Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Government Raids Microsoft Offices
Nakito writes "According to an article at the financial news site Bloomberg, Microsoft's Tokyo office was raided by Japan's Fair Trade Commission, which is investigating whether the world's largest software maker violated the country's anti-monopoly law." Other readers note a AP/Yahoo story claiming: "A commission official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said Microsoft Japan is suspected of attaching improper restrictive conditions when signing software deals with Japanese personal computer manufacturers, such as requiring that Japanese companies allow infringement of their patents."
BBC is also running the story here.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Too bad Microsoft has bought enough politicians here in the US to keep the company from conforming to anti trust laws. *sigh* Good thing I am starting to make my transition to Linux now, though if the **AA's had there way, Linux would be made illegal cause it circumvents DRM. :-(
It would be quite difficult to attempt sepukku with a katana.
Actually I'm the president of a company that has used open source profitably for over 5 years, and it does pay the bills. Very nicely in fact.
Thanks goes to the developers of Linux, Apache, MySQL (and other databases), PHP, and others.
And yes, I want my company to make money, which it does. But there are more important things than that, and there are plenty of profitable companies (open source or otherwise) to prove that money can be made hand over fist without resorting to Microsofts tactics.
All that bluster is the equivalent of wearing a jacket with "RIAA" emblazoned on the back, FBI-style. An acronym and intimidating paperwork do not magically grant regulatory powers to an organization.
irb(main):001:0>
Summerizing this Japanese article, the issue is that the OEM contracts contain a clause disallowing the filing of complaints about against Microsoft software. The main part that seems to have rankled is that Microsoft is believed to have improperly included software developed by Japanese manufactures(Fujitsu, NEC, etc). By being forced to agree to the clause in the contract however, they are unable to file a complaint against Microsoft.
This is where the monopoly bit comes in. Because Microsoft has an OS monopoly the makers have no other choice than to include the OS on their machines, which in order to do so forces them into sign the contract. All of which rubs up against various Japansese antitrust and trade laws.
I don't have any link handy, but there has been a number of patent cases brought to a court by foregin (read: US) companies. One of my buddies, who used to work for a well-known Japanese electronics company beginning with "h," once told me that this Japanese company's newly established computer (desktop) devision knowingly copied DOS, and after it was discovered the company was tried, and ordered to pay hefty damage to MS, which lead the devision to shut down.
If Japan really is patent outlaw country, why do all the big companies (Sony, Panasonic, Toyota, Honda) own so many patents both in Japan and US? I'd appreciate it if you can explain to me, please.
I don't really have any link to back up my argument, but your knowledge in Japan's Patent laws and enforcement obviously is paper thin.
And America has some of the most unfair practices when dealing with the rest of the world. ( steel imports, third world aid packages that don't aid, blockades against entire countries )
Whats your point?
Depends on which romanization system you use. The long "o" sound can be romanized as either "ou" or as an o with a dash above it. The proponents of the latter tend to leave the dash out when typing on computers.
This is in referrence to raids on Kazaa in Australia.
Not a great post, but certainly not offtopic.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
According to Hepburn romanization, yes, but official kunrei romanization forgoes the extra 'u'.
Perhaps that is what the 'tanto' (a short knife) is for..
The katana is probably just extra service, in case Gates can find someone willing to behead him and stop his most painfull and honorable suicide.
The art of Seppukku
Actually, I think it was probably the Odakyu Southern Terrace (Tower?) that got raided, so I'll give a bit of context... I frequently eat in a pretty good Tex-Mex restaurant in the basement. (Well, actually it's considered a basement even though it's at ground level on one side. The building is actually built into a hill.) Nice new building, white, about 25 stories, with "Microsoft" written on the top left corner. It's about a 4-minute walk south from Shinjuku Station, which may be the busiest train station in the world, but it's actually located in Shibuya-ku. Actually my manager is the one who checked the address--I didn't think Shibuya-ku extended so far to the north.
Too bad I wasn't visiting Tokyo today. If it was a really good raid, maybe I'd have been able to see them throwing papers and hard disks out of the top floors.
(It also might have been a different Microsoft office that's actually closer to Shibuya Station, but I can't give any context for that. It's not really my kind of neighborhood and I don't know it very well, though the Tex-Mex place has a branch there, too.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
If you want to really go after the Japanese on patents, at least get your facts straight.
Japan actually has one of the highest rates of corporate patenting ANYWHERE. This is caused largely by corporate guidelines that say "department x must have at least 3 patentable inventions per year."
As a result, Japan's books are filled with tens of thousands of patents for truly mediocre things.
That said this forms the basis of a series of "blocking patents" which are taken quite seriously.
Your claim that "... without such enforcement" is simply wrong.
the moderators who gave you "insightful" should be ashamed. I mean, you're 180 degrees wrong and were just speaking out of your ass out of some quixotic wishful thinking, not facts.
No, the katana is there to make his suicide honorable. You see, few people can resist cutting out his/her entrails without quite a bit of screaming and thrashing.
So, the person who his killing him/herself slices himself open, and the assistant will gauge the moment when it looks the guy/gal can't hold a minute longer without howling his/her head off, and then beheads him/her. That way, the person faced death bravely and not whinning like an animal.
..how the hell do you think the US got to be the richest country in the world
..by keeping most of the north of South America and middle American countries like Haiti poor. By inserting paid for rebels into such countries to ensure strife and general unrest, and for what purpose? To have a lot of very cheap labour for US companies to take advantage of.
And don't get me started on the Afganistan oil pipeline, the connection between Bush senior and Sadaam and the general bias the media has about such matters.
Open your eyes people!
Umm... doo itashimasite is roughly equivalent to "you're welcome." Shouldn't we be saying "doomo arigatoo gozaimashita" (thank you very much for a completed past action) to the Japanese instead?
Depends on what flavor of transliteration you're using. It is a long "o" sound, but Japanese writing words out phonetically using kana do use the "u" kana to follow up the syllable ending in "o" to show the lengthening of the "o", so some transliterators would write "dou". Others use the "macron" (a horizontal line) over the "o" to show a long vowel sound.
Because people are stupid enough to let them in. Even the police can't enter your property without either your concent or a warrant (with limited exceptions such as entering during a chase, or when they believe human life is in danger). The BSA can not enter your property without concent PERIOD.
If they accuse you of any crime inform them that you will sue them for slander if they make false allegations, that if they continue to harass you you will take legal action, that you will call the police immediately if they do no leave your property, and remind them that any action will require them to make a full disclosure in front of a court.
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
I don't think the sticking point is Monopoly.
According to an article at the Inquirer this morning.
"The Japanese Fair Trade Commission claims that Microsoft persuades customers in Japan to sign away their rights to sue the Vole when they pre-install Windows on their PCs. The monopoly cops say the clause would apply to customers even if they were to discover Microsoft had infringed their own patented technology."
If you install Microsoft products you have to give up rights to your own IP.
These "These [Did anyone else read it as|In Soviet Russia|X is deader than BSD] jokes are getting old" whines are getting increasingly more tedious. If you don't like them, add a -6 modifier to Funny mods and you'll be rid of them for good.
Either /. lameness filter or maybe a cookie thing.
/. inserts and remove them.
In any event, google for "BSA raids" and read some of the stuff. Or try hunting down the spaces
Virtually every raid has the BSA accompanied by agents of the government.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Ever heard of punch cards & paper tape? Really hard to secure those.
The Altair had just started coming out, and it was just accepted that people would share and improve upon your software, and that would circulate around and you'd enjoy the benefit of that.
Then Bill Gates out and out called the whole hobbiest market (of which he was recently a part and benefactor of) "thieves" for stealing his software and changing it.
In the US, "X" is often meant to be "eXtreme" or "eXtra" or some other marketing angle. (re: X-Games, X-Men, X11... er...)