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New Blow for Microsoft in EU Row
twitter writes "The BBC is reporting on a stinging rebuke to Microsoft and their last defensive move in the EU anti-trust trials. Boston district court judge Mark Wolf accused Microsoft of trying to 'circumvent and undermine' European Law by requesting Novell documents. The story reminds us that last month, a federal judge in California denied subpoenas of Oracle and Sun for the same reasons, that a New York judge is currently considering a request against IBM and that Microsoft will be appealing their March 2004 conviction next week and may face millions of dollars of fines a day. New complaints were made just two months ago."
The way I understand it, it is like follows:
Microsoft approaches an American court and says, in essence: Please force company so-and-so (in this case Novell, in another case it was Sun and Oracle) to render a number of documents to us. Reason? Well, we are involved in a lawsuit in Europe, and these documents have been used there in some context or other, but it was ruled that we had no right to look at them.
The court then replies: So what? European courts have their own mechanisms. The only basis for your demand is that you don't like the outcome of those mechanisms and want an American court to interfere with the European proceedings. It would improper for us to grant you that wish.
Quite simple: Microsoft can't get what they want in Europe. In Europe there are laws that prevent Microsoft from seeing third-party documents. What Microsoft is hoping is that it can get the documents in the United States when the EU specifically prohbits it. What is even more interesting is that Microsoft actually thinks that some Federal Judge is stupid enough to grant the request. If Microsoft was to get the documents I would wonder if Microsoft would be in trouble with the EU. I know if I was on the commission, I would punish Microsoft for such back-handed ways.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Section headings from the downloadable PDF include:
# Microsoft has Designed its Multimedia Product to Exclude Competitors and Extend its Monopoly Power
# Microsoft has Used its Monopoly Power and Anticompetitive Tactics to Try to Defeat Quicktime
# Microsoft Repeatedly Pressured Apple to Give Up Quicktime and Cede the Multimedia Playback Market to Microsoft
# to Thwart Quicktime, Microsoft Employed Punitive and Exclusionary Actions
# The Technical Problems and Misleading Error Messages Introduced by Microsoft Impair Quicktime's Performance and Impede Apple's Ability to Compete
# Original Equipment Manufacturers and Independent Software Vendors Fear Reprisal from Microsoft if their Business Conduct does not Conform to Microsoft's Wishes
There are far too many examples of monopoly-abusing business practices to quote them all, but here are a few from the main PDF:
From paragraph 77: "As recounted in the sworn deposition of Phil Schiller and Tim Schaaf, Microsoft repeatedly pressured Apple to abandon its business of providing software that enables users to view multimedia content on their computers. In return, Microsoft offered Apple the much smaller portion of the market for software tools used to create multimedia content. Microsoft made it clear that if Apple refused to relinquish the playback market, Microsoft would use its monopoly power to drive Apple out of the entire multimedia market." See subsequent paragraphs for how they went about this.
From paragraph 97: "... Microsoft took several steps to sabotage QuickTime. These included creating misleading error messages and introducing technical bypasses that deprived QuickTime of the opportunity to process certain types of multimedia files. In some instances users were left with the false impression that QuickTime was not functioning properly"
From paragraph 104: "Microsoft has used undocumented changes to the Windows registry to impair the ability of QuickTime to play numerous multimedia file types. In some cases, Internet Explorer 4.0 bypasses QuickTime and uses Microsoft software to play a multimedia file from a Web server. For many formats the Microsoft software is not able to process the file at all. In other cases, the Microsoft multimedia software will play the file with a severly degraded quality."
From paragraphs 108,109: "Microsoft has caused misleading error messages to appear for consumers who used QuickTime for various file formats. For example, ... Under certain conditions, an error dialog message would pop up when the user tried to gain access to types of media files, such as a QuickTime movie file, which were not associated with [Microsoft's] ActiveMovie. The Windows operating system would then ask the usser if he wished to reconfigure his system, suggesting that there was a problem that the consumer should fix although no actual error had occurred. If the user selected 'yes', Windows would reconfigure the system to select Microsoft's ActiveMovie instead of QuickTime -- even though QuickTime was capable of running the movie file. From the point forward, Internet Explorer would launch the ActiveMovie player whenever the consumer clicked on a file containing a QuickTime movie. This would cause problems for certain multimedi files because the ActiveMovie plater could only process a subset of the file formats that QuickTime could process. If a file could not be processed by ActiveMovie, an error message would appear telling the user that the player is not available -- even though QuickTime was capable of operating with the file. This could mislead consumers into believing that QuickTime was not operating properly.
From paragraphs 125,126: "At the conclusion of the meeting [between Apple and Compaq, to discuss Compaq bundling Apple's