Oh, Good, Here Comes the Justice Department

They did such a bang-up job with the Microsoft situation, I'm so glad to see that the Department of Justice is on the case! Now, if you read any of yesterday's grumpy rants, you know I'm not exactly a big fan of AT&T or of the ability of Federal agencies to improve, well, anything. Truth be told, I would LOVE to see the iPhone freed from AT&T.

But… this is just stupid. Check this quote out:

Among the areas the Justice Department could explore is whether wireless carriers are hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers, according to the people.

They specifically call out the iPhone. Wow.

Yes, the iPhone is awesome. Yes, it's a competitive advantage. I mean, duh! Of course it makes it harder for smaller competitors to compete. That's the whole damn point! Have we forgotten what a monopoly even is? It's hard to imagine how it could be illegal to enter into a two- or five- year exclusive agreement with the manufacturer of a phone that accounts for 1.1% of the mobile phone market.

1.1%?

Playing Monopoly by the Department of Justices rules would be no fun, because you'd only need one property before you have monopoly. To heck with requiring players to have 100% of the properties with the same color. If you've got more than 0% of one color, you're good to go. Monopoly, baby. Start building houses! One house is at least 33.33% of a color, so you obviously have a monopoly there!

God, this would be such a waste of taxpayer money. It's is a sad attempt by the Executive branch to appear responsive to negative public sentiment about wireless carriers without any real legal basis and without any intent to actually fix or even really change anything (how'd that split-up of Microsoft work out?). This is using a duct-tape as a band-aid and sticking it nowhere near an actual wound.