aaron said:

This would require additional laws to be written.  So, do you have any examples of this?  Or is it more playground theorizing?

do you believe that microsoft doesn't employ lobbyists? because if you do, i believe that you are badly mistaken. but when it comes down to it, having laws written only one of the ways the big corporations operate... another way, which they find to be extremely effective, is to _threaten_ legal action. even in cases where they have very little chance of winning, their adversaries will often shirk from a court fight against such deep pockets. but you already know this. don't you?

So companies make money by hiring a bunch of accountants to keep busy, shuffling money to their competitors, and paying licensing fees gladly? 

well, they already _have_ the accountants... and yes, they pay their licensing fees "gladly", because that gives the system its legitimacy. and since -- even among their corporate kin -- they pretty much break even by this exchange, so they could forget the exercise entirely, except what it does is keep the little guy out in the cold. and _that_ is the big payoff for them, basically. it eliminates new competitors when they're little, and keeps all the cash in their kozy kountry klub... for the same reason, all the media companies have jacked up the price demanded when another entity wants to use their content in some other product. it's not a simple selfishness, because they have to pay _other_ companies as often as they _get_ paid. but what it _does_ do is "keep all the riffraff out"... all of a sudden, you need to be a big player to play. raising the price of entry for any new competitors is a well-known tactic in the world of big business. it is. they teach it in the business schools. they really do...

Just because a company joins forces with a competitor to defeat one issue, it doesn't mean that they are not in competition on everything else.

actually, aaron, it is much more accurate to say that just because they compete on the showroom floors doesn't mean they don't cooperate on everything else. the biggest myth of current-day american capitalism is that the corporations are "competing" against each other. the "invisible hand" of today's marketplace is that they all have come to an implicit agreement to soak the consumer, by charging the highest price they can, and not the lowest. in order to do that, you have to choke off new competitors, the ones who'd snare customers by not playing by that rule. so they find a way to kill them, by raising the cost of entry... -bowerbird