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EC Suspends Microsoft Sanctions Due to Appeal
An anonymous reader writes "The European Commission has suspended sanctions against Microsoft stemming from a ruling that the group had abused its dominant market position."
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This is stupid. When anyone appeals a judgement against them, the sentence is suspended until the outcome of the appeal - when the verdict is in doubt (it's being appealled), you shouldn't be punished.
If MS loses the appeal, then the judgement will be reinstated. This is normal.
jon
The law is too slow - let the market decide.
The entire point of these sanctions was to punish Microsoft for NOT letting the market decide. Anti-competative practices and monopolising in any situation is bad for a free market, even if the product meets the peoples needs.
They've realized the product cycles of the software world are smaller than the amount of time it takes to run a court case. This basically means you can violate whatever laws you like, and no one will do anything, because they can't stop you until winning a court case; but by the time they manage to run the court case to completion, the company you were violating said law against is bankrupt, the product you were doing it with has been replaced, the violation is no longer relevant to what you're doing currently, and no one seems to care so much about punishment because what's happened is in the past...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I am not at all surprised MS is making progress on this appeal. The ruling was really a piss poor way for the EU to flex its collective muscle against a US corporate giant. Not that MS doesn't deserve to be investigated for anit-competitive business practices. In particular the recent (or not so recent for some) revelations that MS has been funding nearly all of the so called independant studies showning MS products as better, faster, safer and even cheaper than open source. The problem here is much like the problem with the Kyoto protocal. It's the right idea but so poorly drafted that it renders it completely meaningless. It is about time someone put MS in its place, but if you are going to use bull**** allegations to do it then you are going to fail in the end.
"Take that Lisa's beliefs!" - Homer Simpson
If they lose the appeal, do they have to pay interest from the date of the original decision?
If they stretch the case over a period of a couple of years, that could increase the cost significantly.
Of course, in that time, M$ piggybank would have grown so much to make losing the appeal(s) neglible.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So there it is. Like the Americans, we oh-so-superior Europeans now know that we too have the best 'justice' that money can buy.
Julia Cameron
Oich ù agus hiùraibh éile