Microsoft Chided Over Exclusive Music Idea

grumpyman writes "The federal judge overseeing Microsoft Corp.'s business practices scolded the company Wednesday over a proposal to force manufacturers to tether iPod-like devices to Microsoft's own music player software. Microsoft blamed the proposal on a newly hired, "lower-level business person" who did not understand the company's obligations under the antitrust settlement."

Comments

Of course

[dtfinch]

There's nothing Microsoft could have done. Those low level interns practically run the company.

Re:Of course

[MLopat]

Yeah well that's closer to the truth than you think. 10% of the company is comprised of co-ops. They typically put in longer hours, do more work, and are the real boys and girls in the trenches.

Re:Of course

[rtb61]

Well perhaps they would get more senior people doing it if there were considerable fines and minor jail terms for continued attempts to thwart the princicples of the settlement as minimal as they are. This failure to apply genuine fiscal pressures upon microsoft, especially considering the cost to government of the continued overseeing of the monopolistic machinations of bog balls and wee willie, is very strange to say the least ;-).

"Microsoft regrets

[ceoyoyo]

the proposal ever was sent to music-player manufacturers..." Wow, they let the new coffee getter conference call with Sony by himself? Huh.

Re:"Microsoft regrets

[einhverfr]

IANAL, but these are my thoughts.

Which makes you wonder what Microsoft will be doing once those clauses of their settlement expires in 2008. Perhaps what they're really regreting is the manager letting the cat out of the bag before they could legally do it.

Doesn't matter. Antitrust law doesn't expire in 2007, only close government supervision does. If anyone thinks that this expiration means the end of Microsoft's antitrust woes, they need to think again. The reason is something called collateral estoppel. Basically all those facts decided as a necessary part of that portion of the case not overturned on appeal is beyond relitigation. I.e. in any future antitrust suit, Microsoft cannot say "We were never a predatory monopoly." The best they can say is "We are not a monopoly any more" or maybe "what we are accused of doing is not predatory." I.e. the litigation changes from establishing facts to establishing *changes* of facts since they were established.

What this means is that the whole point of the antitrust case against microsoft was the judgement that Microsoft both was a monopoly and had broken antitrust law in maintaining it. The exact details of the judgement are largely irrelevant. Indeed had Microsoft been broken up, it would have been *easy* to argue that facts had changed "Yes, Microsoft was a monopoly, your honor, but we were broken up and so the facts from the prior case no longer apply." THe fact that they are largely allowed to continue doing business as usual is *not* a good thing or a light punishment for Microsoft. Indeed it is largely a declaration that it is open season on Microsoft from an antitrust litigation point of view (in that the bar has been lowered to a rediculously low level for such claims, including continuing violations).

Already there are over 100 antitrust suits against them winding their way though a multidistrict panel including Novell v. Microsoft, Go v. Microsoft and countless more. The antitrust settlement might be a minor cut to Microsoft, but it is a cut that occurs in waters populated by a large number of man-eating sharks. Sucks to be Microsoft. Which is one reason I no longer work there.

The good old days at MS

[MLopat]

I miss the good old days at Microsoft. When we used to just do whatever the hell we wanted, and would write a cheque for the consequences later. :)

of course...

[sapgau]

It was one of those lower level, chair throwing, teeth grinding employees!!

Re:did not understand?

[jedZ]

with a sign on it saying "Beware of Leopard".

Re:Suuuure

[cgenman]

low level business person who did not understand the company's obligations under the antitrust settlement.

Ballmer?

In defense of MS

[weavermatic]

I am a service tech with Siemens on the Redmond Microsoft campus. We do all of their desktop support so I see A LOT of the normal day to day happenings that go on around this place. Ever since I've been here, all I've seen are people doing everything they can to make the most feature-filled, least buggy, most compatible software they can. I know for certain that the team working on Microsoft Operations Manager has in the last week broken several barriers that they were working on.

My point is that Microsoft is not the immense evil company that they are made out to be. The people that work here are not trying to rip you off. They are not sabotaging their software. They take pride in thier work. We have copies of different linux builds lying around and some people even use Macs here. Seeing the way things work here, when Balmer says he has not thrown a chair, I believe him. Every last employee and most vendors here have IMMENSE amounts of freedom in their jobs. Microsoft hires people that present an air of trustworthyness. They want to be able to hire people, assign them a task, and be confident that the person they hired will be able to complete the task in the most efficient and responsible way possible.

In reference to this article that obviously did not happen. Somebody was entrusted with a certain amount of authority and they misused it. Please realize that Microsoft as a company is not some huge evil organization out to rape your wallets. They are regular people who want to, like anyone else, do the best job they can.

A Tale of Two Microsoft's

[einhverfr]

I used to work at Microsoft. I started out as a temp and was eventually hired full time. I have worked in PSS, and apprenticed in other departments such as testing. I as also deeply involved in many competitive discussions regarding Linux, etc. Indeed, over two years after I quit, I am still seeing the effects of suggestions I made to high-level competitive managers while I worked there.

Pretty much every thing you say is true. To a point. It is true that Microsoft is a place where one can generally have a lot of freedom on how you do your job and you only find out once a year that the management thinks several of your most important contributions were wastes of time (a more common complaint than you might think), and that in general, it was a fairly satisfying place to work. It is true that people take a lot of pride in their work, and that most of the people there, especially those in product development, are primarily interested in making quality software, though whether they succeed or not is another question.

The problem, however, is that there is also an odd sense of mean-spiritedness which exists as a hidden undercurrent at the company. It does not come out in every employee, and I think that the GM of my department through most of the time I was there was probably the least mean-spirited guy I have enver seen in any company, but it is a part of the corporate culture. You would not believe how many Microsoft employees might ordinarily vode democrat but voted to elect Sen. Gordon simply because Cantwell was coming from a competing company (Real Networks). Never mind the fact that she might actually understand the industry. One guy even told me that he could not in good conscience vote to elect an executive from a competitor to public office. And you would not beleive the flack I got because before I was hired, I had migrated my parents to a Linux desktop and did not want to bring them back into the fold of Microsoft software (yes they still run Linux, and no they are not nerds or techies).

Similarly, the level of mean-spiritedness I watched seemed to go up as one ascended the management chain though there were plenty of exceptions. I knew several people who ended up in GM positions who really were great people to work for and with, and were entirely procompetitive. Sadly I also saw many more people who were fundamentally meanspirited (even if they did not at first appear this way) who were promoted as well.

Now, I was not ill-informed as to the nature of this aspect of Microsoft corporate culture when I was hired. I had read essentially all of the court documents both regarding Caldera v. Microsoft and USDoJ v. Microsoft. And I largely accepted the employement at first due to the fact that I did not have another job lined up when my term came to an end. In other words, it was clear to me that a large percentage of senior execs (including Gates and Ballmer) were of this category of employees, and that this was a large part of what catylized this attitude in the company.

During my time at Microsoft, I worked tirelessly to improve Microsoft software and business practices. My contributions were nearly all procompetitive. Among ideas first floated by me:
1) One has to stop thinking of Exchange and Sendmail as competitors (as a result of this email, a POP3 server was added to Windows Server 2003).
2) If you are going to Linuxworld, at least take the one product (SFU) that Linux guys might find interesting.
3) SFU should ship with the operating system.
4) If you can't provide SSH, at least provide a telnet server which uses Kerberos to encrypt the session (don't know the status on this one, but I believe it may be forthcoming)

I don't know where my other suggestions so I will not mention them here. However, I will say that I had suggested a very aggressive competitive approach aimed at materially reducing the number of safe markets for Linux and FreeBSD. I would not be surprised if Microsoft continues to impliment other suggestions I made.

Glad to see Microsoft's H1-B program is working

[bombadier_beetle]

The judge said Microsoft's music-player proposal -- even though it was abandoned 10 days later -- "maybe indicates a chink in the compliance process."

Well, now we know the ethnicity of the low-level intern.

Re:Turnabout is FairPlay?

[oscast]

"You are smoking crack."

No crack.... you're just confused.

"The iPod and iTunes are as anti-competitive as it gets."

Not at all... watch as I destroy your whole argument.

"The hardware is completely closed and no third party software can run on it."

That's not anticompetitive... Apple creates the whole product. You might as well go after radio manufacturers (for example) for not allowing other companies to automatically be suppliers for their knobs and buttons. If you create the entire product (hardware and software) you can include as much or as little as you want with it. If Windows could be used to the exclusion of PC hardware... then they would be allowed to bundle as much as they want without concern of leveraging their illegal monopoly.

"There are also a limited number of codec's that work with the iPod."

Actually, the iPod is pretty much on par with all other music players with regard to the number of codecs it can play.

"The only thing that you can do is play AAC, MP3 and DRM'd apple music on it."

Wrong. The iPod can play songs encoded with these CODECS:
MP3 (from 32 Kbps to 320 Kbps)
MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR)
AIFF *
WAV (with no compression)
The following require iPod software 1.3 or later:
M4A AAC *
M4P AAC (Protected) *
M4B AAC (iTunes Music Store Spoken Word files) *
The following require iPod software 2.2 or later or iPod mini 1.1 or later:
Apple Lossless Encoder
* Requires iTunes 4 or iTunes 4 for Windows. AAC files also require the most recent update to the iPod software.

"It is a black box. It even enforces DRM practices on non-DRM music."

Its a Black box... and of course also a white one... and no it does not enforce DRMpractices on non-DRM music.

"Apple chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only apple products to access the iTunes music store - No iPod, no iTunes."

Motorola chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only motorola LCD displays in their phones. No Motorola LCD display, no motorola phone.

Whirlpool chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only Whirlpool dish soap dispensers in their dish washers. No Whirlpool dishsoap dispenser, no Whirlpool dish washer.

Sony chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only sony buttons on their stereos. No Sony buttons, no Sony radio.

See how ridiculous your argument is? Apple creates the entire product the same way that these other companies do. Because Apple also happens to compete in a market that is largely comprised of multiple vendors each contributing a small part in a piecemeal approach to any given technological solution does not mean they are required to do so under any law as you're implying... be it legal or ethical.

"It is a monopoly now - because Apple currently has a majority of the mp3 player market share, and a 100% monopoly on music encoded in an Apple DRM format."

Keep in mind... its not illegal to be a monopoly. Its illegal to use your monopoly illegally. Apple is not doing anything that excludes competitors to enter into the market. Microsoft's spotty history is rife with this sort of behavior throughout its history. They didn't achieve their monopoly legally... and they certainly haven't maintained it legally. Apple on the other hand achieved their monopoly in the market through hard work and innovation. They are maintaining it by doing the same repeatedly.... over and over again.

"They are also actively discouraging 3rd parties from interfacing with their hardware and software (real player)."

And there's nothing illegal or unethical about that.

"Thus, they are using their monopoly advantage to exclude competition in the market of players that can play AAC/DRM formatted music."

No, any company can use the AAC codec and can attach DRM to the fo