Slashdot Mirror
EU's Mind 'made up' on Microsoft
Alain Williams writes "The BBC reports that Microsoft could soon be facing multi-billion euro fines and other sanctions for breaking European competition law.
The European Commission has finished drafting its decision in the case it brought against the software giant." Let's just hope that the EU can fine them cash and not accept Microsoft coupons like the US does. Clearly the best solution to an operating system monopoly is to give free copies of windows to school and eliminate the competition as early in the education process as possible.
Rubbish.
The EU isn't afraid of fining European Companies. You just have to look in to Car manufacturers, i.e., BMW, Volkwagan etc.
Plenty of these firms have been fined *heavily* for anti competitive practices and price fixing.
If MS was a European Company, it wouldn't be let off the hook, as it would be seen to be crushing other EU software companies as well...
Why can't we have define fines as a proportion of the defendant's wealth or income or something, so that they hurt everybody just as much regardless of how rich they are?
The EU can fine for an amount of 10% of the earnings within eu countries. Nintendo was once fined $600M for uncompetitive behaviour. How much do you think they can fine microsoft?
In fact, the fine is capped at 10% of the undertaking's total worldwide turnover in the previous year. So, the fine could be a maximum of $3,500,000,000.
Notethe part: It will also be necessary to take account of the effective economic capacity of offenders to cause significant damage to other operators - in particular consumers - and to set the fine at a level which ensures that it has a sufficiently deterrent effect.
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I tried this installing firebird on my parent's PC. They ended up on some sites which were only accessible to internet explorer, so they concluded that Firebird doesn't work. This was enough for them to switch back.