Microsoft's Long-Playing Business Record

khendron writes "The Globe and Mail has an article which tells it like it is. Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,' and has no intention of changing. A telling quote 'Losing or settling case after case, Microsoft has tested the bounds of antitrust and patent infringement law, with little evidence that its power has waned or that its behaviour has been substantially changed. Rivals and many legal experts say antitrust law itself has come out the worse for the skirmishes, while Microsoft appears to have built the ongoing scrutiny, fines and remedies into a strategy showing scant sign of reform.'"

Comments

wow, I thought the law was supposed to protect us,

[garcia]

"I can tell you with 100 per cent certainty that when managers are deciding what features to put inside products, they are not considering antitrust issues unless it is in a very narrow area covered by the DOJ settlement," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a research firm that closely covers the company.

Unfortunately, because of how these types of things have been handled (including laws), they have been either way too specific or way too broad. On one hand we have the DCMA that has sweeping implications for tons of different situations. It has done little but allow for more lawsuits from bigger fish against the minnows. I believe its intention was to protect but it ended up making everything so vunerable. On the other hand, we have MS' settlement. They are basically allowed to do what they want based on what they think is best. What the fuck kind of punishment is that? As long as they stay within the narrow constraints placed on them they are good to go. Asked whether the "rule of reason" test would have prevented Microsoft from bundling the browser, the issue at the heart of the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit, Mr. Ballmer was adamant: "I would still integrate a browser. We would still integrate the Media Player. ... Nobody ever said the browser did not meet the rule-of-reason test. It absolutely met the rule-of-reason test to go in." You just HAVE to love that. Ballmer getting to decide what's ok and what's not.

While I have reservations about both the browser and the media player being "integrated" (for obvious tin-foil-hat reasons), I am more concerned w/the simple fact that THEY get to decide for themselves what is all right. After all the fucking money that was wasted coming to this fucking "punishment" why don't we have a team of REAL FUCKERS telling MS what to do? Hmm, looks like it is the other way around eh?
And to think, I always believed that the laws were to protect those that could not easily protect themselves.

Which is why fines are not the right solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It just allows the rich companies to continue to abuse the system and break rules that other smaller companies have to follow. Once you're in power, it's much easier to stay in power.

Re:Which is why fines are not the right solution

[rokzy]

the nineteenth century phoned, and they want their spelling of "jail" back.

Re:Which is why fines are not the right solution

[Chiasmus_]

If you don't think fines are the solution, then what do you suggest? Gaol sentances? Might work, but who do you put in gaol?

Here's a novel solution.

Fine Microsoft, sure, but instead of making that fine payable to some country's department of justice, make it payable to a competing company.

Microsoft may not miss $100 million too terribly... but it might not be thrilled about having to fork $100 million over to, say, Red Hat. In other words, replace criminal sanctions with something more closely resembling civil liability.

Rather than distribute the fine among all Microsoft's competitors, which would render it worthless, I'd suggest picking one of its top twenty competitors out of a hat and giving them the whole chunk.

I wonder if that would solve the speeding problem, too... instead of fining you, they could just look up your religious or political affiliation, and force you to fork over $100 to the organization they suspect you would have the most distaste for ;)

Yes, I see some obvious problems with this plan, but forcing Microsoft to pay Apple or Linux companies is still a fun idea to kick around.

Re:Which is why fines are not the right solution

[danharan]

If you don't think fines are the solution, then what do you suggest? Gaol sentances?

Revoke their corporate charter.

Corporations are not people. They are a legal fiction granted by the state for the purpose of shielding investors from liability. This is necessary and proper when a project is so big that investors can't be expected to be responsible for day-to-day operations.

A long time ago, probably when we still spelled jail "gaol", we would revoke a corporation's right to exist if it exceeded its rights as set out in their charter. Then after a bit of judicial activism, corporations became "people". They don't have the right to vote, but have the right to free expression. They can lobby the government that gave them the right to exist to change the laws. And most importantly, we no longer believe we have authority over these creatures.

Many corporations, if the "three strikes and you're out" principles were enforced would be abolished. Corporations routinely get away with murder, or at the very least criminal negligence causing death. I'm not making this stuff, or saying it to be inflammatory. Remember Bhopal? There are many more examples. And how about Thalidomide? Tobacco companies whose executives consistently lied? Often the corporation only gets fined or settles out of court.

Microsoft could probably be split into smaller units with little harm to investors and no layoffs. The only thing that would be sacrificed would be the legal fiction of Microsoft.

The question is, how long will we allow these serially criminal entities to operate unchecked? How long until we recognize that sovereignty means we can re-assert our rights and dissolve them?

Re:wow, I thought the law was supposed to protect

[msim]

As others have said elsewhere, around 60 Billion in cash = deep pockets to bring out some seriously nitpicking lawyers.

They have the resources to just drawwwwwwwwwwwwww any legal experience out beyond viability for anyone other than a decent sized business (personally that's why i think that class suite from the US states pretty much folded in their favour anyway).

"You want to sue us? fine, stand there while we smack you about the head with a 2x4 a while first please"

It's not working

[Paulrothrock]

When a company can simply write off 'punishments' as costs of doing business, they cease to be punishments. Increase the fines, or make them percentages instead of amounts, if you want to change anything. (Percentages would be better because it would affect small companies the same as big companies.)

Microsoft, like all other companies, has one duty: To make as big of a profit as possible. It's up to society, and therefore the government, to provide them with economic incentive to be nice and play fair.

Attitude Adjustments

[cptofmysoul]

The unfortunate truth is that for Microsoft to do business differently the attitudes of people in a lot of different positions has to change.

Just to name a few:
Investors have to realize that pumping money into a company that turns around and puts the money in the bank is ultimately the same as putting their money into their own bank.

Businesses have to realize that the one-supplier solution for IT is as bad as a one-supplier solution for anything else.

The government has to realize that they don't want a company competing with them for control over the masses.

No teeth to take a bite out of them

[tackaberry]

Microsoft has had the beat us if you can, stop us if you can attitude for some time. You can't blame them for wanting to take over the world...doesn't everyone. The failure here is to successfully demonstrate that in taking over the world they have used dirty tricks to snuff out the competition. Until any settlement hurts them either in the wallet (unlikely) or in their ability to operate as a company (split them up), they will continue with business as usual. Either the laws are outdated/weak, or the cases are flawed - or both

The other problem is that the average non-slashdot computer user probably thinks Microsoft first when they buy software - why? everyone uses it - so it must be the best, and half the time Microsoft is giving it away, whereby the competitor is trying to build/stay in business. Bundling applications/features that drive other companies out of business (regardless of the quality of the programs) hurts everyone but Microsoft. Although I wonder if things were flipped and if Apple had the 90% share would companies/governments/people be suing them for including iPhoto/iTunes/iMovie, etc?

Re:Integrating Software

[Coryoth]

Is there anything that Microsoft has been sued for "illegally integrating" that a Linux distribution or Mac would be caught dead without? Monopoly or no monopoly, a modern OS requires an internet browser and a video player.

I believe the difference is thus: If you are installing MS Windows you must also install IE, and WMP, and all their other knicknacks. You can't remove them either. That means if an OEM wants to ship a PC with MS Windows on it, they have to ship a PC with IE and WMP on it. At best they can include some other programs as well, but IE and WMP are required to be there. Given that MS Windows has 90% desktop share, that means effectively on any new computer, you have to have IE and WMP installed. That's where leveraging a monopoly (which is the bad part) comes in.

On the other hand, were Linux to even have an effective monopoly, what is getting forced in the install? Does a distro have to install mplayer, or xine, or totem? Is there any requirement that Mozilla, or Firebird, or Konqueror, or Opera, or Galeon or Epiphany be the installed browser? Those choices are up to the distribution - or the OEM if they want to roll their own. Yes, you have to install a media player and a web browser these days on any modern OS install - the question is, do you get to choose which one to install, or are you forced to install some out of necessity?

If Mplayer slid downhill while Totem got th Gstreamer backend going and improved massively is it likely that Distributions might move to having Gstreamer instead of Mplayer? Yes. Would this be hard to do? No.

If Windows Media Player started to lag in development while quicktime, or helixplayer shot ahead, would OEMs be able to install the better media player instead of WMP? No - at best they could install it alongside, and hope that WMP doesn't have some hardcoded stuff that pulls it up for certain actions (hey, IE certainly does!).

What we're saying here is that there is no level playing field for these apps on MS Windows. Were Linux to be in the same position, doing the sort of bundling it does now, which media player, or web browser, or office suite gets bundled would be entirely up for grabs. It's an open market on Linux. On MS Windows it's whatever MS has, plus possibly some competition bundled alongside.

That's a big difference in a competeive market with narrow margins.

Jedidiah.

Not alone

[michael_cain]

Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,'

MS is not alone in this behavior. Large local telephone companies are regulated by the states in which they operate, and many of those states require certain levels of company responsiveness when customers call -- eg, that 95% of calls be answered by a person in less than 30 seconds. Staffing to the necessary level has historically been quite expensive, and the level of fine that the states can impose for non-compliance relatively small. When you have to decide between spending $20M on additional staffing, or pay a $10M fine, the answer is fairly obvious.

I suppose extensive outsourcing to India or the Philipines will change the equation...

Corporate Persons

[Black Mage Balthazar]

The problem with corporations, is that they carry more rights of "real" persons than responsibilities. I say instead of fines, give them jail time. But how do you confine an abstract entity you ask?

Simple, you freeze them in the spot. No money or supplies go in, no money or products go out. The company is effectively frozen in time, unable to do business.

Now, most of you are probably looking at this going, "But if that happened to MS, the world would screech to a halt!" But isn't that the point others were trying to make? That having a single supplier situation is a Bad Thing. If this happened to a more diverse market, such as auto suppliers for a car rental company, the company could switch to another supplier (I'm making the assumption that if the law were like this, corps would have a sufficient backup plan to put into place).

When the company "returned" to business, they could try and pick up their contracts again, or realize that because of their behavior, their market has dwindled. I think this would work better than a static fine (as evidenced in this case) as well as a percentage fine, since charging a small company $1000 for an infraction can also be seen as a slap on the wrist. (Now, I know that a small company and monopoly tend to be mutually exclusive, but I mean other infractions that corporate entities can commit as well.)