Slashdot Mirror
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.
http://tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=business&s=risen0
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
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.
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.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
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.
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
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.