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EU Says Microsoft's Abuses Are Ongoing
levell writes "Although the legal difficulties Microsoft was having in the US seem to be drawing to a close, it's not yet over in the EU. In this story, the BBC reports that the EU says it is still abusing its monopoly with Windows Media Player, and perhaps more interestingly from a Linux point of view, also in the low-end server market. The story is also being covered on CNN, Ananova, Reuters, etc." The EU's press release is informative.
Sure they have a monopoly, ie so dominant market share that they could do just about what ever they wish if there weren't anti-monopoly laws.
Like, if MS required every big computer maker to actively hamper using linux on their machines or they wouldn't give them OEM Windows license, how many of the computer makers could affort to decline without going out of business very fast? Or if they wouldn't approve (XP style) any drivers or give DirectX support for any graphcis card maker that didn't keep it's specs secret and release drivers for Win only.
So I'd say it's definitely a monopoly, because only anti-monopoly laws are preventing them from doing stuff like above.
The EU represents the 2nd largest trade area on the planet, and can fine companies who wish to trade in the EU who break competition rules in the EU. And when people next go "that won't hurt MS" remember that the fine is proportionate to the market and the level of control.
So how about a fine equal to the sales over the period of the infringement. And restrictions on the sale of MS products.
And the best bit is that the EU actually has a spine here as its a great chance to piss of a US company, which lets face it they are hardly going to resist.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
No chance of any competition in that model. Ever.
A big danger is DRM being added into the chain, then Microsoft would have 100% say over who makes files, who reads files, when and where they can read files, and who can make programs that read, write or modify files. And just to make the lock-in complete, 100% control over determining the life span of the file format. No more 100 year old archives.
If the EU starts down that path by using encumbered file formats, it steps on the rights of countries where access to government information is a constitutional right. Sweden and Finland are two such countries where information has been open by default as part of the constitution. There may be other countries, but even countries with weaker freedom of information need to use open formats.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Microsoft has a history of pushing closed standards and protocols out to the masses, and their monopoly status is the ONLY reason this is possible.
If Microsoft didn't enable MSFT-ONLY, PROPRIETARY codecs, their bundling of a media player would be a non issue. The same applies to IE and IE-only tags. I guess this doesn't matter to people who are in love with Windows XP.
You can't compare free software to jailware. Redhat doesn't add proprietary codecs to Xine, and then roll it out to millions of people in it's up2date service.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Tell us dunces what powers the government has given itself over the course of the MS trial. The government has brought charges to companies liek this before. It has also fined companies, broken up companies, and regulated their actions before. None of these are new.
If I make a better product, how is that anti-competitive
That's not what people are complaining about. MS Put out a product good enough to obtain a monopoly. Which is fine. Then they saw an emergin market where people were making money (Netscape used to sell web browsers). MS then bought a browser from a nother company, turned it into IE, and gave it away for free for the express purpose of driving Netscape out of the market. To help speed up the process, it was made into an essential part of the OS with Windows 98 (I believe 95a even). Think about that. To uninstall the browser you would have to break the OS. They then forced OEMs, using their legaly obtained monopoly position, to shut out competitors, AOL and Netscape pre-installed or even icons on the desktop. You would have to be a complete, freaking, idiot to think that the first versions of IE were better. But the majority of consumers just use whatever is there already, not realising there is a choice. By the time IE was good enough to compete on technical merit, MS had run Netscape out of the browser market. (I know they still make browsers, but IE has 90%+ market penetration). The illegal tactics are the leveraging of the desktop OS monopoly to prevent OEMs from distributing competing products (implemented by non-uniform licensing), and selling a product in a separate market at a loss, to drive out competition (use profits from the OS market to sustain distributing IE at a loss in the browser market). They are doing the same thing with the media player, AFTER being convicted of their original anti-competitive behavior.
You say that the intent of the government is correct in this case, and that somehow justifies the use of force.I know its cliche to say this, but Commumism had a good intent too. Intent never justifies force, except in self-defense, and I don't think that MS was threatening to attack the US
MS is attacking consumers, by artificially driving out competition and keeping prices artificially high. The Justice Department and State Attorneys General act in defense of the consumers. Get a clue.
Can you honestly tell me that if it was your company making the os and you also made a media app that you wouldn't add it to your os as well??? I highly doubt it.
I can't help but feel we've been here a million times before, but here goes for the 1,000,001st...
MS has - or at least was judged at the time of the US court case to have - a monopoly on the OS market. It is illegal to exploit a monopoly in one market to gain one in another, for reasons which I hope are obvious. Thus MS cannot simply add applications into Windows. Doing so would give them an unfair advantage over their competitors, and the whole purpose of consumer capitalism - to let competition drive up living standards - would be defeated.
Nonetheless, not only did MS break the law and incorporate new applications into their monopoly OS, they made it impossible to uninstall them. A more flagrant violation of both the letter and the spirit of the anti-trust laws is hard to imagine.
So yes, if I made an OS and a media app I would want to bundle the two together. But if I had a monopoly in either market, it would be illegal for me to actually do so; and we should all be glad of that.