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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."
It surpasses fines the Commission has imposed on price-fixing cartels and that may send the wrong message about antitrust enforcement priorities, Pate said.
It seems like it sends a perfectly clear message. DO NOT FUCK UP OR WE WILL HUNT YOU DOWN. The fine wasn't all that steep for what MS can afford. It was another quick bump in the road. What it shows me is that the EU cannot be bought as easily as the US can.
"Imposing antitrust liability on the basis of product enhancements and imposing 'code removal' remedies may produce unintended consequences," Pate said. "Sound antitrust policy must avoid chilling innovation and competition even by 'dominant' companies. A contrary approach risks protecting competitors, not competition, in ways that may ultimately harm innovation and the consumers that benefit from it."
I really don't believe that MS purchasing companies and rolling their products it into their OS makes it any better for the consumers. In fact, I find that updates to software by smaller companies comes often and usually w/o large upgrade fees. To upgrade software once it is rolled into the OS requires you to usually pay for another version and may take years. Sure, WMP9 came out but at the cost of a very harsh EULA that had consequences that outweighed its benefits.
Had the DOJ followed through on it's case properly earlier, I don't think that the EU ruling would have been so harsh. The EU felt they had to send a message that someone was going to stand up.
Hell, if the DOJ had pursued real resolution there might not have been a case in the EU as Media Player might have been unbundled then.
Media Player is not the biggest anti-competitive piece they have anyway.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Ah, yes, sending the wrong message about antitrust enforcement policies. Like, when someone is found guilty of anticompetitive behavior while a monopoly - actually enforcing a penalty so they don't do it again?
Sorry - my bad, what was I thinking of.
I am somewhat concerned with the EU's choice to allow MS to "license" the API's. From my perspective, those API's should be fully published with no license behind them. MS should not have to reveal the code behind how they work, but the API's should be publicly available, and any updates and changes to those API's (say, though a patch or service pack) should be immediatly updated.
Just my $0.02. As always, it's just my opinion, and I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Yeah, it may send the "wrong" message about trust enforcement priorities.
Their job is to enforce antitrust legislation. To the extent that they have not enforced it upon Microsoft (and numerous other conglomerates) they are not doing their job and are guilty of dereliction of duty.
Are they worried this "wrong message" might get people thinking about what should be done to aggressive monopolies, and get people talking about the fact that pork and kickbacks are now driving policy in the US under the current administration?
A fine that large ain't hay, even for the $loth.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Thanks to Ashcroft, the DoJ has lost all their credibility with me. If they say it's bad, well, it must be WONDERFUL.
I'd love to hear their positions on this, and a variety of other issues; can we get a DoJ interview?
Should we have broken up Ma Bell? Standard Oil? American Tobacco?
What's your position on mandatory prayer in school... how about illegal search and seizure--an idea that was ahead of its time?
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Huh? ... but the MS zealots made it very clear to me that "the purpose of an OS" was to provide a web browser and a media player. I had started thinking AIX wasn't an OS because it didn't bundle a browser and a media player.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
In fact, it does - what if MS files patents on the CIFS APIs ? Samba has no means how to license those, and even though, theoretically, the API is "open", it is not, in fact. And Microsoft is filling patents one after another these days. This is exactly what Register tries to point out and you have missed. Regards, Jan
It is sad to see that excellent decisions in other countries highlight the corruption of my US goverment. As a minnesotan, I say put Ventura in as president and we can eliminate corruption once and for all.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
...of how government is tied to big busness regardless of political affiliation. In other words, the US system is corrupt. But then again, so is about every other nation on this planet.
Human nature never ceases to amaze me. Even under large orginizations called countries, corruption can and WILL take place.
Life is not for the lazy.
It is unfortunate... unfortunate that the DOJ didn't do thier jobs properly the first FOUR times, allowing this company to continue to behave in an anticompetitive and illegal manner with nothing more than a wink and a nudge.
Why can't I get away with abusive and immoral practices for 25 years, leading to nothing but becoming the richest man, and company, in the world? Am I not rich enough? Is my industry not new enough to be beyond the law?
While limited one of many particular aspects of Microsoft's behavior, I applaud the EU's ruling. If anything it was too limited in scope... hopefully other cases will follow. Let's see, there is DrDos, BeOS, Word compatibility, IE, per-cpu licensing, OS only licensing, No naked licensing...
The ______ Agenda
My understanding of US government is somewhat lacking, but what does this have to do with the DoJ? MS broke EU rules, and the EU has made a decision based on that (right or wrong). It probably does have something to do with whatever department(s) handle foreign trade and relations, but what way is that the business of the DoJ?
$500 million is enormous to most companies, but it's 1/80th of the CASH that MS has in the bank. Not 1/80 of the company's total value, 1/80th of the amount that they can write a check for. Most companies would give far more than 1/80th of their cash if it meant that was the cost of maintaining a monopoly. From a cost/benefit standpoint, MS is getting off easy. That's why certain European countries have started making traffic fines a percentage of a person's income, rather than a flat rate for everyone. $150 will make me think twice about speeding, but it's the price of lunch for a millionaire. It's the same for MS. Let me ask you this. Let's say you lie, cheat, and defraud people in a completely illegal manner for years until you've become the richest man in the world. You have $40 billion in the bank. The fine for having done all of that is $500 million. Do you think that's excessive? You get to keep the other $39.5 BILLION that you extorted from people. In the world of individuals (as opposed to corporations), thieves, extorters, and embezzlers don't get to keep what they've stolen. But MS does. At least 79/80ths of it. Peanuts my friend, peanuts.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
What it shows me is that the EU cannot be bought as easily as the US can.
A slightly more cynical wording: It shows that the EU cannot be bought by a US company as easily as the US DOJ/presidency can.
this is the same protectionist EU which is absolutely drunk in love with GI (geographic indicators).
Geographic Indicators are a good idea. If the packet says parmesan cheese, that's what I want, not some inferior cheese that has chosen to exploit the popularity of parmesan. The crazy thing is that in the USA, a company can Trademark a name like "parmesan", even when parmesan has meant something very specific in the rest of the world for hundreds of years.
I think the reason the US doesn't like GI is because it doesn't have so many food products that are linked to a region like Europe does. But really, if the USA expects everyone to respect their trademarks, they should respect our product labels too. Come up with your own names for stuff, don't rip off names that have been respected in Europe for generations.
Firstly, the ruling is about MS being a monopolist and locking out competitor products from Windows by virtue of the very deep integration of WMP within Windows. This affects commercial products like RealPlayer and some OSS players that exist for or have been ported to Windows - nothing to do with Linux.
Secondly, this decision slows down MS's plans of dominating the market with licensed DRM software, for which WMP is the "Trojan Horse" transport. This aspect of the EU decision is what really hurts MS, especially if they are forced to license the APIs for those DRM formats.
However, DRM will affect Windows users first because it will be the codecs inside Windows that get altered or replaced, over a period of time, to stop the playing of "unlicensed" media. Linux users might end up not being able to play DRM media but they'll still be able to play the standard non-DRM formats like MP3, MPEG, etc.
It would be really nice to hear from a Windows user exactly how he or she feels about having his/her rights to fair use curtailed by Microsoft, the RIAA, etc. because I have never seen a Windows user ever respond to that question.
Windows users need to remember that a major reason a lot of people use Linux is because they intend to maintain their rights to have full and complete control over the software their machines run - this has always been a core philosophy of Unix that has been carried across into Linux by the Open Source movement.
Whether MS is fined or not, whether MS exists or not, is of no importance to the majority of the Linux community.
Unfortunately, it's the poor thinking by the Windows community that will allow DRM to get pushed through that will affect everyone's rights to fair use.
I've said this before and I'll say it again - if the EU decision holds back DRM in any way, then it's a good decision. End of story.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Instead of which, the little Commissars of Brussels royally screwed up by allowing MS to levy a fee for their interface specs. Which guarantees that Open Source software won't be able to use them.
Do you realize what it means?
Ii means that in one fell swoop, the Commissars kicked OSS competitiors out of MS pathway in the file and print server business. If it has been the result of bribery, I'd say "kudos to the bastards". But here, the incompetent Brussels morons apparently wanted to promote competition in this field. Unfortunately, as good carreer bureaucrats, they completely ignored the technical and market environment and used ideologically tainted views instead of reality as a decision basis. Whatever the intent, here is the result: Samba will be unable to develop new versions to follow MS changes without paying. Which they can't. So Samba will become incompatible and irrelevant. Linux will not be able to interface with future Windows 200x servers. The lock-out will be complete.
To paraphrase Linus, the destruction of Samba will be "a completely unintentional side effect". Nevertheless, that's what the Brussels Buffoons achieved. Which was to be expected, since after all, they are bureaucrats, not techies.
Heck, paying $600M for this result is a piffle. MS would gladly have payed ten times that to kill Samba, only people would have cried foul. But I'm sure Balmer is giggling right now: "Hey Bill, look at that, the Linux crowd is cheering 'cuz we have to pay the equivalent of 3 weeks of revenue!" - "Yes, Steve, little do the fools realize that we just completely won."
Once again, EU snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. And there was much rejoicing (in megacorp orations' board rooms).
--
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Unfortunately Linux, and *nix in general, appears to have placed importance on an SMB network, the only alternatives such as NFS are still orientated around networking computers rather than users.
OSS should present and push a simple and credible alternative standard for user orientated networking, get it standardised, and evangelize to the user community the advantages of not having a networked locked into proprietry standards (as if those compelled to upgrade thier NT servers are not allready aware!). MS should be forced to comply by user demand.
BTW, interesting that one of the few viable alternatives to SMB (as far as integrating on windows is concerned) is Novells stuff, I wonder what thier approach to the problem will be?
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
So let me get this straight:
1. Microsoft has to pay pocket cash to pay the fine.
2. Microsoft can't bundle Windows Media Player.
3. Microsoft can now lock out all open-source projects trying to attain API compatibility. Good-bye WINE, Samba, et al.
Forgive me, but any EU decision which ends up doing significant damage to the free software movement and does minimal damage to Microsoft can't really be considered a "win" for the consumer.
That's not to mention that, compared to the DoJ ruling, this does NOTHING to reign in their monopolist tendencies. If the DoJ was a slap on the wrist, this was a loving pat on the rump. At least the DoJ got Microsoft to stop abusing OEMs who tried to give choice - all the EU ruling did was protect Real and get some money from a US corporation. If this was a big win for the EU, I can only imagine what a big defeat would be.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
In "The Age" article at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/25/10799 39782633.html
the former head of antitrust in the DOJ under Clinton disagrees with the current head of antitrust.
"But Douglas Melamed, chief of the DoJ's antitrust division in the Clinton administration, said the EU's order made perfect sense.
"The commission did nothing that strikes me as outrageous or foolish," he said. The fine was appropriate; a good deterrent that "enables you to focus yourself on deterring wrongful conduct rather than trying to regulate it after you find it.""
The opposing reactions of the two heads of antitrust lends strong credence to the theory that Bush's election did lead to a dramatic change in the DOJ antitrust operations and was the reason why stronger action against MS was dropped.
Also, Senate Republican leader Bill Frist has hinted at sanctions and a trade war with the EU over Microsoft. According to the article in "The Age" he is quoted as saying:
"I fear that the US and the EU are heading towards a new trade war and that the commission's ruling against Microsoft is the first shot." and
"If the US Government does not make a clear and strong objection to the EU actions, we will lose influence and credibility for years to come, to the detriment of the US economy and US consumers,"
So I guess now support for MS has become intertwined with patriotism and national pride. Yay. I guess for all your Americans out there, remember, according to your beloved Republican Senate leader, the reputation of the US as a nation is now intertwined with that of MS...
Do you have a problem if it's the SAME KIND of cheese, just made somewhere else?
What we are talking about mostly is a lot of very high quality food products that are linked to specific regions of Europe of the same name. How would you qualify, and regulate, the concept of "same kind"?
The problem here is one of perception in the USA. Most Americans can clearly see that if I started making, say, a fizzy drink and I called it Pepsi, that would clearly not be "right", both legally and morally. Well, when companies in other countries start making cheeses (for instance) exploiting the good names of Euopean cheeses that have been around for generations, then that is cearly not right either. The problem is that there has been no legal protection for these names. That is what GI addresses.
http://murray.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=219442
Go on though. You were saying something funny about Democrats?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
That is just plain wrong.
Samba team managed to remain interoperable through, what, Win 3.11 even, definitly Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, and NT 3.5, 2k, and XP series, without any acess to documentation, beyond what was freely available.
On what basis does making Microsoft make more information available to some other people make it more difficult for the Samba team to continue to do what they do, for future versions of Windows?
In short, Samba exists without Microsoft assistance. Forcing Microsoft to help a third party doesn't make it more difficult for Samba, at all.
(As an aside, given that the EU was only looking at Media players, I think that the API's will only be for Media playing interfaces - thus I don't think that, say, the printing subsystem, will bo covered in all this.)
Oh, and Samba doesn't _use_ any Windows API's. It uses the SMB protocol, and I've not seen anyone claim that Microsoft's protocols will have to be opened - the equivelent here would be the protocols that cover WMP to server negotiations, I think.
So, unless you want to point me to something I must have missed, I can't agree with you.
I've said it before. It's been modded as flamebait before. I'll say it again and it's not a flame.
Anti-trust is DEAD under this administration. It wasn't kicking so strong under Clinton either, but it was alive. Remember the MS suit that was tossed out as soon as the Bush team took office?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
EU judgement:
Ok, so the DoJ doesn't like the way things went down. Neither do I, perhaps for differant reasons.
I think that in fining MS and then telling them to release the API's, with the ability to charge for said access to the API's, the EU did nothing. Thats right, they made a lot of noise, but in the end they did nothing. Unless you consider forcing MS to open a new market and give some of the profit to the EU courts as something to be proud of.
Consider: EU court system charges MS a fine. Why does the EU government get this money? Was MS competing with the EU government? Does anybody believe the majority of this money will end up in the hands of the companies MS was charged with pushing out of the market? So free check for the EU courts. Next the EU courts tell MS that they have to allow others to use their API's, but MS is allowed to charge a royalty. In other words, thanks for the cash, here's a slap on the wrist and a way to make the money back.
So in the end, the companies that MS has forced out of business are still out of business, the API's they wouldn't release before are now released, but still unavailable to those that cannot afford them, and...?
Maybe next time they will consider not bribing themselves and actually making a decision that will actually help the situation, rather than simply making it look as if they had.
Taking money away from MS won't do a thing towards getting them to compete equally. Opening closed standards and imposing financial monitoring would only be a start to forcing free competition, but it would go a lot further than forcing MS to sell access to (some of) the API's.
In the end I think the EU courts basically took a bribe to look the other way. Except where they had the power to really do somehting ere, they were actually the ones that offered and received the bribe, they just made sure the money was coming out of someone elses pocket.
Amount of Fine:As to the arguments about the amount of the fine, it doesn't matter to MS as long as the amount doesn't affect operating costs. The money will be made back simply by not offering as many special deals on software. MS doesn't even have to raise the retail prices, just the wholesale ones (ie, the real price we pay everywhere but Amazon and BestBuy who carge retail and tell us we're getting a deal).
OSS:
No effect. Samba (as an example) hasn't needed the API's this long, and as far as I know they really don't need the Media Player API's. Just a guess.
Whee signature.
Translation: "Shit, you guys are making us look bad. Stop it!"
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