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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."
It's all a questions of respect. The US government barked, but when it came to biting, they didn't. As a result, MS does not and will probably not ever again have respect for them.
Apparently, someone in the EU has some soft skills and knows that at this stage it isn't about being right or wrong or fair or blablabla. If the EU doesn't bite after making so much noise about it, they'll have a hard time ever getting MS to comply with anything.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
oops, bad math, they can hold out for 666 years based on their market value, forever if you assume they get 4% interest.
If it was, I would imagine they'd have started imposing these fines many months ago - the original ruling was made in March 2004.
"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.
If that were the case, they'd be making it as difficult as possible for Microsoft to comply with their demands instead of telling them exactly what they are doing wrong and giving them years to correct their mistake.
I know it's trendy to accuse the EU of being greedy and anti-American, and I don't deny that the money will be happily spent, but that doesn't mean Microsoft isn't breaking the law and it doesn't mean the EU aren't right to fine them.
Microsoft could easily avoid these fines by complying with the court ruling. They have chosen to make every effort to avoid doing so, and these fines are the result.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I guess I'm looking for trouble by saying this on Slashdot, but I think the EU's reasoning on this issue is faulty, and I think it's an old-fashioned money grab.
They're breaking the law. The US convicted them of it. The EU did too. So did several other nations. They have failed to comply with their punishment. If the EU does not act, they are stating to the world that they won't or can't enforce their own laws. For a fledgling organization like the EU, this would be devastating. If you convict someone of robbery and they escape from the prison instead of serving their time and then stroll into town and tell everyone they aren't going to accept the punishment since they don't want to, the law bloody well better act if they want to be taken seriously, ever.
Good thing I'm not in charge of Microsoft. Out of spite I'd have pulled up stakes of everything in the EU, save for a distribution warehouse.
Yeah, because you'd be fired and replaced within hours.
"Microsoft is headquartered in the US. I don't think the EU has the authority to simply demand money from them."
Microsoft is a multi-national conglomerate doing business in many nations around the world. As such, they are requires to obey the laws and accept the sanctions imposed by every country or, in the case of the EU, group of countries they do business in.
"Sure, they can kick 'em out of the country, but MS should call their bluff."
Sure they should. Then the EU should simply impound all of MS's European assets, and strip them of all patent and copyright protection, thus allowing Europeans to install their new open source, free operating system quite legally under the laws of the EU.
When you grow up you'll realize that there are other countries, legal systems, and ways of looking at things than the US's. BTW, as I pointed out before, the EU is a GROUP of countries... your statement about "kick them out of the country" berely underscores your ignorance.
But thanks for playing.
there's no need to create spurious conspiracy theories
Would this be Slashdot if we didn't?
Developers: We can use your help.
Perhaps the commission was expecting MS to produce proper documentation, rather than try to guess how close to useless they could get while still being in compliance.
- These characters were randomly selected.
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.
But showing that they were prepared to scupper their own customer base due to spite would stop ANY business that had continuity plans from EVER using Microsoft products again. Simply because you couldn't trust them.
It would kill the company overnight.
Pulling out of Europe would also mean anyone that does a lot of business with Europe (read China, India, and many other places that don't rely solely on the US) would need compatibility with Europe too.. Which means they'd be introduced to non-MS products.
With Europe + rest of world (bar US, most likely) using non-MS products rather quickly, the US would soon find that to do business with the rest of the world, it'd have to be compliant with the non-MS standard that had arisen behind the world wide economy.
Which would loosen the grip of MS in the US, eventually making it irrelevant.
So, in other words, they could choose spite, and kill their whole company in a couple of years (while leaving a lot of pain in the wake for a short amount of time), or they can toe the line, open their API, and do what the EU asks, and then have to compete on innovation with the rest of the world. Which, with the brains in the MS research labs, I reckon they've got a good shot at doing. Like IBM, they'll be around for decades to come, but without the massive monopoly they have now.
If I were running the company, I know which option I'd choose.