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."

Comments

Re:I still don't get it

[TubeSteak]

At some point you just have to wonder what the real point of these suits is if they're not going to call MS on its real bad business practices and will instead throw questionable charges at Microsoft.

The definition of "real bad business practices" depends on what part of the world you're in.

http://tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=business&s=risen03 3004

In simplified terms, American antitrust, like much of our country's regulatory philosophy, aims to create a level playing field on which all companies, small or large, can compete; the focus is on protecting consumers through ensuring competitive markets.
...
  In Europe, antitrust laws focus less on consumer protection than on competitor protection; the ability of companies to compete, regardless of whether their existence helps consumers, is what's important. From the European perspective, a near-monopoly market share is almost always a bad thing; furthermore, even if a big company is playing by the rules, it has an obligation to make sure it doesn't crowd out smaller competitors.

Since Microsoft Windows has 9x% of the marketplace... pretty much anything MS bundles with Windows is going to limit competition in the marketplace.

And I don't think the Europeans are specifically hating on MS. I imagine that if Apple had 9x% of the market, the regulators would get on Apple's case over all the bundled apps in OSX.

Displace and distend

[spisska]

It's refreshing to see that Microsoft's legal strategy of 'displace and distend' is finally running out of gas. Stretching out and distorting legal proceedings through any and all means is exactly how they ended up convicted of but unpunished for abusing a monopoly position in the US. Europe, thankfully, is no such pushover.

It's also refreshing to see that US states (CA and MA) acknowledge that, not only do their state laws not apply to the EU, but that they as states are obliged to protect the legitimate interests of companies located in their states against corporate behaviour that has already been found to be criminal on both sides of the Atlantic.

Microsoft broke the law and has been twice convicted for it. They have, however, paid no price for doing so and have not changed their business habits whatsoever. They are still embracing and extending, they are still moving into new markets to undercut and squeeze out rivals with the help of their OS, and they are still treating market regulators as contemptible wretches who can be outlasted, outspent, and buried under the collective output of an extremely high-priced legal team.

Re:The EU justice system

[Antony T Curtis]

IANAL...

But as far as I know, in a trial, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
When it comes to an appeal, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent.

It is the defendant's duty in an appeal to prove that the findings of fact and final judgement in the trial are wrong.

For Microsoft, the trial is already over. They have been found guilty. This is an appeal, they have to either subject themselves to remedies or prove their innocence.

Re:I still don't get it

[Dcnjoe60]

Apple releases a poor port of their QuickTime player for Windows and assumes that's enough. Their goal is to keep users frustrated enough to jump ship and switch to OS X so QuickTime "simply works better". Guess what? Switching platforms is not an easy proposition if you have a lot of investments in Windows software, even cross-platform apps like Photoshop or Flash.

Ummm, wasn't it pointed out in the earlier trial that the poor port of Quicktime was because Apple ported it to the then published Microsoft media specs, whereas Microsoft's own media player used undocumented APIs? Wouldn't that qualify as the abuse you are looking for? Well, at least the courts thought so.

Where's the abuse from Microsoft? Have they made these players perform poorly on Windows? Have they made it difficult to install these apps? Does Windows Media Player hijack file formats without asking the user first? The answer to all of these is no. Microsoft's media player meet the needs of media distributors and this is why it's used widely on the internet, not because it's installed with Windows (you can actually uninstall it by the way, it's not linked to the OS in the same way IE is).

Has Microsoft made it difficult to install third party media players? Yes. You can't even fully uninstall Microsoft's media player, only make it so it's not the default, but the guts are still there. Does it hijack file formats without asking? Only after doing an update.

As for Microsof't media player meeting the needs of media distributors, thankyou, you just proved the monopoly case. The only reason it became popular is because prior to that there were several options. It was only after Microsoft bundled media player with their OS that it became widespread (prior to that, you could download it seperately). The only "need" it met was that media distributors new it was now installed on every windows pc and didn't have to worry about any other format. The fact that Microsoft controlled the OS is what allowed this to occur at the expense of other media formats and vendors. If Microsoft had bundled Quicktime with Windows, then it would have been the default. The difference being, that they didn't license Quicktime (or Real), the came out with their own product and by using their monopoly power took over the media market.

That is why, with the exception of DRM, there hasn't been any real innovation with Windows Media Player. There is no competition, so there is no reason innovate. And for the record, you cannot fully unninstall Windows Media Player. The core DLLs and hooks are still there.

Face it, there are better players than media player. There are better encoders and formats than media player. There are better interfaces than media player. The only thing that makes it the standard on windows is not that it meets media distributors or users needs, but that it is bundled with Windows.

Remember, long before the EU got involved, the US courts declared Microsoft an illegal monopoly. The remedies to the findings were challenged and later changed, but not the original ruling. The fact that the EU has come to the same conclusion shouldn't be a suprise. It's not "slashbots" or the courts who are destroying Microsoft. It's Microsoft collapsing under it's own weight.

Re:I still don't get it

[NoOneInParticular]

Media player market: both the actual player and the ability to play content (codecs). RM has its own format that it tries (tried) to license out, and now MS tries to get a monopoly on that market by (a) making its player standard, (b) making sure that most content will be published in the MS codec, and (c) dissallow other players (especially for other platforms) to make use of the MS codecs. No question marks, profits are at (d). MS owns all.

MS is smart and its plan is good. Many simple minds here at slashdot would see problems with making any of steps (a) to (c) illegal, while at the same time would cry murder when they can't view any content without licensing from MS. Every step is seemingly innocent, the end result is simply that MS has another monopoly: on playing and distributing audio and video no less.

The EU does see the plan and simply decided to stop MS at (a), while at the same time making it more difficult to implement (c) by mandating that MS opens up his protocols. It has never been about the player, always about the codecs: the player simply carries the payload.