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."

Comments

Re:M$ vs WinAmp

[skajake]

Very true, but remember the important rule of thumb.. If it is default, 99% of users will not go the extra mile of finding a better alternative.

If it works... dont fix it! This is why MS needs to be put in check.

Re:As if this was a bad thing...

[Babbster]

First of all, MS can't be saying that it's WMP that's making Windows superior? You've got to be kidding me. Most people don't even use that app for their multimedia needs.

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.

The EU probably won't do anything to Microsoft...

[kcbrown]

I don't think the EU is much less in the pockets of corporations than the U.S. government, considering how quickly they've done things like passing an even worse version of the DMCA than the DMCA itself is.

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.

The No Spin Zone

[rsmith-mac]

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.

Re:fact is MS is right

[Waffle Iron]

That's right, it's the file formats that are the real problem. Microsoft maintains its monopoly largely because their competitors must spend so much effort trying to reverse engineer the ever-changing secret file formats and APIs that they don't have resources left over to innovate new improvements.

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.