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."
Shipping a substandard OS to European customers? ;)
How is this news? They've been doing that for years.
Will the substandard DRM free, anti American version be available in North America for purchase or will I have to pirate a copy.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I don't need a media player with the operating system, just an operating system. That's cheaper, right?
Microsoft claims that by removing Windows Media Player from Windows, it would be forced to ship a substandard version to European consumers.
Is it me or I'm the only one who thinks this is an oxymoron?
R.
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.
A monopoly is a company that gets exclusive market rights from the government.
No, that is a definition of a utility, such as a power company, or cable service. The price that the entity pays for having exclusive rights is that it is HEAVILY regulated by the local, state, and federal government. Are you suggesting that Microsoft is a not a monopoly, but a utility that should be subject to heavy government regulation?
The US Postal Service is a monopoly
Technically, no. The US Postal Service was considered an organ of government. Do you call the Federal Judicial system a monopoly? The federal government has offloaded that function to a non-governmental entity, in order to improve its efficiency.
Standard Oil was a company that did not get exclusive market rights from the federal government, but was able to use its market position to extort profits from its consumers. It was also able to crush competitors by either lowering its prices to prevent either of them from making a profit, or prevent them from gaining access to materials to produce their product. This is the generally accepted definition of a monopoly. It does not require a coercion from the government.
While I do respect your libertarian point of view, I question whether you genuinely understand what constitutes a monopoly.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I wonder if the EU has thought of just including MS products in the 100% tariffs category (along with things like sunglasses and motorbikes) that they are allowed (by the WTO) to impose on imports from the US as a retalitory measure to the illegal US steel tariffs. Come to think of it, weren't countries like Japan, China, Korea, Australia as well as a host of others also part of the WTO judgement (on the side of the EU) as well?
So Dubya, keep those illegal steel tariffs! Remember you need to win votes in steel producing states in the next election!
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.