Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Defies EU Commission
otahkgeek writes "Wired News is reporting that Microsoft claims that by removing Windows Media Player from Windows, it would be forced to ship a substandard version to European consumers. This is on the heels of a three-day hearing by a European commission to determine the validity of charges that Microsoft illegally abused its power over the home computer market."
If it works... dont fix it! This is why MS needs to be put in check.
~ Maintainer of the Skajake Projects
I suspect you're referring to the same "most people" who don't use Internet Explorer (a truly inferior product) for their web-browsing needs - in other words, "a minority of people." I use Windows XP (surprisingly, the best Microsoft OS I've used) and I find that that Windows Media Player, with the appropriate codecs installed, works quite well for a wide variety of multimedia files. The idea that "most people" using Windows are using an outside multimedia viewer/player when the software that comes with the system works fine is laughable.
That being the case, how many here think the EU will actually bother to stand up to Microsoft in the end? My bet is that the EU will continue to make noise about Microsoft until Microsoft pays them off (quietly, behind the scenes, of course), at which point the EU will quietly decide not to "go forward" with any sort of real action against Microsoft. At most, the EU will probably give Microsoft a good wrist-slapping ("Stop, or I shall say 'stop' again!").
Only if a more powerful multinational corporation attempts to influence the EU against Microsoft will the EU really do anything.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I couldn't give two hoots about Real to be honest. Their product has always been substandard and intensely irritating. What I am concerned about is that by muscling the competition out that MSFT get to set the standards for file formats, network protocols etc. This is far more lucrative to them, and has far more potential to limit our choices as users. It certainly won't be favourable to our pocket books.
Besides, the closest competition that the article mentions, RealPlayer, has constantly been flamed as bloated spyware. What's the difference between WMP and RP? Choice? I can choose to load up IE (or Opera, or Firebird, or Lynx W32) and download a different media player.
If the EU forces MS to take out WMP, then they should also remove Notepad, Calculator, MS Paint, Address Book, Hyperterminal... the list goes on.
What MS could do instead: ship with a non-WMP Windows version, then ask the user every day if they'd like to update their computer to include WMP.
[__] No thanks, go away
[__] Yes please!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Untying WMP from Windows wouldn't result in PCs shipping with no media player installed -- it would just put the choice in the hands of OEMs, rather than Microsoft.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
There are times when I wish we could mod stories down, so that stories like this could be killed. For anyone that reads the article, it talks about what MS told the EU about what they insist are the ramifications of removing WMP from Windows, but the title is "Microsoft Defies EU Commission". Please tell me where it states that MS isn't complying with the EU, or otherwise doing something that is defying the EU(other than the monopoly issue at hand). This is a disagreement with the EU, perhaps even a strong one, but for MS to defy the EU they must either act when they shouldn't, or not act when they should; you can't defy the EU when the action in question never left the proposal stage.
A simple tweak to copyright laws would largely fix this. Make secret file formats and copyright protection a mutually exclusive choice. Copyright was originally instituted to encourage open publication. Therefore, it should only be fair that software which enjoys copyright protection must be provided with the full open specifications of the file formats it uses. This ensures that there will always be a free market for that type of application, and users are better off because their their valuable data is not held hostage under the exclusive control of an external vendor.
Of course, if a file format is so stupendously elite that a software vendor can't stand to publish it, they could always choose to release their programs without copyright protection. The choice would be theirs.
Even if people don't have the guts to univerally institute a reform like this today (and they most certainly don't), this condition could have been applied very effectively to the special case of the original Microsoft antitrust trial. It would have been less absurd than breaking the company up, and it would help restore a free market in desktop software. We wouldn't have to worry about WMP and its proprietary formats taking over the digital television and movie publication markets just because Microsoft locks in deals with a critical mass of content producers and nobody else can figure out how it works. They could bundle WMP to their heart's content, but competitors wouldn't be locked out of using native WMA formats.
There are those that would argue that exposing secret file formats is unfair to the software vendor. However, there are times when the harm to the public of keeping product information secret outweighs the economic benefit gained by the industry selling the products. Not many people today would argue that we should abolish food ingredients lists on labels to help protect the proprietary interests of food manufacturers. Now, it's just a fact of doing business in the food industry. They compete in other areas than top secret ingredients lists, and we all benefit from being able to know what we're eating.
Microsoft did NOT develop the concept of an operating system if that whats you mean. They didn't develope the concept of personal computers. They didn't develope the concept of operating systems for personal computers. They didn't develop the concept of a windowing system and graphical interface. They didn't develop the concept of a web browser. They didn't write the code that formed MS-DOS, they didn't write the code that formed NT, they didn't develope the concept of a media player. They didn't develope the concept of a terminal server, mail server, games, dialer, card games, command line, batch files, file system permissions, compression, acl's, networkable drives, web server, ftp server, text editor the list goes on and on.
The list of things that weren't microsoft's idea goes forward to encompase every concept and application you will find produced by Microsoft (not just all the ones in the operating system).
They invented... NONE of it. They innovated... NONE of it. They developed... NONE of it.
They may have written some fringe code themselves (not sure it can be proven microsoft itself has even written a line to be honest), but they certainly didn't write any of the core functionality.
Who knows it might be a mistake to say microsoft writes bad code, if they ever actually wrote some it might be pretty good stuff. But it's all theory until they do, for now I expect they'll continue to get it all via subcontracting and stealing the produce from business deals in which they screw the other party (*cough* NT *cough*).