By John Rogers
Andy Martin, the self-proclaimed founding father of the Anti- Microsoft movement and America’s first consumer advocate in cyberspace, held a press event in New York on Thursday to announce that his organization, The Committee to Fight Microsoft, was establishing a War Room to spearhead anti-Microsoft litigation nation-wide.
The press event amounted to Martin standing on the sidewalk on 67th Street in Manhattan behind a collapsible podium with a small sign that bore the name of his organization and talking to exactly two curious journalists (the other called me later to say he was giving the story a miss.)
Martin said he was now ready enter the next phase of his campaign against the Redmond, Washington software giant – establishing an office, preferably in a cheap space in New York, he said – from which to coordinate the attack which he has made his mission. Martin’s latest action was to file a personal antitrust suit against Microsoft two weeks ago which he describes as a guidepost or a beacon to others wishing to do the same.
The War Room is being established, Martin said, for three reasons; to help persuade others to file similar personal suits against the software giant; to provide formalized pressure as a counterbalance to deals which Microsoft may hash out with the Justice Department and the states; and to make these sort of cyberspace control issues a ubiquitous and undeniable part of political platforms, like gun control or abortion, for instance.
To that end, Martin is currently running for US Senate from the state of Florida (he claims a failed Senate bid from Illinois 20 years ago) and thinks he has a decent shot in the Republican primary. He admitted that his chances of winning the Senate seat are negligible, but sees it more as a test, to determine how far into the political spotlight he can bring technology issues.
Martin said he’s working on obtaining funding for his War Room from a Washington-based public interest group which he declined to name. He also declined to name any others who have worked closely with his organization, explaining that they’re all a bit gun-shy when it comes to Microsoft.
Martin is anything but timid and seems confident that he’ll be able to establish an office buzzing with other intrepid souls willing to hasten and shape what he sees as Microsoft’s inevitable downfall and regulation. You have to begin somewhere, Martin appears to have been saying with Thursday’s event, even if it happens to be the sidewalk on 67th Street.
At one point, Martin ran inside to fetch some documents from an office he was borrowing for the day. A woman walking past looked at the sign and asked of myself and the other journalist present, Are you The Committee to Fight Microsoft? No, I said, He just went inside for a minute…But he’ll be back.
