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EU Prepared to Fine Microsoft $2.5 Million Per Day
Lord_Slepnir writes "The European Union is unsatisfied with Microsoft's compliance with their anti-trust compliance from 2004, and is preparing to fine them 2 million Euros ($2.5m US) per day until they comply. Under that ruling, Microsoft must open up parts of their operating system to competitors, and change how they bundle Media Player." From the article: "On Monday, Microsoft said it had begun to provide the information Brussels had demanded, but the Commission has signaled the company acted too late. In December, Brussels informed the software giant that it had failed to comply with the original ruling it issued in March 2004."
I think it was at least a year ago that the EU would fine microsoft every day.
Scratch that. If I RTFA, I would know that that was exactly what they said in 2004.
Under that ruling, Microsoft must open up parts of their operating system to competitors, and change how they bundle Media Player.
Just for clarification before anyone gets on their soapbox about how Microsoft shouldn't have to open their code to competitors, that is not the parts that the EU wants. They want MS to dislose API type information so that competitors can better interface with Windows. i.e. Samba.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Microsoft must open up parts of their operating system to competitors, and change how they bundle Media Player."
This is ambiguous and misleading commentary. MS has been ordered to document the APIs of the interaction between their monopoly desktop OS and their non-monopoly server OS to allow competition. This is not "opening up" any part of their OS. They have not been asked to provide any source code and in fact they offered source code as an alternative to the documentation (under terms that would have gutted the benefits of the punishment) and it was rejected as unsatisfactory. To reiterate, MS was not ordered to open up any code, only to provide documentation on the interaction of their OS's.
There is no "EU government". Further, the EU annual budget dwarves a paltry $2.5m/day; while more money is always good, there's no need to create spurious conspiracy theories.
The EU is merely taking the sort of corrective measures the US DoJ should have taken a long, long time ago. I fail to see how a company that's been convicted of a crime can go unpunished for so long.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Microsoft has about $35 Billion in the bank.
MS is not as financially well off as many might think. Sure $35 billion is a lot of money, but MS's expenses are about $9 billion a year. All it would take is 4 unprofitable years and that cash is gone. Not likely but not impossible.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Now THAT is a lot better... Than the limited (though enormous) fines the EU was talking about the last time. Last I recall, the total fine was around 50 million dollars.
You're a little confused. The fine has remained 2.5 million a day, but it started racking up quite a while ago, so the payment due is now well over 50 million and going up by 2.5 million a day. The EU has just delayed collection of the fine for a while.
"isn't it possible that the real problem is piss-poor programmers"
... let the trolling begin.
No the problem is, as the article actually states that it is Microsoft wilfull witholding of information rather than any sub-par performance as you so misleadingly imply.
"Brussels also ordered Microsoft to provide rivals with enough information to develop software that could run as smoothly as its own on servers running Microsoft's Windows operating system."
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Not to start a flame war...
sarlos (903082)
davecb5620@gmail.com
No, the part about 'if they comply right away' was supposed to end in the beginning of february iirc. They didn't, dragged some foot, released some gibbrish, and now they need to pay the daily fine imposed on them starting from the end of 2004 til now.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Indeed. Moreover, a lot of people from the US who lurk around here don't seem to appreciate how small their market is compared to the rest of the world. The US may have the world's single biggest national economy (though not by far, depending on the metric you use) but compared to, say, Europe as a whole, it's not so much. Losing most or all of its European income would basically kill Microsoft overnight. Of course, in the current economic climate, it could also trigger the freefall meltdown that the world economy is in grave danger of falling into any time now. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
if i was MS i would have said fuck it by now.. and pull out of the EU completely.
I see. So you would break your agreements with thousands of international customers (like every major company in the world since they all have european offices) while at the same time abandoning 20 billion dollars in profit a year to avoid paying .7 billion in fines? And you'd do thins knowing you'd be instantly creating your own biggest competitor by handing a third of the market to other parties. You'd be fired before the day was out, since the board of directors can do math. You might be shot if they're feeling spiteful about the billions you managed to cost them in the confusion and bad PR. If nothing else you'd be a wanted criminal in so many nations the US would almost have to deport you.
the EU have been draging[sic] this out making it imposiable[sic] for MS to settle it..
The EU wants the APIs documented well enough to provide for fair competition as judged by the expert MS chose. MS hasn't bothered to do that, because they make more money breaking the law. What they have done is proposed a number of solutions that won't restore competition and spent a lot of money on press in the hopes that they can put pressure on the EU by spreading lies, like the ones you are parroting. How exactly can you think their documentation is in compliance when it has not been released and the expert MS chose says it isn't?
not really, some of the Samba guys are on those independent committees for the EU, so they know EXACTLY what they are needing as far as documentation. It's a running joke that the interface for windows printer and file sharing is so messed up the current MICROSOFT devs occasionally need to dig out the documentation from the open source [and reverse-engineered] Samba project to figure out how to do their jobs... on the REAL source code. One clarification too, the EU did NOT demand MS to open up their source code.. that would mean giving up IP... they only required an Open, freely available, no-strings-attached, documentation of how window file and print sharing [plus authentication and a few other things] work.. had it had to be usable.. both technically and legally. MS instead dumped millions of lines of source, under NDA, and a steep licensing fee.... somebody's deliberately not hearing the question.. and it's not the EU.
Microsoft is headquartered in the US. I don't think the EU has the authority to simply demand money from them.
As a matter of authority, that is a prima facie right of sovereignty. It is enforceability that is at issue, a practical matter. The EU can seize Microsoft assets therein, and elsewhere through the Doctrine of Comity and any reciprocity treaties.
Interestingly, and more fundamentally, Microsoft's assets exist only and precisely because sovereigns grant them. These are known as vested rights (or acquired rights), and exist only by way of a sovereign's decision to limit their own power, vis-a-vis the Magna Carta.
The American line of reasoning, bottom-up rights of a constituent superceding natural rights of the state is based upon experiences from a long history of absolute sovereignty that arose from the Peace of Westphalia. (Which was more interested in sovereignty and self-determination as against other states) These acquired rights should not be taken for granted in America, or elsewhere.
That's all pedantic, but underscores the model of law Microsoft is subject to. Their property rights are acquired from sovereign grants, not absolute entitlement, and their rights can be quashed within the EU as a matter of implicit state power, and without as a matter of international relations, notwithstanding the limitations the EU imbues upon its own powers.
ok so how do you explain the opening of the source.. sure you have to register/pay for it but it is there.
The source was not as easy to use to create a fresh re-implementation as the API docs. In fact, the licensing pretty much made it legal suicide to try to re-implement after viewing the source. Further, the license made it so MS's biggest competitors, Solaris and Linux could not have integrated the code since it purposely excluded software with their licenses. How exactly does that make for a level playing field in the server OS market, which is, after all, the point of the punishment?
when you look at linux.. and the documentation for some of the stuff - well it just isn't always there.. sure you can find support and answer your questions.. if mabey[sic] the competition started working with it and messing around and trying instead of getting the EU to do there job then they could make it work..
Are you joking? Most of the AD stuff was a complete copy of LDAP, which was then intentionally broken in order to stop others from interoperating. Linux and several projects have done a great job of reverse engineering most of those intentional problems and working anyway, but it is a huge effort in time and manpower and it can never be perfect since it is all a black box. The point is, MS connecting their server and desktop with these secret protocols is illegal. It is a criminal offense as MS well knew when they did it. Now, as punishment, they have been ordered to stop breaking the law and you say it is other groups' job to work around MS's illegal action?
you have to look at it from both sides.. the competition wants MS to hand everythign[sic] over on a silver plater[sic] and teach them to make software for windows.
The EU wants MS to comply with the law, the same as everyone else and not tie their monopoly to other markets. MS has a monopoly. That means they are obligated to not do anything with that monopoly product that will give them an unfair advantage in another market; in this case the server and media player markets. If MS wants to gain market share and make money in the server market the law says they have to do so by making the best server product, not by illegally tying an inferior server to their desktop product, which everyone has to use since it is a monopoly. You think it is so onerous to demand MS make a better product to compete, rather than doing so by breaking the law? You think they should be able to force everyone to use their drastically inferior server since it is the only one that can properly communicate with their desktop? I guess we fundamentally disagree then.
the comepition woln't open up their software to the extent they want MS to...
LDAP and IMAP/POP were open standards, fully documented long before MS had competing closed/obfuscated protocols.
can someone show me full documentation on how to use the real player api to make it do what i want..
No one has asked for API documentation regarding Windows Media Player, only the secret interactions of Windows server and desktop. Media player is breaking the law via bundling. That is to say, they will only sell you Windows if you buy Windows + Media Player at the same price. Thus, all consumer have already purchased one media player so it is a huge roadblock to people paying a second time for the player they really want and would have chosen in the first place except for the bundling.
sure MS has some dirty taticts[sic] but the EU is being much worse
You are uninformed and just plain wrong.
People want enriched OSes. They do not want an OS that is specified only as a kernel, with everything optional. To them an OS is a UI, and a web browser and so on. Linux isn't the Linux kernel, it's that + the shell tools + X + Gnome + Firefox and so on. Windows is hardly unique in specifying an OS in an enriched context. MacOS is the same way, as is Solaris.
Now the other side of this is that programs depend on the services the OS provides. They don't reinvent the wheel all the time, they use what's there. In the case of Media Player, you lose ALL media playback if you remove it, as happens in Windows XP N. The thing is the guts of Media Player aren't in the exe file, you can delete that if you want and it'll stop working, but media playback stays. You can replace it with Media Player Classic (OSS project) if you like. The actual guts are DirectShow, MS's media layer for Windows. Remove that and games can't play their cutscenes, pro audio plugins stop working (well DX ones at any rate), etc. Installing Quicktime or Real doesn't fix this. Why? They aren't media player replacements, never have been. They just play their own media, they can't actually provide media services to the OS and it's software. Quicktime does this on a Mac, but not on Windows.
That's the reason that these sort of things aren't uninstallable. Because removing them breaks shit, and they don't need the complaints. I mean at the ultimate level you don't actually NEED the Win32 subsystem. Windows 2k/XP are modular, you can add APIs to them. They actually ship with simple POSIX and OS/2 APIs (turned off). You could, with sufficient hacking, remove Win32 as well and use a different API. Of course since ALL the software is written on it, it would all stop functioning. Explorer, services, logon, etc. It would cease to be Windows in any meaningful capacity, other than the kernel.
I can fully support MS not wanting to remove parts of their OS that other programs use. To allow for the removal is just to invite a shitstorm for tech support. You'd have millions of people who either on their own volition or because of bad geek advice would decide they "Don't need all this MS crap" and would remove it. Then they'd scream at MS when their software failed to work.
MSFT stock ending up in freefall if they choose to pull out (nobody in the non-US world, even outside the EU, will invest money in NEW Microsoft software... they trust would be shot to hell)
Then come the shareholder lawsuits for ruinig the company.
Ergo, not an option to pull out.
To all the people smoking crack and spouting that Microsoft should pull out of Europe - as a whole we're the largest economy in the world (see European Union on WikiPedia).
Here's a choice tidbit for anyone too lazy to click:
If considered a single unit, the European Union has the largest economy in the world with a GDP of 12,427,413 million USD (2005)
I am NaN
> but come on, let's not jump to conclusions here.
..)
I agree, i say let's leave the conclusions to those that actually have all the facts.
Let's see whether they think that the problem is the lack of good programmers...
(..reading TFA
well, there it is: apparently they believe that it is the lack of proper protocol documentation
that causes the "sub-par performance of third party applications on Microsoft server software".
At least we cleared this one up.
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
"It reminds me of a mob movie, you either pay their protection money (opening up the source code and unbundling media player) or bad things will happen to you (2.5 mill a day in fines)."
No one has asked that MS open *ANY* source code. Please do not spread such FUD; or are you astroturfing? The reason I ask is that this is the *exact* argument MS has been known to use.
From the article
"Brussels also ordered Microsoft to provide rivals with enough information to develop software that could run as smoothly as its own on servers running Microsoft's Windows operating system."
I believe the EU has asked for all the information necessary to emulate and reproduce windows networking code. so either Microsoft has to just give the source code of they have to write an all new document that explains every little thing that the networking code does and how it is executed (might as well be source code).
What sovereigns? First of all the Magna Carta was an English document that pertained only to England, not Europe as a whole (the UK is about 10% of the population of the EU), and second of all the Magna Carta has been almost entirely revoked, several times in fact.
Let me suggest a definition:
vis-a-vis (n)
1. a person or thing having the same function or characteristics as another
Hence: Magna Carta is a historical example of cessation of absolute authority, and while perhaps the origin of vested rights in modern society, certainly not the current authority for it (which would typically be a constitutional writ, but not always).
What you are really trying to say is that if a company is in flagrant violation of the directives of sovereign governments, those governments can apply such sanctions as they see fit. If the company refuses to pay fines, company assets can be siezed in lieu of payment. Exactly like anywhere else in the world, including the united states. I have no idea where you are getting this "royalty owns everything, not like in the US" idea. Model of law they are working under, my arse.
You are confused about what I am saying. See, e.g. definition:
Sovereign (n):
2. Independent of, and unlimited by, any other; possessing, or entitled to, original authority or jurisdiction; as, a sovereign state; a sovereign discretion.
You are confusing this with Sovereign meaning royalty.
As well, it is incorrect and presumptuous to say that every country has the same regulatory authority for seizure in lieu of arrears.
Actually, do DO try to use their monopoly to gain a monopoly in other area's. What people fail to see is that it is not about the mediaplayer, it is about content. Contentproviders know that most desktops (ie windows desktops) have windows mediaplayer installed, and must guess about other players. Therefore they will provide content in windows mediaplayer format, which is proprietary. This way, MS will get a big say in what content will be available, who can get to see/hear it (WMF is riddled with DRM), and who gets to provide content (You don't play by MS's rules, you don't get a license). User-stupidity, though abundant, has nothing to do with it. MS working towards a de facto veto in the content industry does.
a horrible place
No, it's the documentation of the interfaces and protocolls MS is supposed to publish (and keep up-to-date with further updates, of course), not the source code. Documentation, as somebody else pointed out, MS (hopefully) already has.
Now, the source code is the implementation of those protocolls. If MS manages to supply the market with the best implementation, MS will keep the market. If not, it will lose it (or at least some parts of it) to the competition.
On the other hand, if MS keeps their protocolls secret, changing them every now and then just so that the reverse engineering efforts of the competition get undermined, the quality of the implementation MS provides is largely of no importance, because there is no NEED for MS to improve it.
I am sure you see in which of the above two cases the consumer is a winner, and in which the consumer is just a silent cash-cow, forced to update from time to time, and with no chance to ever come out of being dependent on one (and only one) company.
Now again, what is your problem with the EU in this case?