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Doing the Math in the Microsoft Anti-Trust Cases
coupland writes "Bob Cringely has posted this week's column and has made some interesting comments. He says that regardless of what happens in the EU, DOJ, and class-action proceedings, Microsoft can't lose. Why? Because they make more money by paying lip-service to the law and accepting the occasional fine than by complying. He even does some simple math to prove his point. Fascinating stuff."
Bill Janklow was a recalcitrant breaker of traffic laws. He went on record saying, "Oh, I'll just pay the fine" even though he probably racked up enough violations to have his license taken away. He kept on "paying the fine" until his car met a motorcyle and the person driving the latter was killed.
Judges should act quicker and allow for much less delay is anti-trust cases, because time plays against the ones they're trying to defend.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Interesting take on things -- and I will say that I am no Microsoft fan. I was ticked when I had to pay the Windows tax to get a PC during the time period Microsoft got away with such tatics. Working in IT myself and being a business owner I will say that as a end user I do not trust Microsoft anymore. Not for a long time. WFW3.11 and NT had it going on back in the day. 95 came to market too soon (and no, I didn't buy). 98 wasn't any good until the se release. Me was nothing but a money grab. 2K is barely usable and XP is a joke (IMHO :).
:). New desktops are either OS X or Linux based. Period. Where possible (CAD groups) the networks have been segmented off and there's little Windows worlds that, in a couple of my offices ... can't see the Internet. Ever. Yeah, I believe it has come to that (already). Funny, but the networks always ... just work. Always.
... and I believe that it does NOT account for people like me. There's many of me out there it seems. I took my mom and dad off Windows years ago and they THANKED ME. Go figure. My contribution to the Microsoft coffers since 2000? $-0-
:). Mac's are BSD based. BSD is alive and strong, don't think it's not... Novell has gone Linux. HP and Dell want into the mix directly. What do the best tv video recorders all run on?
Funny -- of course the offices all run on Linux (and/or Netware to this day, thank you
There something wrong with this guys equations
It sure seems that with EVERY major computer type company you look at they're all going one Unix or the other. IBM is Linux. Redhat Linux (obviously
Microsoft obviously has enough money to be a around for a long while. Even while their markets are being eaten left and right. Windows is, well, a technological JOKE at best -- comparing it personally to any of the Unix's out there. OpenOffice sure isn't going away. Who knows WordPerfect may decently re-appear and there's always -X- company out there to come along. What else does Microsoft make money at? Not much.
I see their bottom line continueing to be eaten away -- left and right. Mean while their costs will continue to sky rocket and things will be, well, fun to watch...
What whould you do if the parking ticket cost less than the parking meter?
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
They're Microsoft! What, were you expecting them to play nice?
The 411 on Bill Jankow
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Word on the street is that Sun will get $2 billion dollars of vouchers for Windows 98 and Office 97.
A plea for relief from Microsoft's escalating anti-competitive tactics.
Previously, the FCC was limited to fining $27,500 per offense - and Clear Channel, pulling in many millions a year syndicating Howard Stern, would gladly pay the small fine knowing that the 'controversy' only increased his ratings, resulting in even higher profits for them. When the FCC recently changed their fine structure to $275,000 per station per offense, that could result in many millions in fines each time... which is what resulted in Clear Channel dropping Stern from most of their stations.
In both this and the EU/Microsoft cases, small fines don't work, and large fines will either be appealled and reduced or attacked as being unreasonable. The only solutions that will actually change behavior are the ones that will cause serious economic harm, without seeming unreasonable - suspending licenses of non-complying stations, or forcing Microsoft to open code/APIs and unbundle apps (or even splitting up the different sections of the company.)
-T
Back during the Watergate scandals, a big corp got caught making illegal contributions to a Republican slush fund. They had to pay a fine, of course. A reporter, noticing the paltry size of the fine, remarked to one of the lawyers, "I'll bet your fee was higher than that." The lawyer responded heatedly, "I should hope so!"
But don't respond with a round of lawyer bashing. That's like blaming garbagemen for pollution. Instead, go out and elect a President who will appoint an Attorney General who thinks that anti-trust laws need penalities that actually hurt.
The article does have some valid points but there's some stupid stuff in here as well.
In anti-trust law the actors are individuals, companies, and regulators. The clock rate of the overall system was defined no later than the 1930s when the most recent anti-trust laws were passed. The primary data bus is provided by the U.S. Mail.
Holy mixed metaphors Batman! This just makes no sense. Actors and clock rates! Please... don't overclock your actors! Also what is the US Mail doing in here? Maybe I missed something but I don't recall the USPS having anything to do with Microsoft's legal difficulties.
It looks tough, but Microsoft gets to appeal, remember, and this particular part of the EU bureaucracy has been reversed on appeal two out of the last three times. So whatever the fine, Microsoft has two-to-one odds of not having to pay it
I don't recall the proper term, but this is logical fallacy. The fact that the EU has a lousy record does not give MS 2:1 odds of beating the rap. This is not coin-flipping, this is complex legal stuff. Simple odds do not apply.
However, I really love the last paragraph, especially the suggestion that justice be meted out through death and maiming. I'm all for that!
There are only two ways for a society to address such taking advantage of a legal system. One way is to drag that legal system into the 21st century, which isn't going to happen in America. The other way is to dramatically simplify the legal system along the lines of nomadic justice where there are no prisons nor even capability for collecting damages, so all correction comes down to death or maiming. That isn't going to happen, either, so Microsoft wins.
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
I thought Bob was unusually long winded this time. All he is basically saying is that Microsoft have so much money that no court-imposed monetary penalty can possibly be a problem for them. This is obvious I would have thought.
Even a forced break-up, splitting up the OS and Office divisions, would probably not slow them down too much. Then you would just have 2 monopolies instead of 1.
The forced open-sourcing of Windows is the way to go!
MS has been doing this for YEARS. He's just catching on now? What about DriveSpace and the lawsuit by Stac? MS had to change a little code and Stac went out of business. MS stole Apple's quicktime coded for windows 3.11 and all they got was a slap on the wrists. Makes you wonder how much crap they actually got away with.
Why? Because they make more money by paying lip-service to the law and accepting the occasional fine than by complying.
Sounds kind of like corporate corruption. If you are a corporate officer and you can pillage $100M and face a 10% chance of being caught and receiving a slap on the wrist (paying a $5M fine, being banned from being on a board for directors for five years, and publically announcing that you will stop breaking the law), what would stop you?
In Microsoft's case probably most if not all of their $52B cash pile is ill-gotten and their EU fine is what, $620M? Most government taxes are higher than the 1.2% ill-gotten-gains tax.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Step 3 is: Make so much money that the fines just become a cost of doing business.
I seem to remember[1] this being a problem with the EPA laws years ago. The cost of disposing of waste legally was more expensive than dumping it illegally and paying the fine. It's a no brainer from a business point of view. As long as non-compliance makes them more money than compliance, even with the fines, guess which they're going to choose.
[1] this might be an instance of "creative memory" rather than actual fact, but the analogy still holds.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
In other news, I wouldn't care about traffic fines if they only cost a quarter.
This reminds me of the scene in the movie, where Ed Norton's character explains that if it is cheaper for a company to pay fines, than to recall a potentially-deadly product, then they will opt for the former.
This is one rather unfortunate downside of capitalism; it only works when government has enough regulatory power to compell companies not to harm its citizens. Once a government is in the pockets of business, the citizens are in big trouble.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I'd say anti-trust violations are a bit higher up on the old crime scale than a parking violation. For example, if I commit murder for the first time should I only be issued a parking ticket? Then depending on however many people I kill after that the penalty should only incrementally go up?
I think he dismisses the killing and maiming option far too quickly.
What not have the Federal Trade Commission declare Microsoft OS defective and pull it from shelves?
IANAL, but I believe that a product can only be pulled if it poses a (physical) danger to its users. Buggy as Windows may be, I hardly think software poses that kind of threat (unless it is used in life-threatening environments, which the EULA specifically prohibits, anyways).
In any case, there's a difference between going after a company for its behavior and removing products from the market for political reasons. Nobody should be forced to buy Windows; but if I want to use it, there's no reason I should be prevented from doing so, either.
It's my understanding that this happens very often in large corporations. There was a recent article on a large pipe manufacturer that refuses to comply with OSHA standards for factory safety because it's MUCH cheaper to pay an occasional fine than upgrade; don't think this is a tactic only big n' evil Microsoft uses.
He seems to base his whole article around the idea that Microsoft appeals simply to postpone any form of compliance so that they can continue to make as much money as possible.
I wonder if it occurs to him that maybe the appeal because they don't feel what they're doing is illegal, or at least feel the punishment handed out is too harsh.
Maybe it's me, but that article was waay too long winded to state the obvious: As long as Microsoft can turn a profit after any sort of penalities given them, they have no motovation to comply to any sort of antitrust regulation.
That, and that Pulpit guy likes Geometry.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Don't believe me? Look up the last slashbork story that quoted him on anything remotely technical and read through the comments, preferably at +3 or so. Yeah, that hurts.
Oh, but when he goes off in a bogus "M$ is teh suxx" rant, he gets airplay. I don't believe for a second he's got the scoop "from friends of friends" on what's going on with the compliance team in Redmond. Bullshit. Not that I don't doubt Microsoft is ignoring it, but that's not the point. But bring up a vague accusation using vague references to vague characters in vague positions and presto, you have a fact! Journalism at its best.
...because of patent infringements. Patent infringements are like nukes in the IT world. Everyone has them, but no one will sue over them because, well, everyone has them. Also, given the number of patents out there, chances are every major company has inadvertently infringed on somebody else's patent. So here is how it goes down:
Linux adoption continues to increase.
Microsoft has a bad quarter.
Microsoft panics.
Microsoft digs through their 100s of patents, and find something that IBM unwittingly violated.
They sue IBM for say, 3 billion dollars.
IBM digs through its much larger patent portfolio and finds several that MS inadvertently vioplated.
IBM sues MS for 60 billion dollars.
MS wins its suit against IBM and nets 3 billion.
IBM wins its suit against MS and nets 60 billion.
And Microsoft is broke.
Unknown host pong.
-
There is nothing to stop the EU from retrying them and upping the fine if they keep it up. That's like saying you should get life for your first parking ticket.
Did you actually RTFA? Cringley points out that even that won't matter. The justice system moves so slowly that by the time the new trial winds down and MS has to pay the fine, they'll have earned billions more than the fine costs them, even adding in interest from the original fine date. The EU's max fine isn't enough to even dent MS.I hate to say it (because I don't care for Microsoft's actions) but I'm afraid Cringley is right, MS will win no matter what as far as the courts and anti-trust goes. Ironically the biggest threat to them is possibly Wal-mart's new PCs coming with Sun's Java Desktop on them. What's so ironic about it is that Wal-mart is another example of a company so huge that it can just ignore compliance because it'll cost it less to pay the fines.
0$ profit
-$699 liscencing fee
= -$699 net profit
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Once again we see Cringley stating the obvious but phrasing it a little differently. The EPA fines many polluters each year but quite often the fines are much less than what the polluters make polluting. The gov't gets a little extra cash, the polluters continue to get rich and pollute and we breath foul air.
So maybe we should view M$ programs as a form of digital pollution and turn them into the EPA. I know my health would improve if they fixed a few of their bugs:)
but his two previous articles about EDS/NMCI and the US Navy were much more interesting.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
Cringely makes sense, as usual. I was explaining this same line of reasoning to my dad last night when he asked me about the "huge" EU fine. I just laughed and told him this will only make microsoft stronger.
.. another FINE!
Microsoft, like any large company, is not a person, even though it is treated like one by the law.
Microsoft doesn't care about the moral or ethical point of view. They just care about dollars.
And the government can't punish microsoft by putting it in jail, that's not even possible. They can't do anything to microsoft except fine it, basically. The government can say, "you gotta do this and that", but at the end of the day, the only thing compelling MS to comply is
So Microsoft is just playing the numbers. As long as the fines are less than the payout, they'll do whatever the hell they feel like. Stretch it out, make money. Pay the fine, make money. Settle with the government, make money. They just can't lose. As an added bonus, they know the EU probably won't slap any huge fines for a long time after this.
Here's an analogy.. like some of you who are self-employed, I pay estimated taxes every quarter. Sometimes I have a good year and I under-pay. The IRS charges a "penalty" for this, basically charging you daily interest at 8-9% annual rate, or something like that.
You might think at first, like I did, wow, the IRS is punishing me. I'm a bad person if I underpay. No, it's just numbers. There's no moral component. There's no mark left on my record, there's no reason for me to feel guilty.
Just run the numbers, and if you think you can do better than 9% with the money you didn't give to the IRS, go ahead, don't pay them during the year.
The point of the analogy is, microsoft just looks at the numbers and makes the best business decision.
Companies as large and powerful as microsoft simply don't have to comply with every law. That's the sad truth.
I don't know about lawsuits, but a number of European car makers (BMW, Porsche, etc.) regularly pay fines for failing to comply with the CAFE standards because it would cost them a lot more to increase their cars' gas mileage than it does to just pay the fine.
Rank Presidents by th
Where could you start, passing laws (or using existing ones) which do not support the monopoly or fostering corporate welfare
Declaring that that these products post a threat to national security due to lax security and undue load on government and public networks
Deeming that the supplier has berached US and international laws and is therefore may not validly apply for government contracts
Declaring that no government agency may pay continued licence fees to a company which has acted illegally
Declaring that in tha national interest the government must have access to it's own data by releasing to said government all proprietry file formats and API's necessary for conversion and interoperability
Pooling the saved licence fees and funding academic institutions to develop solutions for existing products for which there is no viable alternative MS Project, Access and perhaps Visio
Of course this could only be initiated in the US where they have the most robust legislation in place to support such arguments, any other nation which tried it would potentially face US trade restrictions.
Stopping myself...Abort (core dumped)
Something even scarier is that businesses can buy "permits to pollute" & barter, buy & sell those permits within their respective industries.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Instead of fines, make the penaty the removal of upper level managment from the company. You break the law you lose your job. End of story. Wonder how long Micosoft would last without Bill or Steve?
What they needed in this, and many other anti-trust cases, is to think outside the box: why not use the RICO statutes? What not have the Federal Trade Commission declare Microsoft OS defective and pull it from shelves? Why not go after Bill and Steve like they did with Enron's Skilling and Lay?
Actually, Cringley peripherally touches on that question, too, by noting that Microsoft has a lot of political allies. It is, of course, a matter of popular wisdom that money buys legislation, but that's not strictly true. You are, for example, not ever going to cough up enough dough to get Tom DeLay to advocate for same-sex marriage or to get Teddy Kennedy to sponsor a bill in favor of racial segregation. All but a few of these people really are ideologically driven, and all the money buys you is wiggle room, which is significant for most politicians, but not all-consuming.
The real problem is that there is an ideological faction in Congress -- which is primarily but hardly exclusively Republican -- which sees business and making money as a good thing, and which naively reasons, therefore, that bigger business and more money must be a better thing. These ideologues are not (especially) corrupt or stupid, but they are blinded by their own dogma. The libertarian wing of the faction is particularly blinded by their adherence to the doctrine of a self-correcting market because they refuse to recognize that, all other things being equal, wealth is itself a competitive advantage.
This will not change except at the ballot box, and it will not ever be the primary issue: the average person doesn't care enough about this to choose a candidate on the basis of their feelings about Microsoft or antitrust laws.
Now, mind you, I'm not arguing against being politically active by any means, but the best way to fight Microsoft (and Oracle, Adobe, Macromedia, etc., etc., ad nauseam) is to write excellent free end-user software. Sure, it's still necessary to fend off the more ridiculous legislative initiatives and vote wisely, but in the end, making the better product will win out.
(Now, by "better", I mean better in the eyes of the average consumer, not the average software engineer, but that's a rant for another occasion.)
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
A little sauce for the goose, my friend.
l /main552270.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/05/nationa
This is such a fantastically good idea. Imagine watching our congressppl(on both sides of the isle) try to explain why they can't quite support it.
Hours of entertainment ensue.
At your expense.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Fines don't hurt enough? Finland doesn't have this problem because, for example, a traffic fine is based on ability to pay--the offender's income. That's how Anssi Vanjoki got a $103,000 speeding ticket.
Actually, that's not a bad analogy. I park illegally and get a parking ticket, but I can only get one a month. I go to court and they charge me a $10.00 fine and tell me to use the parking garage. But the parking garage wants $25.00 a month to park. So I can park illegally and risk a $10.00 fine every month, or I can pay $25.00 up front to park legally. Which would you do?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
So fines are essentially permits after the fact , and they're often avoided and appealed. As has been said , make it a punishment rather than merely a tax-deductable fee for doing business , and things may change. Otherwise it goes on the balance sheet under pens , paper and lawyer fees.
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
... stop the nonsense of giving personhood to corporations and make every legal action be directed against named individuals. If every time a corporation had to go to court, and someone was facing a personal fine, not the company's money but their personal money, or staring at jail time, they would think twice or thrice about being crooks. This nutso artifical human named the corporation is too much of an insulation for the actual humans who make decisions.
IMO, microsoft has more than proven they are chronic serial liars and crooks,and that they will continue to be crooks no matter what, and because of that they should have had their incorporation revoked. That joke fine they got in the US of being able to print up their own fine-money-vouchers, was beyond obscene. Joe and Josephine average can't do that, no "corporation" should be allowed to do that.
My cat's free next November...
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
Harmtut Pilch of FFII provides a great Analysis on Montis decision.
Hartmut's document in short:
EU Boosts Microsoft's Monopoly
The European Commission's competition procedings against Microsoft have led to a verdict which gives a big boost to Microsoft's monopoly position in the OS market and helps Microsoft expand this position to other markets. While the Commission may have earned substantial revenues for itself by imposing a one-time fine of 1% of Microsoft's liquid cash reserves, the smallprint of the verdict gives Microsoft green light to kill its main competitors in the operating systems market. This smallprint was simultaneously reinforced through backroom deals in the Council's Patent Policy working party, of which copies have been leaked to FFII. Immediately after the announcments the stock value of MSFT rose by 3%.
This reminds me of the scene in the movie, where Ed Norton's character explains that if it is cheaper for a company to pay fines, than to recall a potentially-deadly product, then they will opt for the former.
But that's the way it's SUPPOSED to be.
The company is in business solely to maximize profit. This makes it's behavior fit the definition of psychopathy/sociopathy - like about one/three percent of the population.
The government is in business to co-opt vigilantism by providing a coherent and understandable set of rules, including punishments for non-compliance that:
- convince most psychopaths/sociopaths that their best interests are served by following the rules, and
- taking out of circulation any that don't follow the rules, once it becomes clear that they won't follow them.
If the fines and other sanctions are low enough that businesses find it more profitable to be scofflaws than law-abiding, it's the fault of the GOVERNMENT, according its own legal theories.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Maybe it's me, but that article was waay too long winded to state the obvious: As long as Microsoft canturn a profit after any sort of penalities given them, they have no motovation to comply to any sort of antitrust regulation.
Close. But you missed the point of part of the wind: That complying with the rulings COSTS Microsoft more than the fines.
So it itsn't just that the fines are too little to matter. It's that COMPLIANCE is TOO EXPENSIVE, and the fines are too small to shift that balance.
Just like alcohol prohibition and the "War on Drugs", it's explicitly PROFITABLE to DISOBEY the rulings.
Of course this brings up a question:
Does this behavior make Microsoft a "Continuing Criminal Enterprise"?
If so, it could be VERY interesting if that's brought up the NEXT time somebody brings Microsoft in for antitrust or other violations.
I wonder if the RICO laws could be applied, too.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As you say, a person can face personal fines or jail time.
How do you put a corporation in jail for 90 days?
How do you give a corporation the death penalty?
Once upon a time, the king could revoke your corporate charter, and your company went away. That's the closest thing to a 'death penalty' for corporations that I've ever encountered, but even modern trust busting practices don't go that far (Ma Bell was dismembered, but not actually destroyed).
Similarly, the punishment for some crimes allows for any goods that were acquired in the process of breaking the law to be seized. If you have a product that violates the law egregiously, why shouldn't the benefits (profits) of that product be seized, and funneled back toward the public good?
Fining a company that has $60B in the bank 600 million dollars is chump change. They can take that out of interest payments on their liquid assets. You really want to hurt them, you seize all of their profits (or source code) for that product. Anything less is merely an annoyance.
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
The only way to subdue a larger opponent is to divide that opponent's forces and proceed to conquer them. Microsoft and any other large corporation knows this and uses it against any legal strategy which is brought against it. Our government is just too afraid to use it against them.
Remember that the original judgement order would have split Microsoft up. Remember also that they fought it tooth and nail because they knew that if it happened - then they really would have had problems.
Remember AT&T was split up and we got better phone service. IBM had to split up and we now have microcomputers that are so cheap you could work at MacDonald's and still buy one. Microsoft should be split up so software can evolve the way it should.
But then, Microsoft has enough money to buy anything and anyone. So the guy is right. When you are making so much money that you can thumb your nose at the law - who's laws do you live by? The answer is - no one's but your own. Someone giving you a hard time? Buy them off or buy someone who will remove the problem. And that doesn't mean you have to hire a hit man. You just need to hire/buy/create another company to put pressure on legislators, or do letter writing campaigns, or even just visit these people and hint that your company which brings vast wealth into the U.S. would leave and...well, I'm sure you get the picture.
So did the DOJ of Utah. If you have forgotten, remember that Microsoft was in big trouble with the State of Utah for creating a company which wrote ficticious letters to them asking for leniency in their case against Microsoft. IMHO - that is a $10,000.00 fine for each and every letter written and a 5-10 in jail for each offense. Since there were litterally thousands of letters we should never see Mr. Gates or anyone else who was in charge of Microsoft at the time ever again. Yet - there have been no arrests even though Microsoft admitted they had done this.
I think Mr. Roosevelt said it best:"...So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory."
We need victory. True victory and not hollow lapdog lickings. But all we have gotten so far is a pat on the head.
Later.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
"how do you give a corporation the death penalty?". simple.
1. seize all of its assets and auction it ASAP.
2. put all managers, middle-management and up in jail.
3. declare all of its rights in contracts invalid.
4. watch.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Finally, someone else sees this. I've seen for years how MSFT signs contracts with companies it needs software of information from. They usually end up with the product one way or another and the original owner attempts court action. Microsoft drags it out long enough that the other company has no more income and must settle for pennies on the dollar for what the technology would have been worth.
Cringely takes this up to the monopoly cases and class actions but it's the same game. This is why I've been saying, since the mid 90's, that any company that works with Microsoft is on the road to distruction. Sure, you might find one or two companies that were bought out and survive within the walls of their Redmond offices but most are just crushed and their bones just tossed out with the trash.
I still can't believe Sun Microsystems tried to use another legal document to settle with Microsoft. Look at all the stuff Sun and Microsoft agreed to. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! They should have just taken the $$$ and walked away. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
How should the Justice Department take on large multi billion dollar Corporations?
Easy : never ever put financial sanctions on them. Only put regulatory sanctions on such Corporations. For instance take the EU vs. Microsoft case : a $600.= million fine is pocket money.
So demand Microsoft to remove the Media Player with the sanction , that if Microsoft fails to do so in time, Microsoft would just loose their commercial chamber registration and license, and thus would be forced to stop doing business in Europe. Easy as it gets.
Robert
Passing a law that forbids governments and public institutions to buy products from convicted companies would be much better and a real punishment.
The threat to Microsoft is not the fine. Its restrictions on bundling and opening up APIs, and its likely that these are going to imposed pretty much immediately. The reason these are significant is because of Microsoft's business model. They rely on sales, not services. This means that they need users to buy software and upgrades and they need to constantly expand to new markets. At the moment, these strategies aren't working very well. There are major complaints about support and licencing of existing installations and the attempts to expand look successful at first but are loss-makers: Last year MS server sales made a loss, and X-Box has always been hugely subsidised. Even worse for Microsoft, they are being threatened in their core market, as Linux on the desktop is starting to be taken seriously - especially in the corporate market. Microsoft is desperate to expand into the multimedia market: they want you to use Microsoft TVs, home media centres and portable media players. To do this they have to be able to sell XP embedded and bundle media player. These are key parts of the on-going EU investigation.
Microsoft is a lot less strong than it looks - its all based on share value. If in a few years time desktop share starts to fall due to corporate Linux use, users are even more reluctant to upgrade yet again or purchase 6GHz machines with 4GB memory to run Longhorn, and they have no escape route into other markets because of EU action, they won't be a happy company.
Unfortunately, it seems that our government is in bed with so many corporations, and they don't want to threaten their corporate benefactors. Therefore, they'll never bring up such a thing, because of all the feathers that the subject would ruffle.
Personally, I think Microsoft's proved more than enough times that the corporate death penalty should be an available option when companies get that large - as Cringely pointed out, in a roundabout way, Microsoft has so much money on hand, financial "remedies" aren't, when the company in question can afford to just consider fines for non-compliance as a business expense.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
This reminds me of a law that's gone out-of-fashion here in Toronto, Canada. When I first moved here in the '90s, it was illegal for stores to be open on the day after Christmas... but the Eaton's department store would. They figured that they made more money than the fine. As the years went by, more and more stores on Yonge Street followed Eaton's example. Today, Yonge Street is busier the day after Christmas than any Saturday... despite the fact that it's illegal.
Okay. According to this logic, it is perfectly ethical, and indeed almost obligatory, for those who are afflicted with sexually transmitted diseases and/or are passionate (pardon the almost pun) about finding cures for these diseases to rape and/or cause to be raped those individuals whom they deem able to best effect said cure. Yeah, I didn't think so.
Rape is never right. That our resources are not optimially distributed according to some ethical code or other may be wrong, but raping people isn't going to help things.