure public exposure, then the other one shouldn't be allowed to hide behind confidentiality clauses. It is however doubtful whether Bill G's depositions would command quite as large an audience as Bill C's. Bork, a consultant to Netscape, says that the law clearly states that antitrust depositions should be made in public, as was argued unsuccessfully by various news media a few weeks ago. Although the judge in the antitrust case originally ruled in favour of public depositions, Microsoft successfully overturned this on appeal. According to Bork this was wrong, although he concedes that confidential material might still be heard in camera, which does sort of seem to undermine the whole thing - quite a lot of the material that has been spouted in connection with the various Microsoft lawsuits has already been scissored, and the good judge may just be accidentally calling for more chaos, more delays as the lawyers argue over what should and should not be public. But video is a subject close to Judge Bork's heart. In the 80s he was a Reagan nominee for the Supreme Court, but after a public filleting he didn't quite make it after all. One of the humiliations he suffered in the process was the public release of his video rental list. This was subsequently deemed to have been an unreasonable infringement of his personal privacy, and the 1988 'Bork' law was passed to stop such outrages in future. ® Click for more stories