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Microsoft Flouting DOJ Settlement?
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is not adhering to the terms of its deal with the DOJ. Specifically, there are allegations that it is "trying to license key pieces of its technology at inflated rates" and "thwarting its antitrust settlement with the federal government". They're charging $100,000 just to see technical info about their communication protocols, and you only get $50,000 back if you decide you don't want to license them. Whoda thunk?"
because I don't abide by their EULAs either, so it all settles out.
I am Jack's utter lack of surprise.
oh shock horror, never saw that one coming.....
i mean really, what did you think they were going to do.
S
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
So, we pay $100k to find out they have no communication protocols, and only get $50k back? I'll charge half that if anyone's interested in seeing my communication protocols.
How can you suggest such a thing? There's absolutely no evidence that Microsoft isn't just as well behaved as every other American corporation, such as Enron, WorldCom, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, etc.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Thats a scandalous acussation! Microsoft are kind and gentle, and they certainly learnt their lesson after the nasty talking to the DOJ gave them after that whole "monopoly abusing" thing. Balmer and Gates are such nice men and they wear such nice suits, how could you even think of making such a slanderous comment?
No, I'm sure they're just misunderstood.
They even had to set up a committee internally to make sure they didn't break the rules. Surely the DoJ wouldn't have given them such a limp-wristed settlement if it didn't believe they were honest people.
Oh hang on its only George Bush who lives in a 1950s "Wonderful Life" style world.
Is ANYONE suprised by this move ? M$ have also just bought some AV software, umm will they bundle theirs into the OS to drive other people away, its a shot in the dark, and against the DoJ settlement but it might just be true.
M$ know that with the massively pro-business pro-monopoly president there is right now that they have AT LEAST 5 more years before a President who might go after them. Add 5-10 years of DoJ cases and they might get the next numbskull to let them off.
The only hope for the US Software industry is if the EU crackdown.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
"I'm Shocked! Shocked!"
I bet DOJ used Windows Update. Now, none of their computers work. That would explain their lack of follow-through in this case.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
Except of course that part of their settlement for abusing their monopoly position was a court order that they open all the information on their protocols to the general public.
In a market with actual competition that would work. Unfortunately Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, which puts it out of the supply/demand argument as they supply what they want, to whom they want, under whatever terms they want, to the detriment of an open market.
No, this is not a big surprise to the very large crowd of people who think MS got off lightly for what they have done.
The significance, though, is that there are still a couple of states (WV, MA, I think) holding out on the DOJ settlement.
Their case could be made stronger if they can show the settlement is not working properly.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
So this is what happens to our best and brightest programmers.....
This should not come as a surprise Judge CK and Justice both bent over backwards to please Billy since Ashcroft and others could only recuse themselves from direct involvement because of the contributions they received. This does not mean they did not have a hand in giving Microsoft the power to act as though there was no settlement, it merely means that the settlement was thus: Microsoft is free to be a monopoly and self-enforcing monopolies never can do anything wrong (or at least they SEE no evil, HEAR no evil, and SPEAK of no evil that they are involved in).
Really, who won the case? Not the people, well they did, but the newly elected administration had that overturned and gave Microsoft everything they ever wanted and then some.
Crash, bang, pow! The sound of companies being crushed, jobs being lost, and consumers losing more and more to the power of a global monopoly that is in fact a de facto government taxing American citizens on a national basis every time our government (once elected - now paid) buys from the Nation of Microsoft.
Do we really want more media consolidation - must be, someone in the government says its cool for one company to own everything and offer us the same crappy meals every day.
To borrow a line we might have to get used to""You will work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day."
Thanks to Justice and Judge CK the animal is free to prowl and kill whatever it wants. Nice, real nice.
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
Wow! Paying someone to steal your intellectual property. Thank you Microsoft. Now I understand all that innovation.
At the urging of the Justice Department, Microsoft will now allow engineers from potential licensees to visit its headquarters to examine more technical data. But the rivals say the company is requiring the engineers to sign such strict confidentiality agreements that their ability to work on related products for their employers would be hampered.
"Basically, I'd have to shoot the engineers when they came back," said one irate company executive.
Wow! Paying Microsoft to make your employees unuseable. Thank you Microsoft. Useful employees were a burden anyway.
Yeah, I'd do the same thing if I were forced to send my engineers to visit Redmond...
Anyone have a list of the protocols under discussion? The article refers to there being 133 protocols in the package, and there are claims (refuted by MS) that some of them are in the public domain (by which I suspect they mistakenly include open source solutions like Samba).
So, what protocols are they? I'm certain that a large number haven't been externally engineered, but I'd be willing to bet that quite a few have, or that they originate from public protocols that MS has since modified.
'"We have made progress with Microsoft," one official said, adding that the department is following up on complaints from other firms. "We have gotten them to make changes."'
This just shows how scared the DOJ is of MS. I mean if I got taken to court for not paying back a loan and the court ordered me to pay £x back per month and I only paid a fraction of it back per month do you think they would say "We have made progress with graspee. We have gotten him to pay back some of the money he owes." ???
graspee
Usually, I'm an anti-MS zealot, but this time I agree with you. It's not a fee, it's a deterrent. I would love to get a copy of MS's protocols so I could write a proper exchange connector for unix. But I don't have a hundred grand to pony up, so it ain't gonna happen.
This isn't unfair competitive practices, this is competitive practices designed to protect their trade secrets. They are essentially showing the holy grail of linux computing, so why shouldn't they charge an admission fee?
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Ah stuff it, you whiny bastard. They are a *convicted* monopolist. The opening of the protocols is part of the *verdict*. Ponder this quote:
"There is something fundamentally wrong with requiring Novell to pay large sums of money to access information that the court determined Microsoft illegally withheld," said Ryan Richards, a Novell vice president and deputy general counsel. "Microsoft breaks the law and Novell pays for the remedy."
So no, $100.000 is not reasonable, it's extortion.
How does this effect reverse engineering projects such as Samba (smb) and Gaim (MSN)? Is it free if you can figure it out using a packet sniffer?
----
so why shouldn't they charge an admission fee?
Oh I dunno, maybe because the DOJ settlement said they had to? Or is that not a good enough reason for you?
It is mentioned in the article, and in some comments before mine, that the DOJ seems to be scared of Microsoft. Indeed, the behaviour even seems to suggest it - they are behaving very trepidatiously, despite their obvious power within the US.
My question is, why are they scared? What have they to be scared of?
Oh, they manage. They financial statements show that they spend just over $1.1bn per quarter on R&D.
Because people will buy it regardless? The effort is not primarily to make their "stuff" better, but to develop new stuff - think X-box, DRM, etc.
Hi!
why the hell would i pay $100,000 to look at freebsd code?
Microsoft couldn't care less about the law. They just do whatever they like, and if they get a settlement, they implement THAT however they like. Just plain arrogance.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
From the article:
Microsoft requires companies that license the protocols to be audited -- at their own expense, by a third-party auditor selected by Microsoft -- to ensure that they are only using them for appropriate purposes.
What are "appropriate purposes" when it comes to protocols?
Auditor [pointing, exasperated] And what the hell are you using that one for?
Company rep Oh, we keep donuts in that one.
Auditor And that one?
Company rep Oh, that one is forced into the green button on the air-conditioner, otherwise it keeps switching itself off.
Auditor That one?
Company rep Oh. Erm. Sorry. We ran out of cat litter.
Auditor I am truly shocked at your inappropriate use of MS protocols! You'll be hearing from Bill Gates about this!
The fact is that I can browse a few news sources and come up with significantly more fascinating, interesting, and topical stories than this. It is also news that Peoplesoft rejected Oracle's bid. It is actually BIGGER news than this MS junk.
There are a good one hundred technology/business stories a day. Singling out this one is not just politically motivated, it is childish. That is my point. If you really think slashdotters are into business related technology stories, then you need to report on the big stories, not the ones that make your "competition" look bad. This is fundamental editorial ethics.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
open all the information on their protocols to the general public.
Are you sure about that statement? 'General Public'?
I thought it was more like they could offer it to different people for different rates. Can you backup the 'general public' claim?
Actually, It's a Wonderful Life came out in 1946 directly after WWII and though had a happy ending, pretty much dealt with the shaddy side of the business world and one man's despair (and near suicide) because of it.
It is a great movie and stands as one of the classics.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
My biggest worry isn't the "Nyah - so we'll show you our stuff as required by law but charge so much for it - nyah", but the way they've gone back to buying/threatening anybody who might compete with them.
Take the whole Virtual PC thing. I switch from Linux to OS X on the desktop, and get all excited about Virtual PC - now for those few Windows Apps I *need* to run (like Sharkport for my PS2, Ultima VII in DOS mode - you know, the important stuff), I can have that.
Then - Microsoft buys Connectix. OK, I say. Then RealPC announces "We're comin' back - and better!" I see light at the end of the tunnel. If RealPC can do its "direct hardware technology" right, I could even play Half-Life I (and hope that HL2 gets ported to OS X) in a Virtual Window (yes, I'm sure I'd have to grab more RAM, but it's the *potential* of the idea).
Nope - MS is sueing them now too.
That's the part that worries me - the buyiing/sueing of companies who even *look* like they might do something that MS wants (remember how they tried to buy Quicken, and at least that one was nixed?). At least during the DOJ trial they *tried* to act nice - but now that it's over, it back to the Bad Old Days of either buying somebody out, locking them out, or sueing them into oblivion.
Patience, I tell myself. Someday, maybe 50 years from now when MS is just another fair player in the market, this will all be looked backed upon and laughed, like Standard Oil and AT&T. Patience.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
We all know that MS is good at copying, but poor at actually 'innovating'.
Ironically, the reverse is usually true for OSS.
Yes, I know that better tech doesn't always win (Beta vs VHS), but if an OSS solution is found to this problem, MS can follow or get out of the way.
The key is to put the shoe on the other foot - force MS's compatabillity with OSS protocols, rather than the other way around. A tough road indeed, but one that we'd better get used to.
Look at Flash (not too long;), there was tech that was released by one company and went on to become a web standard. Everyone has the flash plugin, and if they don't, they can get it easily.
This was a tough story to write a comment to - it was like pointing up and saying, "The sky is blue! What can we do?"
"But Microsoft was allowed to charge for the protocols because servers were not part of the antitrust case. " Even thought this is Slashdot, at least try and read the article. That goes for whoever modded this up as well.
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Like oil and water, Republicans and antitrust don't mix.
I worked in the state AG's office in the antitrust division during 3 AG's tenures. When we went from a Democrat to a Republican, we were told there were certain types of cases we were just not going to bring. Ever.
Now I am all for the American Way and for business making a buck. It ain't Romper Room out there. The Fed is supposed to level the playing field for fair competition. I guess "fair" can be defined several diferent ways, depending on who contributes to your campaign.
Write to those Congressmen, people. They are working on your dime.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
I don't know what it worse, being such a bald-faced liar to say those things, or to be the complete intellectual moron to believe those statements.
Rick Blaine: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Police Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[A croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Police Captain Renault: [sotto voice] Oh, thank you very much.
The DOJ settlement does allow for this. The problem does not lie in the fact that they are charging for the protocol inspection, but there are further terms which could be considered discriminatory. For instance, the independant audit at the licensee's expense with no assurance that the inspector is not reporting back extra information to Microsoft, or the severely crippling NDA which prompted one executive to say that "Basically, I'd have to shoot the engineers when they came back,". Now those are what the DOJ has to center in on, not some admission ticket price.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
they're not breaking the DOJ settlement unless you consider 100k fee unreasonable and discriminatory.
It is both unreasonable and discriminatory.
Unreasonable? Hardly, in a business world that money is peanuts.
That is irrelevant. They are supposed to disclose the protocols to competitors. The purpose is to level the playing field to competition. Anyone who is a competitor, such as an open source project, should be able to get the protocols.
It is unreasonable because the cost of providing this information is practically zero. They could put it on their web site if they were truly interested in complying with the DOJ settlement.
Discriminatory? Nope. As far as we know, they're asking the same price from everyone.
It is discriminatory. It is intended to discriminate against the biggest possible competitor that MS has ever faced. This is directly against the spirit of the settlement.
If asking the same price for everyone were all that mattered, then why not just ask for $1 Trillion? They would not be discriminating against anyone after all. In your world, this would not be unreasonable.
Is Ferrari discriminating against me because I'm too poor?
Irrelevant. Ferrari has not been ordered to provide you with transportation. Furthermore, the MS communication protocols are not a product you are buying. This is information that a court of law has ordered MS to provide to all competitors. I wouldn't have a problem if MS charged for the cost of media, or some minor cost tied to the production of the information. But again, producing this information, even in a very raw form, would cost very little. It could be widely circulated.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Slashdot must be the only place in the world where proof by Star Trek gets rated "Insightful."
I think that's all. Want your $50k back?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I don't think they will ever realize that.. mostly because for the most part I am pretty sure it's not true.
And just look to the Linux distros for proof.. I don't see a lot of them that come as just an OS.. It's OS, X, gcc and friends, web browsers, pims, media players, etc etc etc. And all wrapped up in one nice little bundle that can be installed all at once.
I am guessing most normal (non-geek) users of windows do use IE, why spend the time to download when you have a browser already there.. And I think a lot of geek type may as well, since soo many web sites are designed to work with IE and look like crap in Moz.
Why go out looking for a media player if you have one that works? People new to pcs would not know about winamp unless someone told them it rocked, so why would they go looking in the first place, not to mention winamp doesn't do video..
The long and short is, if they just sold windows without IE, Outlook Express, WMP, etc etc it would be harder to justify the cost, make microsoft apps less obvious, and make it so people had to CHOOSE to get their software instead of someone elses. Why would they want to do that??
This isn't unfair competitive practices, this is competitive practices designed to protect their trade secrets.
This is unfair competitive practices. The whole reason they are to disclose the protocols are the remedy the damage done to the competitive landscape caused by their past wrongdoing that they have been convicted of.
The communication protocols are not to be a trade secret. That is the whole point of disclosing them. Because Microsoft has unfairly leveraged a monopoly to create new monopolies they now have to open the landscape to competition.
I would love to get a copy of MS's protocols so I could write a proper exchange connector for unix. But I don't have a hundred grand to pony up, so it ain't gonna happen.
That is exactly why it is unfair. Don't you get it? Competitors are entitled to the protocols. Microsoft is free to compete on the merits of their product, not on the secrecy of their protocols.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
http://www.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.as px?JobID=b0e72d5b-89f2-41ed-bb86-36928c903514
MS hires bigtime for its legal department. It has a budget bigger than the DOJ and more experienced lawyers. Look at http://www.idg.net/english/crd_gates_888634.html
Bill "Nuke 'Em" Neukom built a 600 lawyer in-house team for MS. There are 9,000 lawyers in the DOJ. According to the 2003 Budget at http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/2003summary/html/atr.htm
The DOJ spent 100,000,000 on ALL cartel activity, not just MS.
The DOJ is outgunned.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Companies must put up $100,000 just to see the technical information about the 133 protocols, which helps a potential licensee determine if it wants or needs any of them. But if the company chooses not to license, it gets back only $50,000.
Somebody send a correction to the Washington Post. When making fun of an underskilled and overarrogant programmer or group of programmers, the correct derogatory spelling would be, "l33t protocols".
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Their reasoning was they didn't want corporations to become more powerful than the government, and hence, have influence over it.
BTW, if you think corruption is bad today, read all about Teddy, he started his political career fighting corruption that was taking place basically out in the open.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
This is way offtopic, but the history of this movie fascinates me. "It's a Wonderful Life" was released in '46, received mixed reviews, nominated for some awards, but sank into obscurity. It fell out of copyright and into the public domain in 1974. And because of THAT, TV stations, starting mainly with PBS, picked it up for FREE and started broadcasting it at Christmas. It became one of the most loved, most aired Christmas movies ever. All because it went into the public domain.
r eviews.colossus.net/movies/i/its_won derful.htmlo vies/wonderfu l_life.html
U TF -8&q=%22It%27s+a+wonderful+life%22+public+domain&b tnG=Google+Search
Well, until 1993, when some copyright sleight-of-hand pulled it out of PD.
RIAA? MPAA? DMCA? hello? is this thing on?
references:
http://slate.msn.com/id/1004242/
http://movie-
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
" The difference between Bush and Clinton is that Clinton is no danger anymore"
The difference is that clinton lied about his who stuck his cock into, bush lied about why he took us to war and killed tens of thousands of people.
War is necrophilia.
Generally, in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this. To capture the enemy's entire army is better than to destroy it; to take intact a regiment, a company, or a squad is better than to destroy them. For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.
Microsoft's tactics of decimation and delay benefit no one. They are needlessly beligerent, and have managed to make an enemy of almost everyone. In the process they have also earned, EARNED, a reputation for shoddy product at expensive prices.
This is no "brilliant" plan. It is the work of a thug who thinks that he can bully the entire world. News flash: the world at some point gets tired of this shit.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Once upon a time, President Clinton had to deal with a problem. That problem was that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC, which is pronounced "the ferk") had someone up and quit. Aw shucks. Who to get? Well, our fair President, against his better judgment, got a right wing fanatic from down south to sit in the FERC. Bummer. The poor guy was right in the middle of a good job with a kewl company--trying to get rid of all that public sector crap that carries high voltage power from place to place in Dixieland. Oh well. Duty calls.
Fast forward to May 1999. The California agency for dealing with the physical consequences of the absurd right wing fantasy of "AB 1280", circa 1998 had to route the willy-nilly purchased and sold electric power in California. However, just as forecast an uncharacteristic heat wave swept northern California. It was beyond miserable. Oh my. Why were so many power plants down for maintenance? Why all at once? Why was the schedule for downtime changed? (Psssst. Hindsight informs us that the weather forecast was "beamed in" to the decision making headquarters at Enron down there where the heavenly Governor Bush promised always to look the other way.) The price of a megawatt-hour suddenly went to $400 with no ceiling in sight, and I suppose Ken Lay came in his $700 pants that day. Immediately, the California government commissioned a study. Strangely, a thorough report came through raht quick. There was a murmer about someone gaming the system. With a few more highest level power crises short term, everyone survived in California in 1999. In 2000, the evil science was refined. By 2001, the racket was licensed extortion as is common knowledge. The President of the California Public Utilities Commission (Loretta Lynch) told her top lawyer to dig in and sue the lazy bastards at the FERC, whose notions of laissez-faire included sleeping at the switch while your best friends down south print money through electric wires, choke natural gas lines, game the market, gouge customers, and bankrupt decently managed retail power companies without recourse. Why? Because Bill Clinton wanted to be "nice" to those on his right. The FERC was perverted. Yes. It happened while Clinton held ultimate responsibility. Yes. You can hang this on Clinton. However, when Bush's friends on the FERC kept assisting the milking of the California electric rate payers, after a while the conscience got a little stronger (along with the public outcry that leaked beyond the "lost-to-the-Republicans-anyway" i.e., negligible-to-W.-anyway state of California). When that racket stopped screwing California on schedule, the bets placed at the Enron power/futures/weather casinos in Houston started to lose money for their customers--typically the house itself. Just then there was a Frontline piece on public TV. I watched it. Why was it that all Ken Lay would do was laugh?
Then came August of 2001, when Ken Lay was kind enough to free up the CEO chair for Jeffry Skilling. What a guy!
You know the rest of the story, but now you know the part that we should blame on Clinton. Let the egg drip slowly down your right wing face now. You asked for it.