EU/Microsoft Antitrust Case Delves Into Tech 181
oscartheduck writes "ZDNet is reporting on the Microsoft/EU case, and things aren't going too well for the software giant. The Commission is delving deeply into the technical issues surrounding the case. In addition to 'a record $617 million' that may well be leveled against the American monopolist, Microsoft is also standing accused of knowingly going forward with marketing practices 'that had already been judged illegal by U.S. courts when it was used on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.'" More from the article: " The founder of the Samba team of developers, which took years to create print and file server software that works with Windows, said his team is held back and playing catch-up. 'The tiny device I have here in the palm of my hand is the sort of product that could emerge if the information required by the Commission were available,' Andrew Tridgell said, holding a paperback-size storage server that he said could be turned into a work group server. Once it gives over the information, 'Microsoft no longer has a stranglehold over the world's networks,' he said. "
With Microsoft stock up 1.5% so far today... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:With Microsoft stock up 1.5% so far today... (Score:5, Informative)
Second, Microsoft has its thumb in over a hundred pies. Take a look at all of these news stories [yahoo.com], especially the one on profit estimates. This case won't be resolved any time soon and there are plenty of other things going on.
Re:With Microsoft stock up 1.5% so far today... (Score:2)
I don't know if worried is the term that best characterizes the general
Re:With Microsoft stock up 1.5% so far today... (Score:2)
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/042706-micr
It seems like... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's time to finish their sleezeball business practises once and for all.
Windows has become such a huge part of European infratructure that we can no longer rely on a shady corporation.
Re:It seems like... (Score:2)
Nice copy, but nothing to do with the issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Please note that at no point was Microsoft ever required to give out sourcecode. It was required to publish an API.
It was Microsoft itself that offered sourcecode (with licensing strings attached) just so it wouldn't have to publish the API specification. And perhaps also to confuse the issue ... so that half-informed people could make snide remarks about poor Microsoft being required to hand over their precious IP.
Re:It seems like... (Score:2)
This situation is more like airbus making the aircraft control radar and the airplanes, and then intentionally making it as hard as they can for other airplanes to show up on the radar system. Then in the event that someone makes a plane that can work with their radar system, they change things around in the next version so that it doesn't work anymore. And maybe they add a little code to detec
Re:It seems like... (Score:2)
Besides, plenty of Americans despise MS as well. Taking MS down in any fashion is similiar to taking down Capone on tax evasion. We know they are guilty of a lot, but we will go with whatever we can prove.
Stranglehold on the world's networks (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, we got to make up our minds here folks. Either Linux is prevalent in the server market or Microsoft has the stranglehold there too. You can't have it both ways...
Re:Stranglehold on the world's networks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stranglehold on the world's networks (Score:5, Insightful)
Open standards != Market Stranglehold (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, English could be considered an open standard and businesses from all over the world use the english language to communicate with each other regardless of who invented the language.
If English were proprietary and all businesses required it, every company that wanted to conduct business would have t
Re:Open standards != Market Stranglehold (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Open standards != Market Stranglehold (Score:2)
To take them literally or attempt to analyze is to miss the point being made entirely.
Re:Stranglehold on the world's networks (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft's stranglehold is on the client. Since everyone uses a client to get onto the network Linux can simultaneously be prevalent in the server market. Microsoft also has huge market share for large corporate file servers.
Re:Stranglehold on the world's networks (Score:2)
They have a stranglehold because of the Clients (Score:3, Insightful)
MS holds a grasp on the fileserver market for the simple reason that their clients, i.e. the systems that are dominant on the user end of a network, don't understand any network protocol but their own. And this is decidedly NOT an open standard.
That's where they have a stranglehold. And certainly not because their server syst
Fines don't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
Fines don't matter...MS just work[sic] it into the price of the OS, so the consumer ends up paying for it anyway. So it basically turns into a consumer tax on copies of Windows.
Fines are only one piece of the puzzle. First, where does the fine money go to? Is it used to promote alternatives? Second, the ruling opens MS up to yet another round of lawsuits from all the companies they illegally screwed over. MS will have to get out its checkbook and settle with all of them in civil litigation, thus providin
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
Software is labour based just as anything else yes. But why then hasnt the price
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
Precisely.
So what was your point again ?
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a common misconception, but economics says otherwise. Price and quantity are determined by the intersection of the supply and demand curves. At a higher price point, there's generally less demand to the point that MS loses money relative to what they make if they eat some of the price increase. Microeconomics says that the new equilibrium will d
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
At the end of the day, the money's gonna come from someone's wages, and it's not gonna be any of the
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
I don't have the time to do that kind of research, but there MUST be people out there who do...
Businesses that wanna stay legit I s'pose. If their expenses are up, the cost of their products/services to their customers are up. So you end up paying (lights go dim, voice goes echoy) in ways you don't even know!!!
Re:Fines don't matter (Score:2)
The majority of corporations in the modern world also pay. It would cost a company more to get sued for infringement than to just pay the MS-tax.
Finally, anyone with half a brain could come to the conclusion that MS is making Billions a year, so
International Law Question (Score:5, Interesting)
And how exactly does US law apply to EU courts? Do EU courts ever use US laws? That would seem utterly stupid to me.
Re:International Law Question (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know why this was modded as a troll.
This is a very valid point
I have seen several instances is U.S. politics where people in some circles stated "We should use law-foo because it is used in Europe so it must be fair". Only to hear the argument "Since when do we use E.U. laws in the U.S. and when does it matter what other countries do?"
So it seems very hypocritical on one side or the other
Re:International Law Question (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a big distinction between applying foreign law to questions where involved matters cross jurisdictional boundaries and using foreign precedent to guide the interpretation of domestic law in domestic applications, and between either of those and using the success of a particular foreign law to seek to have similar law enacted in your own country.
Your post, it seems to me, conflates all of these into the same issue, and then goes on to say that since some people argue on side, and some peo
Re:International Law Question (Score:2)
EU law roughly based on US law (Score:2)
Re:EU law roughly based on US law (Score:2)
I was wondering the same (Score:2)
Re:I was wondering the same (Score:2)
Does US law apply in the EU? No, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
But ... it seems that the EU has a healthy respect for the ability of US courts so determine matters of fact (as opposed to matters of law), which doesn't seem stupid at all.
If a US court, after about 3 years of discovery, expert witnesses taking the stand on both sides, concludes (as judge Jackson did) among other things that Microsoft:
- had a monopoly on desktop operating systems
- used this monopoly to prevent new entrants from entering the market
- lied in court when it stated that IE was needed for Windows to function (remember that video that was supposed to show Windows crashing after you removed IE? The video that was doctored to show the desired effect? Now I think that any ordinary person would have been prosecuted for perjury for pulling something like that, but apparently a company can get away with it.)
And if you further note that none of these findings were overturned on appeal ... then I believe it makes sense for a body such as the EU to take heed of it. And apparently the EU thought so too. How is this bad? What exactly is your complaint?
Re:International Law Question (Score:2)
The difference, I suppose, is that if a prosecuter presents a judge with a 9th Circuit ruling showing how the case should be handled, the judge is bound by it. If the prosecutor comes in with a French Court ruling, the judge can say, "Yeah, that makes sense," and rule accordingly. While the ruling itself would be bind
Re:International Law Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Or put another way... (Score:5, Interesting)
"We...submit that the (Commission) decision is an attempt to reconfigure (how the) market works by handicapping the leading player in perpetuity," Forrester told the court.
Perhaps "levelling the playing field" is a better way of looking at it. Look, I'm all for innovation and the right to make money off your ideas, but when it comes to computers and software, you have to bite the bullet and admit that people need choice. Admittedly, you want that choice to be your software or your server, and you can ensure that by dominating the market. Just as we've seen though, that makes you the target of everyone's wrath, whether from competitors, governments, or hackers.
So yes, Microsoft has a "right" to its intellectual property within reason, but when it come to interoperability, they need to rethink their stance. Ultimately they could conceivably eliminate most of their competition, but then that would spell the end of innovation on the grand scale, and force them to become even larger and more bloated than they are now. It's bad enough that one hand doesn't seem to know what the other is doing in Redmond, without consigning the rest of us to oblivion. MS needs to take its lumps, fix the interoperability/bundling issue, and move on.
Won't happen anytime soon.
Re:Or put another way... (Score:2)
This situation is entirely Microsoft's own doing. They kept on abusing
Re:Or put another way... (Score:2)
"The only way to make sure that MS isn't playing games to cripple competitors is to have access to the source code."
I am not sure if you are trolling or if you are simply uninformed. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt. At no time did the EU ever demand, or even request, that MS release source code of any type for anything. What the EU did demand of MS is that they
Re:Or put another way... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where I got ears, you know? Lawyers, like tech people, use a very precise language that only happens to have a larger overlap with the everyday language, so it isn't so much noticed as "tech jargon". But like your average RFC's "must" or "should", the word "frivolous" has a very precise and strong meaning when a lawyer uses it.
IANAL, but I judge this as a warning shot across the bows of the M$ lawyers. They might be in for a hard time personally if their arguments are indeed challenged as such and found to be frivolous.
Andrew Tridgell's Tiny Device (Score:1, Funny)
smoothness (Score:1)
FTA:
To achieve this so-called "interoperability," the Commission requires Microsoft to provide protocols--the rules of how to communicate between the so-called "client" computers and servers, and between the servers themselves.
But providing that information sweeps away Microsoft's intellectual-property rights, the company said.
"The Commission calls for functional equivalence," Microsoft lawyer Ian Forrester said, referring to the level of smoothness software needs to work well with Windows. "In orde
Re:smoothness (Score:2)
Microsoft isn't shooting itself in the foot when it breaks with standards and insists on it's own hidden protocols and such-- not until customers start refusing to buy MS products.
Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sick to death of ignorant fools who can't be bothered to do a little research to understand a topic. Then they come up with the most asinine analogies to prove their ignorant point. Why don't you do us all a favor and shut the fuck up and do some research before you spout off some half baked idea.
I'll give you a little help - the word is monopoly.
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:2)
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, so if I get this right, if I create an interface to provide interoperability between my programs, and my programs become popular enough that people want to connect to them for reasons I didn't intend (and don't want to have to support), why is it a good business decision to release an API for that interface?
First, MS did not "invent" the interface they copied an existing open standard then intentionally broke it. Second, it is not a "good business decision" but it is required by the law if one of the two products you are talking about is in a market you have monopolized.
It seems like that might shooting myself in the foot if I'm giving it to others who intend (as the linux community does) to supplant me with my own technology. To me, that's like bring a tank to war and then giving the enemy the keys to it.
No it's like bringing a tank to the mall and then arguing when the cops arrest you for breaking the law by crushing other people's cars and driving a vehicle banned on public roads. "But officer, my tank lets me park more easily and closer to the doors! I'm special and rich, I don't have to obey the laws! I did the same thing in Kentucky and after I bribed the governor they let me go!"
Please, if you make up anymore analogies, don't forget to include that you are a monopoly and do a little research on what monopolies can and can't do and why. Bundling and tying are illegal actions for monopolies because they remove all the benefits provided by a capitalist free market. You may be ignorant, but you can bet MS isn't and they decided breaking the law was a good business decision. No sympathy for the devil.
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:2)
But it isn't just MS's own protocols, it's what it does to other protocols and standards, such as the way it mutilated Kerberos or the way in which it undermined Java. It may very well be that not doing these things would have meant MS was shooting itself in the foot, but the interests of
You alone won't matter. (Score:2)
UNLESS you start to have a monopoly.
If your tool is so dominant in the market that it's virtually impossible for another company to actually compete with you, this is of course beneficial for you (hey, you could charge whatever you want, you could do whatever you want, and people would STILL have to buy your crap), but the general user base and the industry itself will suffer from it.
Private monopolies are by the sta
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:2)
Is it a good idea to open the phone networks, so that any company can sell you a home/mobile line. (PS, this results in cheaper phone calls)
It is a good idea to open up gas and electricity suppliers?
Are these good ideas? Maybe not for the busines who has the monopoly, but for the consumers of said products.
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:2)
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:2)
it's not the monopoly that microsoft is in court for. they are in breach of a ruling that the court made against them - the ruling is because of the abuse of monopoly power but this hearing is about them breaking an agreement they accepted
...sort of. Except this particular agreement basically said, "we'll stop breaking the law." You see, not documenting the API's between their server and desktop is a crime. It is tying, and monopolies are forbidden by law to do that. They are being fined for not stopping
Re:Forced forward compatibilty? (Score:2)
Actually the funny thing is (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Actually the funny thing is (Score:2)
Re:Actually the funny thing is (Score:2)
Actually if I remember correctly, squatting is perfectly leagal under Brittish Common Law. In fact, it goes so far as to protect the squatter from exactally what you describe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting#Squatting_i n_the_United_Kingdom [wikipedia.org]
So, chalk that up to another failed analogy on /.
I get the distinct impression... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have direct experience of Microsoft having none or inadequate internal documentation (see my latest JE for the full discussion - http://slashdot.org/~Alioth/journal/133996 [slashdot.org]). A quick precis is that we were working with the GINA in the NT 4.0 days, and we had an expensive support contract with Microsoft (IIRC, numbers bandied about were US $40K) because of what we were doing with the GINA. We actually ended up speaking to Microsoft developers - who couldn't answer our questions. We ended up reverse engineering the MS GINA to find out how to set everything up correctly. It was interesting to note that the publically available GINA documentation improved substantially a couple of years later when Windows 2000 came out. Perhaps the developers felt ashamed that their customers had to resort to reverse engineering because this expensive support contract fell flat.
Re:I get the distinct impression... (Score:3, Informative)
I get the distinct impression that Microsoft being tardy to release the documentation for their protocols isn't purely due to malice - or even not malice at all. I get the impression that things like this simply aren't documented INSIDE of Microsoft, and the original developers of the code have left, and MS staff are now busily trying to document a gigantic mass of source code.
That could be, but it is not any excuse for continuing to break the law. MS made billions breaking the law and when ordered to s
Re:I get the distinct impression... (Score:2)
Had to Ask (Score:2)
"we were working with the GINA in the NT 4.0 days"
Was that the Veteran's Administration GINA?
You know, the VA GINA?
MjM
Re:I get the distinct impression... (Score:2)
There's no way they could've received EAL4 (see the product list [commoncriteriaportal.org]) without good documentation. The CC have a very strong focus on documentation and EAL4 is not something you'd get with shoddy and incomplete docs.
Now I haven't studied the evaluation target, so I can't say for sure just which APIs it includes and which ones not. Also note that the certifications are for 2000, 20003 Server and XP only and your experience predates those, so yes, M$ has probably cleaned up shop.
Mircrosofts expert reports point the same way (Score:2)
There were 2 main replies to my post:
- one stating that in all probability the protocol wasn't so much d
Re:I get the distinct impression... (Score:2)
Customer was reporting some odd behavior when they were restoring "damaged" system files, and I confirmed that the same thing happened in our test environment, but that the behavior ran counter to Microsoft's documentation of how WFP worked.
Thank god for Sysinternal's Filemon. I basically had to reverse engineer it myself. Because I had called Microsoft suppor
Re:I get the distinct impression... (Score:2)
You hit the nail right on the head. MS does NOT have documentation for this stuff. And Ethereal has saved the f'n day AFAIC.
MS should be required to setup a "Network Interoperability Compliance" department. Basically they're required to hire a tech who answers queries by third party developers.
For example, let's say I'm writing an authentication module for some XMLRPC service on a Unix machine and for so
Thank God for the EU courts (Score:5, Interesting)
Thankfully the EU has some *balls*, and is not emasculated by the cult-of-monoplists that has shredded the integrity of the US government.
Hopefully, the massive inflation that is snowballing due to price-gouging in the oil industry and the resulting collapse of the real-estate balloon market will shock the US populace into sweeping the Republicans out of both houses of Congress while they clean out the White House.
Then there will be a chance that the US Dept. of Justice will get back into the business of enforcing the law.
It is my dearest fantasy to believe that I will someday see "Ballmer and Butthead" being led off to jail in handcuffs.
Re:Fuck the EU and Blame Bush for everyhting is BS (Score:2)
Yes he is, if idiocy by your terms equals difference of opinion.
"The basic themes of the Association of Useful Idiots of which you belong are as follows-
Bush is the root of all evil and is simultaneously a stupid man incapable of anything worthy while at the same time so brilliantly evil holds sway over all aspects of our lives."
Bush has done very much bad things i
Re:Fuck the EU and Blame Bush for everyhting is BS (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you crazy??? (Score:2)
Are you kidding me? You don't fix the country by taxing the people MORE. Who do you think pays the difference between 15% (now) and the 60% you propose?
It's us! Guys/gals like you and I. Along with the "fat cats" you want to slaughter, you take out a lot of people. If you own ANY stocks or have (almost) ANY retirement fund of ANY kind, then you are affected. And you want to take an extra 45% of MY money?
Things certainly need fixed. But thi
Re:Are you crazy??? (Score:2)
Re:Are you crazy??? (Score:2)
And not to be a total dick but I HAVE taken those courses and you are so far off with your "theory" that I can barely make sense of what it is you are trying to say. Read some books on how the capitalist economy works. Its far from perfect, to be sure, but you clearly
Re:Are you crazy??? (Score:2)
Re:Are you crazy??? (Score:2)
I put little stock in "the sky is falling" prognostications. People like you have existed for many more years than the stock market. And more recently, they said the exact same thing back in 1910, 1920, 1923 (they were close to right on this one), 1939, 1953, 1968, 1970-1978, 1983-1984, and a few times since then.
Re:Are you crazy??? (Score:2)
Re:Fuck the EU and Blame Bush for everyhting is BS (Score:2)
Youre so representtive[sic] of the idiocy that plagues 49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU.
If you want to go off on a rant about how some group of people are a bunch of idiots, perhaps you should try not to make quite so many elementary grammar and spelling errors. It makes your arguments rather comical. Further trying to group "49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU" as having one set
Re:Fuck the EU and Blame Bush for everyhting is BS (Score:2)
You have nothing else to criticise[sic] so you resort to semantical[sic] nonsense and critcise[sic] my spelling and grammar of which is rushed since I am at work and suck at typing!
I have plenty of other things to criticize; and I did. I just though I'd point out you are unlikely to be taken seriously when your spelling and grammar is worse than the average high school drop-out.
Let me clue you in, I do agree, generallizing[sic] populations is rarely something I would agree on but when it comes to BUSH[
Re:Thank God for the EU courts (Score:2)
Crude Oil is $70/barrel or about $1.40/gallon.
18 cents of the price at the pump is federal taxes
about 10-20 cents is state tax depending on your state
about 2-5cents/gal goes to the local station owner
That leaves $1.17 for the oil companies.
Exxon's profits last year were $36Bn, the largest of any corporation in human history. And that was with gas at $2.30/gal
This is just obscene. It's time to nationalize the Oil industry in the name of national security. Not to mention common decency.
Aw, dammit! (Score:3, Funny)
Hate M$ but... (Score:2, Interesting)
The only thing stifling innovation in the EU is the consumers themselves. If the EU doesn't like M$, they should not #$%@ing buy it. I bet if the EU used all non M$ products it would be few short months
Re:Hate M$ but... (Score:2)
Well I think that much of that is the point you are arguing against. The reality is that Micro
Re:Hate M$ but... (Score:2)
Fine, except that there is no choice of vendors. Microsoft use their considerable might to crush alternative vendors by unfair means.
What does it mean for EU to enable other people to enter the marketplace? Stiffle progress each time a competitor gets left behind? Rob the IP right of the leader just because he is good?
Except that none of these things apply to the Microsoft Monopol
Re:Hate M$ but... (Score:2)
Try Criticism of Microsoft [wikipedia.org] to start.
So, the people and not Microsoft have to find a way to get out of this fix.
Yes, and the people are being represented by the government [of the EU] in this case.
Re:Hate M$ but... (Score:2)
You may suggest this is bad for business because France, Germany and some other European countries aren't doing so well economically. But plenty of other European countries that just have more sensible labour laws, etc. are doing fine, like the Scandinavian countries and
about the value of SMB information (Score:2, Interesting)
Source in german from heise.de [heise.de]:
Re:about the value of SMB information (Score:2)
Sorry, but your translation is faulty. The use of the word 'seien' expresses uncertainty about the truth, it expresses the belief of the one making the statement, not a fact.
So the correct translation would be: "The information is not being kept secret because it is supposed to be valuable, but it is supposed to be valuable because it is being kept secret".
This is a significant difference, so I felt it needed correcting.
MartRe:Screw the EU (Score:2)
Re:Screw the EU (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not usually on Microsoft's side but screw the EU on this one. This is a simple case of extortion. I mean there is no downside to fine a US company. They are fining MSFT just because they can and its somewhat fashionable to do so.
So let me get this straight, you think the EU is fining MS for intentionally breaking the law, after MS was judged guilty of doing the same thing by the US courts, because it is "fashionable?" MS broke and continues to break the law. The EU has a history of going after all sorts of companies both European and foreign for breaking antitrust law. To whine when they apply it to MS, means you probably have bought into some of MS's ridiculous propaganda.
Your nationalism is just moronic. You might as well go hang out with all the rednecks that think Americans should be above the law when visiting other countries.
Re:Screw the EU (Score:3, Interesting)
don't buy any of Microsoft's bullshit but I still don't think this isn't going to help consumers anywhere. A Good example: The EU made Microsoft build a new version of XP without Media Player. I read something like .005% of consumers bought that version. Interesting, people in the EU really give a shit about this.
You have just committed the logical fallacy, "argument by association." Arguing that previous EU punishment was ineffective, thus the one we are discussing must also be ineffective is not a log
Re:Screw the EU (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think my logic is off here. Thats just my point. The fact is you have these politicans making technical decisions that they know nothing about.
This is the logical fallacy of "ad hominem attack."
Media Player was wrong and so is this.
This is a repeat of your "argument by association."
You haven't provided any logical reasons why you think this particular ruling will be ineffective. Stop wasting my time by avoiding the topic. Why do you think this particular punishment will not help in the way I described?
I'm for open standards just as much as the next guy. But arguing that a private company must comply with that belief is wrong.
I'm all for nonviolent resolution of problems, but trying to force convicted murderers to not illegally carrying concealed guns while on parole is just wrong.
What MS has done is against the law. This particular part of the punishment says they will stop breaking the law in this particular way. It isn't about open standards, it is about tying a product from a monopolized market with a product from a non-monopolized market. Ford can make tires and size they want with weird, proprietary ways to attach the rim to the rotor. If, however, they gain a monopoly on cars, they have to document that attachment and allow third parties to interoperate with it. Otherwise, they can just spread their monopoly into new monopolies, thus removing customer choice, competition, innovation, and all the other benefits of the free market. It is the law, and MS broke it, intentionally, under the belief that they would make more money doing so than obeying the law.
In theory, MS can comply with the law in another way, by removing all the secret interaction between their desktop and server completely. Just tear the functionality out of one of the products and they will be in compliance with the law, if not with their signed agreement for how they would stop breaking the law.
MS business practices have been shady to say the least but this is the wrong way to fix that.
They haven't been shady in this case, they have been blatantly illegal as ruled by numerous court systems. Ordering them to stop breaking the law is definitely the way to fix it.
Is this the logic? 1) MS makes a shitty / poor documented product. 2) Everyone buys it 3) Sue MS until they fix it 4) Make some cash in the process.
1) You're right so far. 2) Wrong. MS coerces many people into buying it, by tying it to their desktop system, which is a monopoly and no one can do business without. 3) This isn't a lawsuit. No one is being sued. This is committing a crime, criminal law, not civil. The courts don't sue you for murder. They convict you, as they did MS. 4) Fines are very nearly the only punishment that can be levied against corporations. They could order them broken up into separate companies, but this is a step in the right direction.
You seem to be very misinformed in numerous ways. You should do a little research on this case and on antitrust law (both what it is and why almost every country has it in similar form). MS has not been convicted of making shitty/ poorly documented products. They've been convicted of leveraging their monopoly on desktop OSs to make consumers buy those products, even though they are shitty. The basic purpose of anti-trust law is to stop companies from abusing monopolies in ways that obviously harm consumers and markets.
Re:Screw the EU (Score:3, Informative)
Your faith in the good intentions of the EU Commission is likewise moronic. It is simply fortunate that our goal (of getting MS to open their protocols) is temporarily aligned with the goal of the Commission (extortion).
I think you are greatly oversimplifying the goals of the EU commission. None of them personally get any of this money you know. They are motivated by a desire to do their job well enough so that they stand a chance of promotion, by a desire to do the right thing, by political motivations
Re:Screw the EU (Score:3, Informative)
Sure they are following the rules they they set. Really tough to do that...
I think you're a little unclear on the concept of "rule by law." It's not like the people who convicted and are responsible for overseeing MS's punishment had anything to do with passing the laws under which they were convicted. Anthropomorphizing the EU is absurd.
How does the US Law have anything to do with this??
Because the US, the EU, and almost every other country in the world has laws that make what MS did a crime. You
Re:I just wish MS was forced to open it's 'standar (Score:3, Informative)
Problem is that so many of these 'standards' suck. Even our ubiquitous HTTP/1.1 standard has no automated test suite for clients or servers to tell developers 'Yes your client and/or server meets the HTTP/1.1 standard including WebDAV.'. Same thing with Samba, NFS, afs, etc... So we are all left with strange protocol handlers with exceptions for specific clients or obscure workarounds, and using the customers as b
Re:Is this encouraging or rigging the competition? (Score:2)
About SMB, it was not
Re:Is this encouraging or rigging the competition? (Score:2)
Well, there is this thing called Open Source where the users are its creators. Rest assured that there wouldnt be no wasteland.
Re:Is this encouraging or rigging the competition? (Score:5, Informative)
After reading a little about the case, my understanding was that the commission is asking Microsoft to publicize their protocol standards so that it encourages competition. As my understanding goes, competition is not based on knowing how your opponent does what he/she does; it is based on if you can do better than your opponent.
What you are missing is an understanding of anti-trust law. You're looking too much at the specifics and not enough at the law and the reason for the law. You should read up on anti-trust law if you want to truly understand the topic.
Here is a short and dirty explanation. In most jurisdiction it is legal to have a monopoly. Whether the monopoly comes about because you make an innovative new product, or the nature of the industry, or geography, or some combination does not matter. Having gained a monopoly, you have done nothing illegal (necessarily). Once you have a monopoly, however, the law restricts you from using that monopoly in such a way as to gain an unfair advantage in another market. My stock explanations almost always involve cheese for some reason. Say you gain a monopoly on televisions; all well and good and legal. Now you decide, I think "I want to open a business that sells cheese as well. Since everyone has to buy a television from me or go without (I have a monopoly) why don't I just raise the price on TV's $3500 and give away a free lifetime supply of my cheese with it." It's brilliant! The cheese need not be as good as the competition, nor do I have to be able to make it cheaper. People will buy it anyway, because they want TVs. And what of other cheese sellers? Most will go out of business.
What happened in the above situation? The new cheese seller did not innovate better or cheaper cheese. In fact they might have more expensive and less tasty cheese. Still they have taken over a market. What happened is they used bundling to to bypass all the benefits (innovation, lower prices, etc.) that are brought about by the free market. Worse, there is nothing stopping them from parleying each of their two monopolies into yet more monopolies. People realized this was a bad thing long ago, and simply passed laws preventing it, for the good of consumers and the state of the industries.
Moving right along, we come to tying. What if, instead of bundling the two products together (like cheese and televisions) we just tied it to another product. Say we made all the TVs detect anything in between them and the cable TV and stop working if they found something. And then we added a special (patented) connector to the TV that hooked up to a VCR. Since only our VCRs worked, we'd quickly own the VCR market as well as the TV market. Maybe that would be too unsubtle. What if, instead we used a secret, encrypted protocol for the remote control, so people who bought VCRs from other people had to have two remotes, while ours only needed one. And in addition, what if we added a special connector that plugged into our new telephones and turned the TV volume down when you picked up the phone (but only our brand of phones). Well, we wouldn't take over the markets right away, but we would have an advantage over our competitors. And maybe we could sell cheap and crappy phones and VCRs at higher prices, since we were the only ones that worked with the TV that easily. Is there anything wrong with that?
According to the law in almost every country, yes. Consumers should not have to pay more and use crappier phones and VCRs just to gain the benefits of having them interoperate with TVs.
MS is not tying TVs and VCRs. They are tying their desktop OS (monopoly) with their server OS (which is gaining market share and selling well). Their server OS is slower, multitasks more poorly, is more expensive, is less secure, is less stable, and lacks a number of very useful features other server products have. People still buy it though, because it is tied to the desktop OS monopoly by being the only server that can speak the secret AD and Exchange protocols.
Re:Is this encouraging or rigging the competition? (Score:2)
If consumers wanted Linux based PC, then there will be some vendor who will cater it -- supply and demand. The issue is that consumers don't make the Linux choice for various reasons.
Supply and demand does not apply when dealing with a monopoly. It is one of the aspects of the market that is bypassed. For example, I have personally signed off on machine orders for hundreds of towers, all of which would be running Linux or OpenBSD. That order included hundreds of Windows licenses, because the major OEMs h
Re:Is this encouraging or rigging the competition? (Score:2)
So, you do agree the market has locked in. And this is by choice of the market not because of MS (yes, MS may have twisted the arm in the deal, but the market still had a choice). Hence, it is the markets fault not MSs.
"Markets" don't make choices. Individuals within markets do. Players within a market who don't play by the rules (AKA laws). By your logic, just because the mafia held a gun to your head and forced you to buy a particular brand, you still had a choice. You could have stuck to your principa
Re:Is this encouraging or rigging the competition? (Score:2)
In short, as the consumer has already committed to the choice, the provider is leveraging the committment. So, why doesn't the consumer make a different choice?
I think you're oversimplifying. The point of a monopoly is that companies have no other choice. Whether you agree with it or not, the courts have found that most consumers have no choice but to buy Windows for the desktop. They need it to interoperate with file formats, it is the only option available in pretty much all stores, it is the only opt