The so-called California Group, the hardcore collection of states attorneys general who fought Microsoft's antitrust settlement down to the wire, have filed a brief with the court overseeing the case questioning the effectiveness of the consent decree.

They have no remedial suggestions however but would be happy to discuss what, if any, changes the court might consider at the next status conference in September 11, two months before most of the remedial regime imposed by the court on Microsoft expires.

What they would like is to get oversight of Microsoft extended at least so Vista's impact on the marketplace can be assessed. They don't trust Microsoft not to go back to its old ways and worry about symptoms like Google's recent complaint about Vista search.

Besides namesake California, where many of Microsoft's enemies live, the group includes Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Florida and Utah, also nominally part of the group, didn't sign the "Report on Remedial Effectiveness," which quotes an antitrust scholar who calls the consent decree "one of the great debacles in the history of public antitrust enforcement, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."

The report basically says nothing has changed: Microsoft still owns the desktop and more than its fair share of browsers. It's now a major force in servers and the government's protocol-sharing middleware scheme didn't work because the Linux community can't afford the royalties and because Microsoft didn't provide proper documentation on time.

All the middleware provision seems to have done, the brief says, is "promote the diffusion of Microsoft technology into mixed networks rather than to provide alternative platforms that the court identified as [its] remedial purpose."

What the group wants to talk to the judge about is the fact that "Microsoft's commingling violation has not been effectively addressed, Microsoft remains in possession of the fruits of its violation, and the competitive conditions antedating Microsoft's anti-competitive conduct have not been restored."

As a takeaway, the paper praises the technical committee as playing "an important role in enforcement matters beyond what it had envisioned" and as having "seized the initiative on numerous projects on which Microsoft should have taken the lead" and as having been "instrumental in extracting the maximum remedial benefit from the Final Judgment."

The document displays a naïve and static view of market dynamics and development and stands as a good example of why courts and government are not in charge of technology.

As you might expect, the Justice Department, whose handiwork the consent decree was, thinks the settlement succeeded in promoting competition.