Slashdot Mirror
DOJ Calls EU Microsoft Decision "Unfortunate"
ogma writes "This one is especially ironic after the recent slashdot story on more of Microsoft's underhanded actions coming to light. It seems that the DOJ thinks Europe was too hard on Microsoft in its anti-trust ruling.. According to Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate, the fine 'may send the wrong message about antitrust enforcement priorities'..." Open Council writes "The Register points out that the EU has provided Microsoft with a major victory over its Open Source rivals because it will now be allowed to pursue royalty revenue from the APIs it publishes. Jeremy Allison says that the projects such as Samba, which he jointly leads, may face a prohibitive hurdle. The size of the fine is peanuts to MS but will be a bargain if it can lock out Open Source projects from using its API's."
The decision states that "to the extent that any of this interface information might be protected by intellectual property in the European Economic Area, Microsoft would be entitled to reasonable remuneration".
Interfaces and formats aren't protected, which is why WINE and Samba can and have been using them for years. I remember Microsoft getting in a tiff over WINE using the same header files, but backed down.
This doesn't seem to grant anything to Microsoft that they didn't already have. No biggie.
May we never see th
As long as Samba continues to base itself on untainted specifications, Microsoft can't do jack.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Patty Murray's statement can be found at Murray Statement on EU Ruling Against Microsoft. Here are her contact information: http://murray.senate.gov/contact/
Hardly surprising, giving R. Hewitt Pate was one of the men who imposed MS's wristslap by the DoJ. I wonder if there might be a conflict of interest here.
Note : Allowing your senior DoJ / government lawyers *cough, Ashcroft* to be in hock to major corporations might not be a very wise idea.
It has already been done... nfs server too (and other cool toys).
According to the BBC, the file is equal to 5% of their 2003 income...
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
3. Microsoft can now lock out all open-source projects trying to attain API compatibility. Good-bye WINE, Samba, et al. Imho you should be carefull with conclusions like this. All the EC rulling is that if and when there is IP to protect they are entitled to reasonable remuneration. Note that sw patents are not alowed in the EU, so this protection is much smaller that in the US.
It goes into EU general funds - the same as money paid in by member states. If we assume that it's divided in the same proportions as all EU spending, then the majority of it will likely go to agricultural subsidies.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
I agree. Although some of the points that the DOJ was making in their case against Microsoft seemed irrelevent, I was one of many people I knew who were looking forward to some kind of real penalty. Then, out of the blue, it was as if the case just disappeared and we never heard about it again.
Many of the points were irrelevant, and when it went to appeals the points were thrown out because they had no relevance, or, at least, were not properly tied by the DoJ's lawyers to the case they were trying to make. The case "disappeared" because the judge that received the case after appeals forced all parties into long settlement talks.
They were talking about breaking up the company into different divisions or separating products or imposing massive fines, and yet did any of these things really happen? It seems like the DOJ really failed in that regard, and I'm glad that somebody stood up and sent a wake up call to MS.
The DoJ failed to make their case, and the judge that originally handled the case failed to follow proper procedure before putting forth his remedies. To say the least, the DoJ was lucky the appeals court didn't throw the whole case out, but instead chose to go through the transcripts, findings, and judgments, as well as the appeals and counters filed with the appeals court and decide where Microsoft had been found guilty without proper evidence and where there was enough evidence to uphold that finding of guilt. Then they threw out the original judge for his mishandling of the case and "appearance of bias" and remanded it to another judge to handle. By that time, the DoJ's case was full of holes like a block of swiss cheese, and the settlement they came to was probably better than they could've gotten if the judge had allowed them to restart the case (which took something like 5 years the first time around).
All of the important filings are available online, and though it can be a dry read at times, the appeals court's findings especially can be very enlightening as to why the DoJ settled for the remedies they did.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
What do freedoms have to do with it? It really is fairly simple: cap campaign finance contributions.
To my understanding, campaign contributions are already capped. An individual can only give a certain amount, and an organization can only give a certain amount.
Soft money IS the problem. That is where the freedoms come in. The courts consider using your money to influence a campaign freedom of speech. So groups of businesses and labor unions spend money for their own commercials and such, effectively donating money without it technically changing hands. The soft money contributions make up a HUGE percentage of all the money spent during an election. And that's where most of the corruption starts.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
What would happen would be a hefty fine. If you were using a cheddar process, the result would not be parmigiano reggiano, just as a brie is not a hard cheese.
There are several requirements that have to be met in order for something to be called parmigiano reggiano. Making it in the right place is only one of them. 18 months of aging is another. The producers are only allowed to make the cheese between the months of may and november - for quality reasons.
There is something called the parmigiano reggiano cheese control consortium. They market the parmesan cheese (just as Pepsi does), and they control the quality of the products (Hey, just as Pepsi does). They have existed since 1934.
You are wrong in thinking that parmesan cheese comes from Parma. It can be made anywhere in the Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Mantua or Bologna regions. It is also not a cheese it is possible to make industrially, unlike the parmesan-labeled muck you are cheering for.
I suggest you actually take a piece of the parmesan-labeled cheese to Italy, and then see if you can taste a difference from a freshly-cut wheel of the real McCoy. My bet is that you can.
More of the manufacturing process can be found here.
Oh, and by the way, "brut champagne" means "dry sparkling wine from the champagne district in France, made with the champagne process". This is just as much a regional label as parmigiano reggiano is.