Microsoft Stumbles Through A Tough Week Edited Video Hurts Company’S Antitrust Case

A difficult week for Microsoft Corp. at its antitrust trial grew more trying when the government discredited a video demonstration the software giant hoped would help recoup its credibility.

Microsoft played a new videotape at its trial Thursday, but it failed to include an important assertion from the original video that the government had challenged.

The company said the overall results vindicated its arguments that government efforts to disable Internet functions within its Windows software cause serious problems.

Microsoft recorded the new demonstration overnight Wednesday at its law firm here, under the scrutiny of government lawyers and computer experts.

The video showed an IBM laptop behaving oddly, causing strange crashes and unusual flashing screens in parts of Windows after the government modified it. “Right now, the system is in a very confused state,” Microsoft senior vice president James Allchin said during the demonstration. “It’s definitely not well right now.”

The video also showed several ways to browse the Internet despite government attempts to prevent it.

The government alleges that Microsoft illegally “tied” its Internet browser software into Windows, which forced consumers who use its computer operating system also to use its browser. It sought to modify Windows to refute Microsoft’s claims that its browser is inseparable.

Microsoft acknowledged that it was unable to duplicate one disputed segment that purported to show that the government’s tinkering caused its Internet software to run dramatically slower.

On the original video, another Microsoft employee said: “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 (government) program.”

But Justice Department lawyer David Boies showed that a title bar for the Internet software suggested Microsoft’s test actually used a version of Windows unaltered by the government.

When Windows was tested with the government’s changes, “you didn’t have this delay,” Boies charged.

Microsoft said Thursday it could not guarantee in its overnight tests that identical laptops achieved comparable connection rates to the Internet, which would have ensured a fair demonstration.

“The phone situation was a real mess,” Allchin said. He said on the new video that the slow Internet performance “has nothing to do” with the government’s changes.

But spokesman Mark Murray maintained that in the company’s previous tests, Allchin had “personally witnessed the degradation under lab conditions.”

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had criticized Microsoft’s earlier video demonstration as unreliable after Boies pointed out inconsistencies during a single four-minute segment during two days of dramatic courtroom confrontation.

Allchin eventually explained that Microsoft had edited together video segments of several different computers so it appeared a single computer was being tested.

Murray said Thursday that the flawed video had been intended as “an illustration of what we found in the laboratory.” Microsoft lawyer Steven Holley called it “now infamous.”

The trial resumes Monday.