Judge Orders the Release of More Gates Testimony
Will Bill Gates play better than “Heaven’s Gate”?
That’s the question gripping legal and public relations strategists in the wake of a U.S. appeals court ruling Friday ordering the release of more videotaped testimony by the Microsoft chairman over the company’s objections.
Few expect Gates’ 20 hours of testimony--made in August--to do boffo box office; most expect a bomb on the scale of the ill-fated Hollywood western.
But a small army of people are already clamoring for the tapes, including archrival software developer RealNetworks Inc., which plans to make the tapes available via the Internet, according to an industry source.
“These tapes will play as well as the Senate trial of Bill Clinton--which is to say not very well,” said Jonathan Haller, an analyst at Current Analysis, an information technology research firm in Sterling, Va.
Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla said the company has not yet decided whether to appeal the decision, but he said the ruling was not unexpected.
E. Thomas Garman, a professor of consumer affairs at Virginia Tech University, believes Gates’ deposition will probably get repeated play on broadcast news outlets. And that, experts say, could be to the detriment of the world’s richest man, who has been uncharacteristically forgetful in the nearly eight hours of videotaped testimony that have been released thus far.
“Much of the country will be shocked to know that one of the most brilliant men in this country turns into a clueless Joe when put” under oath in a deposition, said Mitchell S. Pettit, executive director of the Project to Promote Competition and Innovation, a computer industry trade group made up of companies that oppose Microsoft.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has not yet decided how and under what circumstances he will make available the testimony of Gates and other officials.
But Jay Ward Brown, a Washington attorney who represented six news organizations seeking the tape, speculated that they are likely to be made available through the court clerk’s office in the same way other documents are released.
