Most Americans apparently don't support Microsoft settlement

A consultation exercise appears to indicate that most Americans don't support their government's anti-trust settlement with Microsoft.

In its latest court briefing, the Justice Department admitted that around 15,000 people had emailed to express opposition to the plan.

But officials say the exercise was flawed because a great many of the replies did not address the issue properly.

The consultation - required under federal law - was supposed to give the presiding judge a measure of popular opinion.

But, according to the government, a great many of the messages it received lacked the necessary "detailed substance". Of the 30,000 counted, 7,500 were in support of the settlement and 15,000 were against.

The rest were rejected because they failed to deal specifically with the settlement terms. Some of these featured anti-Microsoft invective, but no comment on possible punishments for its anti-competitive behaviour.

Others were completely off the subject, often containing either pornography or spam.

The government is legally obliged to reply to every respondent and publish the comments in the Federal Register - a process which is likely to take until the end of the month.

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is scheduled to review the settlement at a March hearing.

In the mean time, nine states are continuing to sue Microsoft to pursue more stringent penalties than proposed by the government.