Email this article
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 18, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------EDITORIAL:
The Love Bug
The ILOVEYOU worm that spread through computer systems around the globe reveals monopoly capitalism's untenable contradictions.
The Love Bug, as the media are now calling it, spreads by accessing email address books and then sending a copy of itself to every address in the book. Damage from the Love Bug and its variants are estimated at $5 billion, and could reach $10 billion before it is completely eradicated, according to the U.S. firm Computer Economics.
What is almost never mentioned in the media reports is that the sole reason for the destructive power of the Love Bug is Microsoft's monopoly. Why are all the big media engaged in what is really a cover-up for Microsoft?
While media reports leave the impression that all computer systems were vulnerable, only computer networks running Microsoft's Exchange software as the mail server and Microsoft Outlook as the user email program were able to spread the worm to other systems around the world. For example, organizations that use Outlook for email but use Linux mail servers may have had individual infections from incoming emails, but they could not spread the Love Bug to others.
The Love Bug takes advantage of a "feature" that is only available on all-Microsoft systems.
It is Microsoft's global domination that made the Love Bug possible.
Microsoft has completely socialized computer systems worldwide. The chaos inherent in competition was reduced by the standards imposed by Microsoft. Many technological developments would have been impossible without the imposition of monopoly standards.
But because of the private ownership of the means of production, there is a Microsoft dictatorship that leaves everyone vulnerable.
Stratfor (www.stratfor.com)--an Internet-based "intelligence consulting firm" for U.S. businesses--pointed out Microsoft's imperialist role in a May 1 report on "The Geopolitics of Microsoft":
"Microsoft has helped spread American culture, the use of the English language as the new lingua franca and given the United States unparalleled dominance in computing around the world." The report concluded that it would be against U.S. business interests to break up Microsoft.
That's not necessarily the conclusion of the biggest U.S. business interests--the military-industrial complex. The May 9 Wall Street Journal reported that Pentagon "think tanks" have emerged as primary proponents of "diversity in computer operating systems," saying that it is necessary just like biodiversity is necessary for the environment. That means breaking up Microsoft. Such diversity is the only way to prevent global disasters like the one created by the Love Bug.
The fact is that Microsoft has already conquered world computer systems, and the new technologies introduced by the Internet have changed the playing field so that Microsoft cannot dominate as it has in the past.
The new technologies will lead to new monopolies. The only way to break the dictatorship of monopolies like Microsoft is to break private capitalist ownership. Workers' control of the already-socialized systems is the only way to end this ruthless cycle of monopoly dictatorship.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)HOME :: U.S. NEWS :: WORLD NEWS :: EDITORIALS :: SUBSCRIBE :: DONATE