Remember the campaign to get US citizens to write in to the court with their opinions on the MSFT settlement? The DoJ got 30,000 responses, (7,500 in favor, 15,000 opposed, 7,500 "nonsubstantive" opinion pieces and a bunch of spam and form letters). Now they have to publish all of those letters in the Federal Register, which is gonna take 10,000 pages and cost $4 million — the Justice Posse is trying to get permission to do the whole thing on CDROM.
"These substantive comments range from brief, one or two page discussions of some aspect of the (settlement) to 100 or more pages, detailed discussions of numerous of its provisions or alternatives," department lawyers wrote.
Of those, prosecutors said only 45 were "major," based on their length and detail.
The Bush administration encouraged Americans to comment on the proposed settlement via e-mail, rather than fax or hard copy. It got what it wanted: 90 percent to 95 percent of the comments came electronically, the department estimated.
