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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."
I don't think fining a business with 40 billion in the bank 500 million is harsh. I think the DoJ wanted them to get a slap on the wrist like always.
It doesn't seem right to me that a royalty could be charged for using api's. The api's are there and can be used by any software. Isn't that the purpose of an OS? That is, to provide an interface layer between the programs and the hardware? The royalty is payed for by the consumer when they buy the OS.
this is the same protectionist EU which is absolutely drunk in love with GI (geographic indicators). this link is a bit over the top, but not too far: http://www.kc3.co.uk/~dt/protectionism.htm also: http://www.lymec.org/article.php?sid=117 Anybody who claims that the EU as a whole does not play machiavellian economic power politics with rulings and regulations is a fool. the EU's economic policies are the equivalent of the stereotype of the US's current military ones.. unilateral, self-serving, and ultimately deadly to innocents.
If Samba gets locked out of the Windows APIs, then I guess someone will have to come up with something better than Samba and make it work with Windows. Personally I think NFS is better, I guess we'll have to create a Windows NFS client that is as easy to use and implement as the Windows networking client.
Shouldn't be that hard considering all the geniuses we have here on Slashdot...Oh wait, nevermind.
Fining Microsoft sounds fine but it's the wrong tool for several reasons. First, it will force Microsoft to raise prices in other ways, so the fine is a hidden tax on consumers. Second, it does not change the underlying problem, which is that Microsoft have been allowed over the last decade to establish a position from which they can control prices in a market almost devoid of real competition. Third, the timing is poor, since the EU and US are on the edge of a trade war, and the US will certainly use this as an excuse to raise barriers on EU businesses. Lastly, Microsoft will appeal and this will take years, during which there will be much argument and hostility, with no positive changes to show for it.
I don't believe for a second that Microsoft will take this fine as a warning that merits a change in behaviour. They will simply spin it into an advantage, one way or another.
What needs to be done is establish and enforce international free-competition standards via the WTO. Then, if a US company is found to be breaking these, the problem can be addressed to the right place, namely the US government.
The EU could achieve much more in the arena of competition by correcting the injustices of the patent system (which turns it into a tool for market control by large businesses), and by mandating the use of OSS licenses in all software that is developed for the EU bodies themselves.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
From Groklaw :
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Washington State's Senator Murray Asks Bush to "Engage" the EU
"'This ruling is yet another example of the EU assaulting a successful American industry and policies that support our economic growth,' said U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Microsoft's home state, Washington. . .
"Murray called on the Bush administration to 'engage' the EU in settling the case. 'The EU has now directly attacked the authority of the United States and our economy in general,' she said in a statement. 'American jobs and economic interests are threatened,' she said."
Um. "Engage"? She doesn't mean sending in troops or anything, does she?
Joke.
Wait a sec. Who assaulted who? Isn't the issue whether Microsoft broke the law over there? If they did, does she suggest it shouldn't matter, because they simultaneously give Americans jobs? The article points out that corporations that do sufficient business in Europe are subject to their laws, something they could avoid by not doing business there. They could also avoid consequences by not breaking any laws. I believe that would entail reading them
Why not an injunction instead of a fine? Removing less than a billion dollars from Microsoft's $50 billion in cash isn't going cause Microsoft to do anything differently. At most it will be a embarrassing publicity problem.
The EU's goal is to provide a competitive environment where other companies will have chance. This can only be done my making Microsoft compete fairly, which means forcing a change in their corporate behavior. This won't happen by confiscating 2% of their yearly revenues.
Microsoft has shown multiples time that it is unwilling to do business on a level playing field. So instead of a fine, how about immediately imposing an injunction on Microsoft making it illegal to sell their products in Europe until they comply with the EU's terms. I think this is the only way to get them to change their corporate behavior.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
Damned if you don't.
I honestly can't see any way to win at this point, and it sucks. There is no way microsoft can be punished. even levelling record setting fines, microsoft still makes out good. This was supposed to be a punishment, not giving them any sort of leverage.
aw hell, I just don't care any,ore.
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"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."
This is a very interesting quote, as it can be read two ways. I agree that we should avoid chilling innovation and competition even by 'dominant' companies, and Microsoft has been doing an excellent job of chilling innovation and competition by trying to lock everyone else out. It's time to put a stop to that.
How much can a change in the political administration of a country influence its Justice ? In theory very little. The independence of these powers is essential to a democracy. In practice, the US DoJ changed from prosecuting a monopolist corporation (with B. Clinton) to: first letting go, and now publically defend, the same monopolist (with the current administration, which shall go unnamed ;-). Quite a change, quite a change ...
First off, it is not a fine. No government ever accesses a FINE. They only tax. They just call it by different names.
Second, the remedies are good in regards to making them separate out the audio/video players. Though in context MS should have been congratulated if it impeded someone from getting REAL.
Back to the main point. Fines are taxes. Every consumer will being paying this "fine" for Microsoft. I don't care if you use Linux, Mac, or nothing at all. Your paying. Think of it as an embedded tax. It looks good in the press as an "evil corporation" is getting punished but tell me what corporation pays any tax? They don't, hence they don't pay fines either. You pay. Corporations make money, anything that reduces that profit is still paid for by the people bought the product or did business with someone who did.
The EU was on the right track but they may have given MS some advantages that it would have never had otherwise.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think that the DOJ is playing the nationality card here.
... any day now.
Every Western country has a few corporations which regularly piss all over various aspects of industry, we even have some here in Ireland, Eircom for example has been an obstacle to roll out of broadband, because it (and competition) jeopardised it's monopoly, eventually the likes of British Telecom got involved in the Irish telecoms market and Eircom's monopoly disappated.
Roll on BT I say, I'm a consumer, the cheaper my broadband the better.
Same with Microsoft, yes, there is a falling out between the US and EU over Iraq, basically because French oil interests didn't coincide with US oil interests... does this affect Microsoft and it's monopoly over the PC software industry?
It shouldn't, the facts are this monopoly is bad for the computer industry and while the DOJ in the US may have too many pro M$ lobbyists to constrain it, there are less of those in the EU.
Probably the fine does relate back to the Iraq war and tensions between the US and EU because of that, but, kids, in the real world, it doesn't matter what the reason is, or how it's done, M$'s stranglehold on technology and the suffocation it puts on it must be broken.
It's a shame the DOJ didn't endorse this ruling, since a monopoly hurts US consumers just as much as it hurts EU consumers.
Yes I use Linux and yes... I've read the manifesto of the communist party.
Ireland... instigating a Soviet invasion of US industry
That'd be a neat trick, since software isn't patentable in the EU (not yet anyway). And Microsoft has been able to file patents in the US for years on CIFS, so this case makes not one iota of difference to the situation either way - same as it's always been.
Also, IBM, Sun and Apple would likely all cry foul simultaneously, and they have much more clout than Samba itself in such matters.
"This is why men never share their feelings; because women always remember." -Just Shoot Me.
Here's the place to look:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT&annual
You can see their revenue is about $32B/year, and their net profits is close to $10B/year.
So, the other numbers are off, but the effect is 2 weeks of profit for microsoft. Peanuts.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Nothing at all.
It is posturing, just as we'd do if an American citizen were sentenced harshly in a criminal case overseas. We would not really interfere with the case, but someone from State or Justice would poke their nose in to let them know that we are watching.
And then there is the whole "stop interfering without ability to sell government" thing.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Tell that to Volkswagen ....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Since when does Samba call windows APIs?
Finkployd
MS is also engaging in blatant hypocrisy. On one hand, they argued that since they had already had an anti-trust case in the US which they lost that the EU had no reason or right to extend the penalties beyond what was already done. They were already and ONLY bound by the US decision. On the other hand, after losing (or suffering a setback in) the Lindows case in the US (IIRC) they are now jurisdiction shopping across the globe because the US courts did not rule in their favor. Go figure...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Don't like RealPlayer? Fine don't use it, but then go find an Open Source or commercial media player that does not dictate what you can and cannot run on your PC - because that's precisely what WMP is starting to do now and will do more and more in the future.
In that way, you'll preserve your freedoms a while longer... and while you're at it, ditch IE and get Mozilla.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
``I am somewhat concerned with the EU's choice to allow MS to "license" the API's.''
Nothing wrong with that. They are MS's APIs, MS has every right to do anything they wish with them. If they decide to charge for specifications, it becomes that much harder for individuals and small companies to code to them, which gives open systems a competitive advantage. It's up to MicroSoft to make the best decission about it.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Maybe humans aren't meant to live in "large organizations", leaving them stranded without a culture to pass on from generation to generation for thousands of years?
Evolution shaped the best-of-breed form of living together for humans: the tribe. Not perfect to be sure, but also not planet consuming like our taker culture has proved to be ever since it took off in the fertile crescent 10,000 years ago.
See friendofishmael.org for more information.
Cheers,
Uwe
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
``The European Commission's order for Microsoft Corp. to ship a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player could stifle innovation and help Microsoft's rivals instead of promoting fair competition, the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust chief said Wednesday.''
Well, yes and no. Disallowing MicroSoft from bundling their apps with the OS gives competing OS and application vendors a competitive advantage. However, this _promotes_ rather than stifles competition, because, as it stands, MicroSoft pulls all the strings. I agree that assymetric measures like this should be avoided, but the system is out of balance and won't function properly until we rebalance it somehow.
I see it as a punishment; in principle, you are allowed to bundle anything with anything you please, but if you use bundling as a weapon to push competitors out of the market, the court can forbid it.
Earlier, I objected that bundling is a service to the consumer and should therefore not be limited, but I realize there is a solution: if MicroSoft can't bundle, a third party still can. They could then select the things to bundle from every product on the market, and given enough bundlers, every software gets a fair chance; at least, theoretically.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Samba has fsck all to do with MSFT APIs. An API is the definition of how a program interfaces with the OS or libraries. Samba implements a protocol, a standard for information exchange between systems.
This is why what MSFT does to its APIs doesn't matter, it has nothing to do with reverse engineering, it's just that they're two completely different things.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Even though MS, sitting on US$6e10 cash can easily afford the penalty, I'd say to the EU:
[I'm a US citizen and I don't think the EU decision is at all out of line. The US DOJ action does not seemed to have increased Microsoft's competition on the Windows desktop or innovation in general by one iota. But we're still getting charged.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Look at the effective encouragement for diesel cars -protects the french car industry against the japanese.
Look at the Common Agricultural Policy, that preserves rural peasant life at the expense of the rest of the world.
The EU is pretty blatantly self-serving at times. But it has embraced the Kyoto agreement, and it is not afraid of slapping around companies that overstep the mark. And it monitors those decisions pretty well.
Maybe it is because there is no president; to buy the EU you have to subvert a majority of countries, and without a big MS presence, none of them can be swayed by the MS creates Jobs story.
MS is now forbidden from playing price games with Windows. They absolutely can not threaten or cajole OEMs to do their evil bidding.
Weren't they forbidden from doing that back in 1993? I must be getting old, because I could swear that this had already happened once before.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The DoJ brings antitrust cases on behalf of the federal government. They tend to have an opinion on which companies are violating antitrust laws and which ones aren't.
(You're right that in theory, the State Department (foreign ministry) should be the one engaging in diplomacy, but there are so many facets of foreign relations that other departments like to handle their own little parts of the pie--assuming the subject is not too sensitive. Trade is generally under the aegis of the Commerce Department, but again this is an antitrust issue rather than a trade issue.)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
You're correct, BiggerIsBetter, but keep in mind that most companies have a lot of Windows server. They see the cost going up, as well as security and reliability problems, so they want to deploy Linux without too much trouble. That's where Samba comes in. Samba allows drop-in replacement of Windows servers. It represents one of the main Linux opportunities that open the door to OSS in corporate and small business shops. Remove Samba and all these Windows shops are effectively trapped into MS forever.
Do you see why Samba is so important and why removing its threat is such a victory for MS?
Optimistic people think that Samba will continue reverse engineering new MS protocols. But the conjunction of patented protocols and for-pay-only specs makes this a shaky proposal from a legal perspective. I doubt Samba can afford long, protracted legal fights. So this stupid EU ruling might well be the weapon that will keep future versions of Samba from being compatible with new Windows protocols.
--
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Who cares what the US DOJ thinks? It has no power in Europe. It's certainly entitled to its opinion (afterall we Europeans frequently comment on American "justice"). In fact I think its nice to have things this way around for a change!
I believe that the Samba team is concerned with patent enforcement.
I remember an article in the past regarding some type of password hashing technique where Microsoft discretely reminded a Samba developer that the Samba code was treading on a Microsoft patent.
The EU action gets the patent engine rolling.
Besides which CIFS has been documented for some time, it is a standard afterall. Of course what the documented standard says and any given version of windows actually DOES is different, but so what. In fact the more technical members of the SAMBA team know the SMB protocol better than anyone currently working for MS.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
They have lost virtually every case brought against them (STAC, DRDOS,.....) (OK some were settled out of court because they were clearly losing) yet not once have they paid the slightest attention to any court ruling. They have simply continued expanding their Criminal Monopoly at every opportunity.
Frankly, nothing will do any good unless it involves a prison sentence for their top directors. In countries which make decent attempts to regulate rogue companies, that would have happened long ago. The US needs to get some decent laws, not an indecent excess of lawyers, and the EU needs to swiftly enforce what it does have the power to do. Swift justice is the only thing that scumbags, and ego-maniacs understand.
So you get:
Italian style hard cheese.
Sparkling white wine.
Cornish style pasties.
Which is fair enough. The manufacturers in these regions are justifiably famous for their products and have spent centuries collectively developing their quality and reputation to the point where they are famous the world over.
You want to make a cheap knockoff and hijack that reputation? Bugger off and build your own name/reputation.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
But consider this situation now. MS has hired the IBM patent guru, the guy who drove IBM's Intellectual Property licensing from zero to $2 billion a year in a short time. Obviously, MS intends to patent everything they can.
In 2003, largely in the absence of Marshall Phelps, IBM was granted 3,415 patents. The others of the top 10 patent leaders were: Canon, Hitachi, Matsushita, HP, Micron, Intel, Philips, Samsung, and Sony.
IBM's piece of that was 18.8% of the patents granted to all of these companies in 2003. They do indeed patent "everything they can", and are very agressive about encouraging patent applications from all employees. Their commitment to developing their IP portfolio will not diminish in the absence of Marshall Phelps.
In short, Microsoft has a LONG way to go before it becomes as dominant in patents as it is in software.
In this situation, I don't see how Samba can be made compatible with Longhorn without infringing IP or patent laws. If you reimplement a patented technology, you are infringing the patent, even if you have never seen it.
Longhorn is currently vaporware. It is not yet a problem. Interaction with it is currently a non-issue. In the longer term, Samba may become unable to interact with new versions of Windows. Big deal. Companies will be aware that if they buy software from Microsoft that can't interoperate, they are locking themselves in to a single vendor.
Feel free to reassure me. Please.
Microsoft's fight to retain it's current level of dominance has become an uphill battle. GNU/Linux and BSD now present a level of functionality and reliability that Microsoft simply can not match at the current price of its software products.
For example, the base distribution of Debian GNU/Linux, available for the price of the media, provides functionality that would cost literally thousands of dollars on Microsoft's current operating systems.
Really, this is probably the most painful (to Microsoft) part of the EU punishment. The issue is largely related to bundling and exclusive arrangements. BSD or GNU/Linux distributions can and do bundle quantities of high-quality free software. This makes Microsoft cringe, because not only are they are being punished for bundling their own software, but because they cannot legally bundle much of the same free software due to licensing restrictions.
Yes you could (provided that you could show Redhat, Suse, Mandrake etc. were applying their operating systems monopolies so as to stifle competition in the text editor market).
Don't most Open Source projects such as Samba come free of charge??? How can you charge royalties if the program is already free?
How is this a bad thing for Open Source software... sounds like it simply doesn't matter, for the most part... not that I don't think MS shouldn't be given the short-end at every possible junction, just that this is really a non-issue.
Way to waste your bribe money Gates! >;-)
Of blankness, I know nothing.
To try to be fair, lets take a look at this whole bundling with the OS issue. I think where we get confused is by calling windows an Operating system, there is an operating system in there but lets not forget that an operating system is a kernel and doesn't even include a way to interact with that kernel (ie shell, gui, etc). Nobody is really claiming that Microsoft should be forced to only distribute the operating system.
The windows operating system is equivelent to the linux operating system, the main place to go if you want just the linux operating system is kernel.org. No, what we are really talking about here is the Microsoft windows distributions and there is nothing wrong with Microsoft bundling all the software they want with them even if they are a monopoly. The real problem is having all those applications install by default. The default install should include only system level applications (ie the kernel, c libraries, shell and gui, basic set of standard utils for managing files and directories).
There is nothing wrong with them including all their apps in their distribution if they wanted to, so long as they don't default them in the install. There is no reason to deny them the right to include their browser on the cd, media player, etc. The justification for going this far is that they are a monopoly and I think it would be far enough in this corner of the issue, have a quarterly review of what they want to install by default by a panel which includes various experts from the industry (expert not measured in which fortune 500 they work for, but rather by expertise, Linus Torvalds for instance should be on the panel).
Their api's, protocols, filesystems, and formats of course should be fully published on the internet as well as all new api's and communications protocols at any point in time for the rest of eternity that their market share in desktop operating systems exceeds 40%, if they go under it and come back up to 40% everything kicks in again. Of course all their api's and protocols, filesystems, and formats cannot be patented and are rendered into the public domain upon creation.
The fine should be at least to the two of 200 billion as a rough estimate of illegitimate gains from their actions, payable in sums of 1billion per year us dollar equiv (adjusted to factor inflation) payable to a non-profit organization which will use it to fund open-source development. Some system would need to be implemented to get input on what the world needs unlocked from proprietary hands most.
Anyone else think this would be a FAIR and PROPER way of handling this that would actually have some effect if actively enforced?
If not, I'm sure someone will come up with a better way to provide the same features. Perhaps instead of trying to interoperate with a windows protocol, we could make a package for windows that provides an integrated nfs client which works just like samba.
The way OSS is moving, it probably exists already. It's be nice to have windows coming to linux for a change anyway.