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Japanese FTC Warns Microsoft
ChibiOne writes "The Japanese Fair Trade Commission has ordered Microsoft to cut a restrictive contract clause, designed to protect the software giant from patent-related lawsuits by PC manufacturers that sell products using Microsoft's Windows operating systems. Under such provision, Japanese makers would be unable to sue Microsoft even if the software giant's technologies are deemed to violate their patents. The Japan Times Online has the scoop."
Is it so surprising that a company like Microsoft would steal technology? They generally license it when they can't get away with it, but if they could steal with no repercussions (as this agreement would technically allow) you can bet that they would steal technology to stay "competitive". They have gone for the most underhanded business tactics against many companies and organisations over the years, most notably the open source and free software movements; and don't forget they essentially stole the original concept for a "windows" system from Apple, so I wouldn't trust them further than I could comfortably spit out a rat.
Additionally, the FTC obviously considers those concerns legitimate, as the article says:
This isn't a *supposedly* "dubious" company like Sharman Networks (KaZaA) are accused of being, this is the so-called "untouchable" Microsoft, who sell nothing but legal product; so for any organisation to go so far as to raid their headquarters, the concern must be very believed and legitimate indeed.
> Japanese alphabet
Japanese alphabet?
alpha, beta...
There's no Japanese alphabet, there are character sets.
Three of them: Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana
"Piter, too, is dead."
I believe the technical term for Hiragana and Katakana would be "syllabary".
While I agree that microsoft is rather underhanded in their buisness practices, the accusation of them stealing the windows concept from apple isn't true. Both apple and ms got the idea from xerox...
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Perhaps M$ agrees? Sometimes even the 900lb gorilla can catch on.
Actually, the decision to drop the clause from August onward was made before the warning--the warning was issued because Microsoft refused to drop it before then (which is probably why the article calls it a "largely symbolic" move), and Microsoft is still contesting it.
...in Japan!
Er, I mean... here.
This is a good point: from the point of view of a single consumer, there are few options in taking on a giant corporation. There's legal process (we saw how well that works against MS and who can afford it anyway), legislation, (see parenthetical sarcasm above) or, a much simpler solution: do not buy their product. Nothing changes a company's policy more effectively than having their bottom line hit. Unfortunately, this can only be achieved through solidarity. MS, among other giga-corporations, pays big money to advertisers who in turn pay psychologists and other analysts to experiment on how to better make you buy their products. Power to the people! only works when the people are responsible enough to take the power. One of the more powerful tools the people have is the boycott; barring that (it can have catastrophic ripples in the economy), create or join a co-op which will only buy products based on certain criteria for a group of member consumers. ...and for today's paradox: If you are paranoid enough to believe the government wants to read all email, vote Republican.
Sony (and every other HW vendor) now has a choice: Let MS use their patents, or don't have MS support of their platform.
What's "unfair" about that?
As has been pointed out many times before, Microsoft has a (virtual) monopoly on operating systems. If Microsoft were the little guy, this wouldn't be so much of a problem, but they're not; shipping computers without Windows is tantamount to corporate suicide. This gives Microsoft immense leverage in contracts.
Now, keep in mind this is happening in Japan. Japan's anti-monopoly law has a clause forbidding "yuuetsu-teki chii ranyou", literally "abuse of overpowering status": in other words, if one of the parties to a contract or agreement has significantly more power or authority than the other(s), then that party is not allowed to dictate terms freely--they have to limit themselves to what they could reasonably expect to get agreement on without such power. This clause is applied not infrequently(*); in this case, the FTC decided that OEMs would not have agreed to the no-sue clause if they had not been in the position of having to accept whatever terms Microsoft gave them, and so it declared the clause "unfair" and issued the warning.
(*)For example, the yuuetsu-teki chii ranyou clause was recently used to prevent retail stores from forcing distributors to cut wholesale prices in response to a new law requiring sales tax to be included in display prices.
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
How exactly is this a warning for MS? Sounds more like a "do whatever the fuck you want, we won't hold anyone responsible" message, to me.
The haijo-kankoku (FTC warning, literally "recommendation to eliminate [illegal behavior]") isn't just a "slap on the wrist" in Japan--it's the first step in taking real action against the company. The procedure goes something like this:
Concepts behind the GUI are older than Xerox. Look up Jef Raskin's 1969 paper on the Quick Draw Interface. Engelbart's mouse is similarly dated.
Xerox created a prototype from existing ideas. It was nowhere near as developed as the original Mac.
Apple licenced some concepts and hired developers like Raskin for others.
Microsoft, on the other hand, licenced nothing and had access to Apple source code when developing the original Word application.
Hmm...
While I agree that microsoft is rather underhanded in their buisness practices, the accusation of them stealing the windows concept from apple isn't true. Both apple and ms got the idea from xerox...
True, but Apple engineers took what they saw at Xerox and expanded upon it into a fully-fledged OS. Microsoft added a clause into a product for the Macintosh which Apple believed was giving a license for UI use on just Windows 1.0 as a cooling off period, but instead gave away the look and feel of the Macintosh to Microsoft entirely, which MS then proceeded to plunder in legendary fashion.
Ironically, Either Apple or Microsoft could theoretically have sued many of the Xwindows systems out of existence, but once the (legally protected) Windows prescident was set, the (non-legally protected) flood of similar Operating Systems with similar looks and feels was released upon the world.
Theoretically, this has allowed Operating System creators to learn freely from eachother, which should allow us to reach a state of computing Nirvana. Freeflow of ideas, yadda yadda. Sadly, in many ways it allows the dominant OS vendor to stay "good enough" at all times, freely stealing the fruits of other people's software when it becomes important, and allowing them to fail with their own experiments without contributing to the pot.
So yes, while Apple was inspired by the work at Xerox, Microsoft's arrangement with Apple more directly resembles contract theft.
The ______ Agenda