U.S. Faults Microsoft Licensing Compliance

An anonymous reader writes "In a written report card on how well Microsoft is complying with its 2001 antitrust deal with state and federal prosecutors, Justice Department lawyers said they might need the court to force Microsoft to act more quickly." The DOJ's court filing is online if you want to wade through it.

Comments

Re:You call this a capitalist society?

[sisukapalli1]

US is not a truly capitalistic country (look at social security, farm subsidies, bailing out airlines, and even bailing out obnoxious hedge funds)...

Laissez faire ideals are things that can cause depression like the 30's. Without the government regulations, we wouldn't even have had a 40 hour week standard (even though many do way more than that).

The ideals of capitalism won't break down if MSFT is broken up -- MSFT itself has become like a government of its own, stifling free market. Breaking up MSFT can only do good to consumers, just like the breaking up of AT&T and Standard Oil did...

S

OEM licensing

[edxwelch]

According to that report MS has been completely compliant in implementing the OEM licensing terms. So why don't we see widespread availabilty of alternative OS's from the big OEMs? There is a little discaimer at the end of that paragraph that seems to say that it hasn't been implemented yet because of the need to "train" OEM sales people, but this "training" has been going on for 2 years already.

Section III.A. prohibits Microsoft from retaliating or threatening to retaliate against an OEM because of an OEM's decision to distribute or otherwise to promote any software that competes with Microsoft Platform Software. Unlike Section III.B., which can be (and has been) implemented programmatically, compliance with Section III.A. can be achieved only through training and ongoing oversight of relevant Microsoft employees. Microsoft has conducted extensive mandatory training for its OEM Sales group personnel concerning Microsoft's obligations under the Final Judgments, with particular emphasis on Section III.A. and other OEM-related provisions. Since December 2001, Microsoft has trained its domestic OEM Sales personnel at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and has trained its international OEM Sales personnel at regional training sessions held in Germany, Switzerland, Mexico and Japan. Training will continue to be an ongoing process, both via live training by Microsoft lawyers and senior OEM Sales group personnel and via online training tools that Microsoft has developed for this purpose. Microsoft's licensing and antitrust lawyers work directly with OEM Division personnel to address and resolve any ongoing questions.

Re:Translation

[Guppy06]

I doubt Microsoft contributed anywhere near as much money as the religious special interest groups have, but that doesn't seem to stop the president from trying to reach out to the homosexual vote (and pissing off said special interests in the process). What makes you think that Microsoft will have more sway over the White House than Baptists seem to have?

Re:RTFA

[Troed]

On the other hand, on my XP laptop - even after having used "set program access and defaults" - the only way I could get bsplayer to view .avis was to each and every time select "open with". No matter the settings for filetypes - XP would _always_ launch windows media player.

I had to use "set program.." to specifically say NEVER to use windows media player to get it to work - and yet the icons are still wrong.

I'm quite sure it's not a bug - it's a Microsoft feature.

Re:You call this a capitalist society?

[Bob9113]

You call this a capitalist society?

No, I call it a corporatist society. In corporatism, the government is charged with the maintenance of power of the major corporations.

What happened to laissez faire ideals, free market and all that.

In a laissez faire system, there is no concept of intellectual property law. Laissez faire is based on the natural laws of scarcity. Microsoft's monopoly is based on artificial scarcity established by our corporatist government through intellectual property laws.

Whether corporatism is the best course for our nation I will leave to other threads. I only intend herein to correct your misuse of the terms "capitalism" and "laissez faire."

What's wrong with this picture?

[TheZax]

In other areas of the settlement, department lawyers praised Microsoft's compliance.

This doesn't deserve praise . This means that they have met the bare minimum of what is required of them in some areas. That's like being praised for not spitting on someone.

Not only that, the reason they were in court is because of ilegal activity in the first place.

So, in summary, they act criminally, get caught for it, are given a minimal set of rules to redeem themselves, and they can't be bothered to do that right.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But even with my low expectations of them, they still continue to amaze...