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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.
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.
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
"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.
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?