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EU Fines for Microsoft Approved, Off the Record
mattaw writes "The Register is carrying a report that all 25 member states of the EU have found Microsoft guilty of non-compliance, off the record. Microsoft is in line for a fine of $2.51 million per day backdated to December 15th 2004 for failing to meet the terms of the EU commission's ruling."
It doesn't really mean all that much. Microsoft will do some kind of wheeling and dealing efforts to 1) lower the fine and 2) establish an even stronger marketshare in the EU such as giving away windows/office/etc to schools, businesses, etc. Sadly, in the end it all works out for redmond.
It's just too bad that the only one they ever seem to go after is Microsoft.
So roughly that's a year plus 7 months is ~575 days * 2.51 million, that's ONE BILLION DOLLARS! (1,443,250,000) Who let Dr. Evil run Europe?
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
If you think a goverment is anything more than a corporation with guns, you're fooling yourself.
As of July 5th, 2006: 567 days * 2.51 million per day = $1.423 BILLION Is there any way to avoid this fine?
From TFA: "I can assure you that we are continuing to work day and night with our 300 dedicated engineers to create documentation which is complete and accurate to satisfy the European Commission."
No wonder then! If it takes 300 engineers, several nights and days to document the protocols of an obsolete OS..... we should be surprised if Vista ships before 2010!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
hmm, ~1.4 billion...
guess bill can only buy 2 small countrys this year,
My first reaction was "w00t, MS is being fined > 1 billion". But, then I thought about it for a bit. Does even microsoft deserve that kind of ruling? They actually have made some changes, like the windows version without windows media player. And > 1 billion hardly seems to be a fair amount to charge for not documenting your software properly, even if you are a monopoly. It just somehow feels like theres something not right about it, even if it does give me the "eat that microsoft" feelings... call me strange if you want.
An EC spokesman was unwilling to comment.
Seconds earlier that night, said EC spokesman was was overheard in an Amsterdam cafe, "Dude! Can you believe it? $1.4 Billion. Pass that shit over here, some jackass American reporter is ringing my mobile."
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
1.5 years of 2.51 mln dollars a day would be somewhere around 1.35 bln dollars. Before all the
Microsoft hating Microsoft users that actually depend on their products (your stupid choice)
get all excited all it means is that everything from their Desktop OS to their smallbusiness
database offering, including support, training, certification and "professional" services
costs EUR 50 - EUR 300 more / item. That money then goes straight to the glorious EU your
Ubergovernment in Brussels and Strasbourg that is also living off of your back right alongside
your respective national government leeches.
Do you really believe the majority would accept that they could not use the most popular OS in the world?
Better order some Ubuntu cds for the EU.
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
Registered Linux user #421033
300 engineers to document some protocols? I could believe 10, maybe 20 could get the job done in a few weeks. How on earth could 300 engineers work together on such a (excuse my ignorance/naivete) trivial job for two years? Hasn't this guy heard of The Mythical Man Month? MS aren't idiots; they've designed the process to fail. They deserve every cent of the fines.
Is that like double secret probation?
I do think some aspects of what Microsoft does will have to change, the fine is not just backdated but also continues every day until Microsoft compiles. Yes Microsoft has a lot of money but that's a lot of money to bleed every year and shareholders will not like it at all.
I do not know what will change, but it's a situation that cannot stand - not to mention that if Microsoft simply coughts up the fine indefinatley it will be raised to an amount they cannot ignore as easily.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It'll never happen. The fine could be ten times what it is, and Microsoft would still stay in Europe. If their monopoly is compromised in one part of the world, the rest of the world will follow. They can't allow that to happen.
MS is getting off cheap. The EU can currently fine a company 10% of their GLOBAL annual turnover. So a fine of only a billion or two is just a warning.
But, really, what can you say about a company who seems to be unable to produce _usable_ technical documentation for their headline product?
The price of windows has gone up by $10 with Microsoft sighting 'increased costs'.
And a Microsoft exec responds: "$1.4 billion, *yawn*. Do you take visa or should I pay with cash?"
"say, MS has been abusing their monopoly.. maybe we could uh, fine them. Let's put it to a vote and see if anyone else wants money from MS?"
To me it's a sad day for America when we have to rely on other countries to police our corporations for us. Of course, I wonder if the EU would have been as hard on Microsoft if it were based in, say, France?
If they really cared about this fine they'd refuse to pay it and watch the uproar that would ensue when it became illegal to sell Windows in the EU.
It will never happen. Even if (which I doubt as they'll at least try to kill eons with negotiations) Bill has to write the check (and keep writing them daily until the EU is satisfied) there is no way in hell that M$ will just let the EU default to linux or the various bsd's.
As for the price per day, ISTR seeing someplace that the fine was chosen to match the estimated sales per day within the EU. Can anyone deny/confirm that? If true, then I don't see it as excessive. Were I setting it, given the testimony thats been given ink that I've seen, I think I'd have chosen it to be a net loss per sale, of the price of the sale, or 2x the street price.
I'm with Linus in this: "If we change how microsoft does business, then we will have won".
As for the billions Bill has, I would wager that if he actually did business on the merits of his product, 2 things would have already happened. 1. Windows would be a hell of a lot more stable and secure than it historicly has been, and 2. He would have made even more money! Of course that would have had to happen 20 years ago in order to head linux off at the pass. I don't recall what his worth was then, but it surely would have been sufficient to survive the corporate direction change that would have required. One things for sure, M$ has enough in the bank to survive a rebirth in the business office, so I fail to see why the hint isn't being taken other than the corporate blinders are causing a total, identifiable by any optometrist, case of tunnel vision.
--
Cheers, Gene
Now roll that 1 billion dollars into OSS development to bring an open source OS and applications up to truly competitive levels with MS. Hell I'd even be satisfied if they paid EU software companies to port their application software to OSX. Just get some freaking competition in there already...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sure, MS could abide by local laws and not drag out a case where they know they're in the wrong.
Oh, unless you were asking if there was any way for them to to avoid it now?
Sure. It's all the EU's fault that Windows costs allot, because Microsoft can see the future and priced their products accordingly. Rather than just NOT DOING ILLEGAL SHIT. Uh-huh. That's because they're evil, right? They can see the future and they are evil. We should accept their illegality, because otherwise they will just up the cost of our crack.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It might be "chump change", but it seriously eats the daily profits of the company all the same (As in the damn fine eats approximately 1/20th of the profits per day...)- and ultimately they're answerable to the shareholders. They could have avoided this drag on profits- which is what is going to be the only thing they're going to see.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Nope. I think you have it the wrong way round. The fact that Microsoft is an (illegally maintained) monopoly, is what *allows* them to sell an operating system for 300 - 400 instead of a more reasonable 50 - 100.
It's not like Microsoft's OS in inreplacable. If the government really wanted to force them out of business, they could just make'em pay back all license fees in fines and spend those money on developing Free Software.
That'd be the Right Thing to create a Free Market.
If they really cared about this fine they'd refuse to pay it and watch the uproar that would ensue when it became illegal to sell Windows in the EU.
When a company or private individual refuses to pay a fine, what happens is they have the tax authorities impound goods or money up to the amount. And if they still refuse, the impounded assets are sold off to pay the fine (with any surplus going back to the previous owner of course). In the case of MS, they have various national subsidiaries with associated corporate accounts that would easily cover a fine of even this size. Nobody is going to stop selling Windows over this.
In practice, of course, if a fine is finalized, MS (or any company) pays. Having authorities raid your offices, with pictures of grim-looking officials carrying off financial records by the boxfuls is enough of a PR disaster that refusing isn't an option - especially since non-payment shows up pretty starkly in the company credit and especially since you end up paying the money in any case so you don't even actually gain anything by the pointless gesture.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Yes, and if by some miracle they win a boat race against Sun and Novell, not only will any multiple secret probation be rescinded, but José Barroso will be forced to grandmaster a parade in Microsoft's honor.
An United States flag above an European Union article ;)
/. is carrying enough european/international topics
maybe time to add a template for overseas too? since
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
2.51 million per day backdated to december 15th
202 days
$507,020,000 USD
plus 2.51 each day til they are im compliance.
thatsa pretty big chunk o cash.
they expect to make 11.5 - 11.7 billion this year, losing 5% is pretty bad.
I don't think the question is whether MS would let the EU default to linuxes and BSDs. That just would not happen. At least no time soon. MS can threaten the EU to remove their product from the market. Sure they make more money then they'd lose, but the EU can't afford for them to back out of their country. The cost of all companies switching over to linux/bsd, not to mention how many companies would leave the EU rather than convert would be far too great (likely in the trillions). While linux is sometimes a better replacement, many applications aren't available. The effect of MS backing out would be disastrous to the economy.
Of course if the government allowed widespread piracy of windows and other MS products, that might stop some of this, but how much would that cost in other companies being afraid of doing business in the EU for fear of the EU allowing their products to be distributed like that. Basically it all boils down to simple economics, the gains to the economy due to MS doing business in the EU is greater than the cost of their products.
On a side note, I will say I am not a windows user. I own a macbook, and a couple linux boxes to run my services and other usages. Personally I find this solution to be better, but obviously most of the world doesn't, and I don't have the right to tell them what they can and can not run.
Phil
-1, Insightful. You win.
It amuses me, how many people don't understand this and think of government as some benevolent protective force.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
If it's off the record it should not exist. What is the EU anyway to have such a provision.
Yea I loath microsoft but choosing which evil is worse gets difficult.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Man, it's weird how much pro-Microsoft shilling appears on Slashdot whenever there's a EU discussion. All Microsoft had to do was document their APIs as requested by the commission. Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Italy maybe somewhere close to that. But Germany? Never! And they bought the whole frigin' EU for the price of France?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
"Microsoft, being at the top of the OS market, will simply add the costs of the fines to the price they charge for their OS."
That's not how monopoly pricing works; that's how a perfectly competitive market works. In a perfectly competitive market, adding to the costs increases the price because the price is driven down to the cost (the supply curve). In a monopoly, adding to the costs has zero effect, because price is determined by *demand*. I.e. they sell the OS for the most that they can get already. If they could sell it for more, they already would.
With monopolies, prices are chosen because an increase in price reduces the quantity of sales such that total revenue drops. Similarly, a decrease in price reduces revenue by more than the increased quantity of sales, so that total revenue drops. This fine does not affect that calculation in any way. Therefore, for them to increase prices, they would either have to accept lower revenue or they would have had to have been underpricing their product. I.e. charging less than the market would bear.
Still, it's the corporation you're employed in. You work for it, you get certain benefits, and if you play foul, you get punished, or fired (=jailed) for a certain period of time. It's bad if your corporation is getting ripped off by other corporations.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
(n/t)
With the accession of the new member states the European Union became the largest single market in the world - if the fine was much *much* worse MS still wouldn't pull out.
Will Microsoft cough up and pay, or will the EU have to raid their european headquarters, confiscate property and put it all on sale. All these computers with Windows sources on their harddrives on public auction, that would be an interesting turn of events.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
well, that's got more to do with the reporting than with the eu.
The applications may not be available NOW, but that doomsday scenario won't fit for long, and the coders who will be asked to duplicate/improve the NLA M$ stuff will suddenly find they've got all the work they can handle. Things might get rough for a month or 2, but IMO one year down the log, most will be better off, and 2 years down the log everyone will be asking themselves "why the hell didn't we do this in the first place?"
That won't be done behind soundproof walls and razorwire fences either, it will filter out to the rest of the world. At that point, M$ becomes irrevelant unless they actually have a better product. Vista will make or finish them and the choice is M$'s to make.
But, what do ya wanna bet? Rather than compete on a level playing field, they'll spend obscene amounts of money on lawyers, the other scourge of civilization.
--
Cheers, Gene
Money represents goods and services. Microsoft is being fined for non-compliance. The fine will either be pad by cheque or by having goods and services to that value conviscated. Unless legal relief is obtained, the fine will be collected. It is Microsoft that must pay the bill. I don't knw if it is Microsoft EU being fined or Microsoft in general. But I can assure you that if Microsoft EU raised its prices in response and Microsoft global did not Microsoft EU would shortly cease to exist. So it will not be a tax on EU users of Windos but a tax on all users of Windows (if it can be considered a tax at all).
That's gotta hurt!
They new IN ADVANCE that not being compliant from this date onwards would lead to this fine, 2.51 PER DAY.
They chose themselves to be not compliant, and wait and see. MSFT has become used to getting away with illegal practices, and up to now never gave a damn about law and justice, they think special rules exist for them.
What choice does the EU commission have? It was all known in advance, MSFT is to blame themselves for not complying but to go to court instead.
You have got to be kidding. Microsoft is the only one _you_ see on the news probably. The EU is very strict on this sort of things. Have a look at the EU vs Alitalia or the EU vs Olympic Airlines, or the EU vs BMW and GM. The EU even goes against its own country members if they fail to comply with EU law. No matter how people want to see it, microsoft is not the innocent victim here...
[Offtopic]Congrats to Italy for Barrying Germany 'Squadra Azzurra' Style! I hope you guys lift the cup in the end![/offtopic]
Well it's a corporation. You can't jail it so you have to fine it.
... but one building has all the server farms, and the other building has all the presentation boardrooms ... so they just walk back and forth like it's a regular day at Microsoft. Perhaps they mutter under their breath about the wastefulness of the court's judgment as they go.
Ahh, but there is an alternative punishment - something we can do to corporations that we can't do to people. Cut them in half!
However this raises an immediate question: How do you ensure that the resulting two (or more) entities don't just collude and price-fix their way along as if they were still whole?
It's easy to imagine - two big campuses in Redmond, one given the MS Office suite, one given the Windows codebase - each told by judicial decree that they can no longer cooperate
This is why I wish that as part of a Windows interoperability and documentation settlement, the EU had the authority to say, "Okay, Microsoft. You know that corporate branch you have in Mountain View, where you run all the hotmail services? They're a separate company now, and THEY own MS Office. Expect a phone call from the department chief down there in about a week, asking for all the source code. I'm sure he'll want to establish a relocation package for all your Office coders, too. By the way, the new company is called Officesoft. Play nice with them."
You'd be amazed what a difference physical separation can make in terms of corporate attitude... Unfortunately, the opportunity for a remedy like this for Microsoft withered down to nothing in the first year of Bush Jr(tm)(r)(c)'s reign. Now innovation on the OS front has been STALLED, for 95% of the world, for the past FIFTEEN YEARS. >:(
... as actual corporations generally provide a service to their customers when they spend billions of dollars a year.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
Because their high priests are being dismantled and the pagan FOSS hordes are threatening to run over the MSC* bastions?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
and I really doubt that the region derives actual profit from paying to use MS products.
There are two different situations here, short term and long term.
In the short term people would be quite happy to pirate windows, it worked for years it will work again.
In the long term you are dead wrong, if the EU simply outlawed windows then we'd see massive investments in Mac and Linux (both OS and apps) and eventually even games availability would be on par with windows.
MS is a money pit that's sucking many GigaEUR out of EU every year and leaves us with less freedom than we had, so I would really like to see all MS products outlawed or at least their EU profits taxed 100%.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Well... I think you're being a bit paranoid. Microsoft is a fantastic monopoly and they have abused that monopoly in countless and incalculable ways. The regulators are in fact no match for MS. Just look at how their business has been affected so far. Redesigned software boxes? New ad campaigns? Sounds trivial to me.
The whole thing is absurd - not for the reasons that you give, but for the fact that Microsoft is a bigger economy than some member states of the EU. And we've allowed corporations like this to grow so big that it takes a supra-national body like the EC to make an impact on them at all. Why would the EC go after a small open source company like yours? How can you even comprehend that as a possibility?
Microsoft made a big mistake and they're paying for it. Apple may have made one with Fairplay, but I don't personally think so.
Not being privy to the future, I would have to guess that Linux kernel documentation will not stifle an industry for its absence.
Still... document your code. It's just good practice.
A decibel - a RELATIONSHIP between two values of POWER http://arts.ucsc.edu/EMS/Music/tech_background/TE-
...the EU default to linuxes and BSDs...
...the EU can't afford for them to back out of their country...
...The effect of MS backing out would be disastrous to the economy...
If all goes to crap, MS doesn't pull out of the EU, EU refuses to enforce MS IP ownership. Everyone keeps using MS products, and pirated versions are available for download within the EU for free. THAT is the nightmare scenario and we will never see it.
MS knows that they will always make more money by squirming and partially-complying than they will by leaving a market. Also, the US is not going to start a trade war to protect MS when they know what what would happen if it went before the WTO.
Prediction: Wriggle, squirm, writhe, followed by minimal compliance (to stop the fine) coupled with rapid API evolution/development to make it hard for competitors to keep up.
PS: Other firms are not going to be afraid of their products being treated like MS products because everyone with a business big enough to matter knows how MS has behaved in the market (although I do think many are worried about the EU regulatory environment in general).
The fine is backdated to Dec 15 2004.
The headlines are wrong. The fine is retroactive to December 15, 2005.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
> And what if they require Linus to provide full legally-acceptable documentation
> for the Linux kernel? Who is going to write it?
I don't think they can't require Linus to do anything, since he only owns the trademark. In addition, as commented above, the source itself could be claimed to be sufficient documentation.
$2.51 million per day is an operating expense, not a fine. Their revenue is $25 million per day.
I'm thinking the cost of having competition would be greater. If I were Microsoft, I'd just keep not complying. It's worked these past two years.
You mean Microsoft has done no wrong and no damages in the EU, only the US? Welcome to a more global world.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Let's see...as of their last quarterly statement (ended March 2006), Microsoft has $33.51 Billion dollars in cash. At the rate of $2.51 million in fines per day, and backdating it to 2004, they should have another 33 years and some before they run out of cash. And that assumes they don't make another single penny profit in sales to add to their cash. It also ignores non-cash holdings.
I'm sure they're really sweating at Microsoft now...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
A humorous typo that works out either way - thanks for the laugh (even if at my own expense...) :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I say "It" I refer to the huge fines that the EU typically uses to punish pricefixing.
What americans don't seem to understand is that the EU is first and foremost a common market, it's an organization built to enable free (and fair) trade, restraint of trade and of competetion in EU is a capital crime and is punished until it stops.
I, for one, have no doubt that the EU will fine MS until it complies with the demands as MS' crime strikes right at the heart and soul of EU by limiting competetion.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
The really sad part is that judgements like this are the reason windows sells for $300-400 instead of 50-100
I thought they did that because the need to pay 5 billion developers for 10 years every to make a new version of windows
...at least you hope that's still the case.
But they can prohibit Microsoft from selling Windows Vista.
How do you imagine thats going to happen ?
1) there are no laws that i know of that would prohibit the selling of an item that is not dangerous in any way based on some abstract ruling
2) they would have to make a precedential law that would prohibit the selling of a specific product, created by this specific company - something that nobody in their right mind would actually support (i hope)
3) even if they did all that - all the members of the EU may choose to follow that directive, nobody can really force them
4) the EC cannot make such a directive pass go and collect 200 all by themselves
the most they can do is propose one like it, and the majority of the members of the EU would have to support it, which they probably wont.
What they can (can they?) do is revoke microsofts patents as a means of covering the fine and make them public domain - something that would actually cause an interesting turn of events.
1 billion worth of patents must cover quite a couple of areas and would allow competitors to legally hack away at microsofts binaries on order to create the documentation themselves.
... or because they are really US fanbois that will defend any USian entity against any outsider no matter what.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
"$1.4 billion, *yawn*. Do you take visa or should I pay with cash?"
"Cargo ship loaded with cash would be nice."
"That will fit in four ISO size containers, we can send it by air freight."
"I think no more than $1.5 milliard fits in a container. You need a ship to send $1.4 billion dollars."
"milliard? What the fuck is that?"
"I think you call these 'billions' back in the US. A billion here is a thousand milliards or a million millions."
"*cough* *choke*"
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Some people here already pointed out, that the fines will be a total of about 1.4 Billion USD.
Does anyone know what those fines will be used for? I doubt they will be donated to open source projects. I'd appreciate some more info.
IIRC, the only part of the ruling that M$ refused to abide by was the release of the Win 95 source code. That proves that they have something worth $2,510,000.00 per day to hide. Given the current state if IP law, pirated code in Win 95 could easily be worth 10 times that amount.
You tell me - what else could M$ be hiding? Why else would they be funding SCO to fraudulently claim that the Linux Kernel contains SCO's code?
Andy Out!
Bill Gates will resign from Microsoft in the future because he wants to create the same strategy w/ the Enron's executives and one of the major reasons is this.
when will EU IPO? it is a good way to make money like this. if EU decides to IPO, i will buy a lot of EU stocks and hold it for a long long time. If I am the CEO of EU, I will kill MSFT in 3 years, and GOOG next, and then AAPL ... easy money.
i honestly see this as a money grab more than anything else
You need to clean your glasses. This is not a money grab. This is Microsoft CHOOSING to give away money.
Microsoft was convicted of breaking the law, and the fine and penaty was ZERO. NO FINE, NO PENALTY. This is like you break a storefront window, and the court orders you not to break any more windows and to clean up the broken glass all over the storefront and to replace the window you broke. The court requires you to stop breaking the law, and to remedy the damage you did. You (and Micrsoft) get the chance to away scott-free with NO PUNISHMENT for breaking the law.
But then you do something really stupid. You replace the window you broke, but you willfully act in contempt of court and refuse to sweep up the broken glass all over the sidewalk in front of the store. The court gives you a week to sweep up the broken glass, and still you refuse to comply. The court then levies a contempt of court fine of $X per day. And then for the next YEAR AND A HALF you still refuse to sweep up the broken glass. And you call it a "money grab" when you rack up over a year and a half of fines?
Microsoft was given ample tiome to comply. Microsoft CHOSE day after day to willfully act in contempt of a lawfull court order. Microsoft CHOSE to rack up a dailly fine. Microsoft basically CHOSE to give away money day after day. Microsoft could have gotten off scott-free with $ZERO fine.
they'd refuse to pay it
Are you STUPID? Do you seriously think that you can hop on a plane, set up shop doing business in some other country, that you can BREAK THE LAW in that country day after day, and that you could get away with simply refusing to pay court ordered fines?
No, you do not go into some country and dick around with the government like that. At first the courts are nice and simply ask you to pay the money you owe. If you are a moron and attempt to refuse to pay a lawful debt to the government, then the government simply orders the banks to seize and turn over the owed debt from any accounts. And the government can simply order customs to seize any imports/exports from the territory to pay the debt. And then the government can simply order the police to physically seize any physical assets and any and all buildings and land. And if you really piss off the government they can order the police to start physically arrest and imprison the individuals stupid enough to persist in disobeying the law and disobeying lawful court orders.
watch the uproar that would ensue when it became illegal to sell Windows in the EU
Oh, that one is my favorite part! LOLOL!
Let's assume that Microsoft somehow managed to empty all of the money from all EU bank accounts and had no future payments due for collection from EU companies, so that the courts could not simply order banks to hand over the money owed. And let's assume that Microsoft somehow magically owns no offices and owns no seizeable assets and property anywhere in the EU. And let's assume that all Microsoft employees manage to flee the countries and are unarrestable for noncompliance with the law. And let's assume that the courts in the US and Japan and the rest of the planet decline to honor debt collection in cooperation with the EU courts and decline to locally seize any bank accounts and assets.
Let's assume ALL of that. Let's assume that Microsoft could successfully play a game of "Nya nya nya you can't catch me!" with the EU legal system.
Then it gets REALLY fun! Because if Microsoft dissess the entire EU court system and cuts off all contact with the EU legal system, then GUESS WHAT! Then Microsoft cannot avail themselves of benefits and protections of the EU court system. The EU courts can refuse to accept any cases from Microsoft attempting to sue for enforcement of copyright or patent or trademark infringment. The EU courts can effectively null and void all of Microsoft's copyrights and patents and trademarks. All of Microsoft's software would effectively become public domain.
So rather than "illegal to sell Windows in the EU", in fact it could ultimately become perfectly legal for anyone and everyone to copy and modify and sell any and all Microsoft software at will.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
This is what happens when state-enforced monopoly (copyright) and state-enforced competition (anti-trust laws) collide.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
After seing many of the posts here on /. i don't understand this "poor Microsoft evil EU mentality".
You see, my biguest personal grip with the law in capitalist countries at the moment is how disproportionaly harsher it is on individuals that it is on companies - for example, if an individual kills someone due to negligence he/she goes to prison, while if a company kills multiple people they get a fine.
Even more relevant to this situation is the disparity when both the individual and the company do something for which they are fined: the issue here is that, proportionaly to the annual income of the individual and the company, a fine with the same value usually is a much higher burden for an individual than for a company. Worse still, for equally harming crimes, companies often get lower fines than individuals since they have beter lawyers, beter connections and the law is (thanks to many years of lobbying) skewed to be harsher on the types of crimes done by individuals than one those done by companies even when both crimes do the same amount of harm.
So back to the fine on MS and to put things in perspective:
- MS had in the year of 2005 a net (thus after taxes) income of $12254 millions, a fine of 1.400 millions is thus 11,4% of their net income.
- For an individual making $150000 bruto per month, with a 30% flat income tax (thus $105000 net income), an equivalent fine (thus 11,4% of their yearly net income) would be $11970
Thus, Microsoft's fine is equivalent to a $11970 (in one year) fine for an individual with an well above average income.
Actually, it sounds like a small thing because that's not the whole thing, and it's the least of the non-compliance problems too. MS was basically ordered there to _also_ sell a version without it, which isn't even much of a punishment when they can keep selling the version _with_ Media Player too.
The current fighting is over the other, and more important part there, namely APIs and protocols. MS has been given a list of stuff it must provide adequate documentation for, and to everyone. That's all.
Basically what the EU is saying is "wtf? A situation where only Windows workstations can talk to a Windows server is a recipe for a monopoly. Do be so kind and provide the documentation for those protocols." It's just telling MS that its products should compete with others on their merits, not on being the only thing that can interoperate with their other products. It shouldn't be years of guesswork and reverse engineering just to get a Linux or Solaris box to talk to a Windows server.
And MS so far has been playing hardball and turning it into a media battle. It started by pulling stunts like selling some libraries and docs preferentially and putting some stupid conditions on getting them. (E.g., literally, you can't use them in an OSS product. Literally.) Then it offered a bunch of undocumented and incomplete implementation code. (The EU says: sorry guys, we asked for protocol documentation. Be so kind and provide the docs.) And so on. And, again, it's been busy astroturfing and turning it into a media posing contest.
And IMHO the court has played pretty nice so far. Even the fine is "backdated" and thus so large, because, seriously that was the final date at which MS was ordered to provide those docs. At some point, after giving MS ample time and letting them delay for years, the court basically said, "No, this is final. At date X you must provide those docs or pay a fine per day." It still gave MS more timeouts even after that, and a chance to not pay those fines, but under the explicit condition that, seriously, if MS still doesn't comply than the original date still stands.
Basically, seriously, if I did half that shit in a court of law, I'd be in contempt and probably facing some quality time behind bars. I'm not anti-MS or anything, but at some point a court of law must be able to enforce compliance or it becomes just a joke. You can't allow someone to basically just refuse to obey for years.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You're free to do that if you write proprietary code as well.
what you, and other people do with your/their own code, has nothing to do with licenses, since you do own the rights to material you produce yourself.
regarding the WMP-free version of windows. The reason noone got that version was that microsoft did not charge LESS for it, as i remember they originally wanted to charge MORE for it (can't be bothered to reference, so don't get hung up on it). So in effect, you could choose not to have it bundled, but it wouldn't save you a dime.
Because the price wasn't better, no OEM or VAR decided to bundle WMP-free windows with the pc's they made.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Nope. I think you have it the wrong way round. The fact that Microsoft is an (illegally maintained) monopoly, is what *allows* them to sell an operating system for 300 - 400 instead of a more reasonable 50 - 100.
Compare that to historical prices for other operating systems. Until Linux came around, Windows was the cheapest operating system. Taking into account inflation, it still is. Linux is only as cheap as it is because people work on it for free.
The next question is: should this push the price down? Arguably, Linux operates outside of the capitalist market - it doesn't obey the same laws.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I'm totally for the Free Software.
Because I want to be free to write whatever code I want. And be free to do with my code whatever I want.
So I also want others to be free to write code they want. And be free to do with their code whatever they want.
Including selling for a buck or for a credit (assuming there's someone who wants to buy/use it).
You already are free to do that - that's what Copyright gives you, and it's why you get the copyright on your work the moment you create it.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
*=I'm guessing that was the Games Division's fault.
That turned out to be all of Microsoft's "home" division, which included the Xbox as well as... wait for it... MSN. Microsoft had earlier said they were going to dip into their warchest to do a massive 1 billion dollar blitz to pull MSN out of the dumps. If it's the same year I'm thinking of, that was the year Halo 2 was released. By most people's estimations the Xbox had a probably profitable if not simply less lossy year. So it is quite plausible that the major losses from Microsoft that year came from fruitlessly advertising a dial-up service that nobody uses anymore, along with a search engine that was desperately in need of a revamp. And any other secret iLoo projects they may have canned, development of the X360, etc.
The ______ Agenda
Man, it's weird how much pro-Microsoft shilling appears on Slashdot whenever there's a EU discussion. All Microsoft had to do was document their APIs as requested by the commission. Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
They don't. The problem is that the EU commission won't specify exactly what's "good enough" documentation.
It's like I asked you to give me some fruit. You're looking for a kumquat. I give you an orange, and you say "no, that's not good enough". I give you a lime, and you say "no, that won't do either". I ask you what kind of fruit you really want, and you say "no, you just have to give me the fruit".
Not really fair is it?
Coming soon - pyrogyra
eh... Italy should not be proud of the way they won through... especially the match against the Aussies :(
A commentor pointed out that this is, in fact, 11.4% of their income in 2005. To which, I suppose, you'd retort by pointing out the difference between income and turnover, which, save from a clinical distinction in definition, is something uniquely ignorant of.
More than mere navel gazing.
Your post started to nice and well-informed. To bad it ended like that :-)
Fleur de Sel
"I'm not saying that something shouldn't be done, but you can't just say "Sorry, you can't do business here" when 95% of your PCs being used every day need them."
Actually, yes you can and further if a company is breaking the law you must. If 2.5 million per day does not impress Microsoft then the EU should keep raising the fine until it does make an impression.
No corporation should be allowed to ignore the law. Period.
It is unlikely that Microsoft will stop selling there products in the EU. But this should not be a bluff. If Microsoft decides to cut off their own noses then so be it. There are alternatives and people will adapt.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Gosh, it really sucks now that Bill is gone.
He's not actually gone yet...I wonder if he decided to step down in two years, cuz the legal team figures it'll take that long for the EU to start looking at personal jail time for the executives...
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Troll. Don't feed.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I am gunna f*cking kill EU. I have done it before, and I am gunna f*cking kill EU.
hilarious
If you think that a corporation is anything more than a government without laws, representation or even a theoretical interest in human life and dignity, you are fooling yourself.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
In other news, the EU threatened to fine SCO $14.95, but the SCO corporate treasurer protested, saying the magnitude of the fine was totally unfair and beyond their capability to pay. IBM then spit up its coffee.
Well, you'll just have to write your own operating system, won't you?
And lay off the queer-bashing. It's just nature's form of contraception, which is exactly what an overpopulated world needs right now. You needn't worry about receiving any unwarranted attention: if women don't want to sleep with you, then men definitely won't want to sleep with you.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
You already are free to do that - that's what Copyright gives you, and it's why you get the copyright on your work the moment you create it.
True, but that's not the whole point.
"Because I want to be free to write whatever code I want. And be free to do with my code whatever I want."
Now if I'm a big company and want to sell my code and not sell the documentation (if it exists - it's mine as well) I get fined. :)
Which means I can't do that.
And, in my opinion, that sucks.
That is my point
It's kind of like you were making pictures and one day a commision comes to you and tells you that if you still want to sell them you must publish a description of what they present. WTF?!
If they (the commision) or someone else (the people) want a fully documented OS they can write it themselves, get a third party to write it for them or use an already available one...
Alternatively you can reverse engineer Windows (which should be legal in the first place - it's funny to see how once They try to pretect the so called "intellectual property" and at other times They order people to give it away - which proves that such decisions are by no means a matter of rightness but a matter of lobby and/or money!)
A billion is bi-million which is a million squared (10^12)
A trillion is a trillion which is a million cubed (10^18)
etc.
Sometime in the 1920s American journalists started using billion for a "thousand million" and it caught on. Prior to that the term wasn't commonly used. Sometime in the 1980s the BBC gave in and started to mis-use the term as well. It causes a lot of confusion in the rest of the world (except India, which has its own plethora of names) where they do use the term milliard.
(completely offtopic) The prize money in the TV quiz show "Who wants to be a millionaire?" in Indonesia is 10 Milliard Rupiah.
what part of better interoperability with third-party applications you don't understand?
Putting those directly responsible (e.g. managers or heck even the CEO) in prison however is.
I am NaN
> Microsoft offered source code access as a form of documentation, but the EU rejected it.
Interesting. I guess we're just lucky, then, that Linux doesn't rely on undocumented internal API's, and interoperability isn't one of its design goals. And your open source project shouldn't do that, either, so fix it, if you're so worried. Or are you, like pembo13 suspects, a troll?
At this point, I don't think there's anything that SCO could say that would truly surprise anyone.
http://outcampaign.org/
Ouch. I'm really tired today --- change "interoperability" in my reply to "thwarting interoperability"...
It may have something to do with the Linux source code having meaningful comments and sensible variable and function names. But I think the most important difference is that you can look at the Linux {and, for that matter, BSD -- but Microsoft already know that} source code without having to promise never to program anything ever again.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Yes, very insightful.
Apart from the fact that Debian would include several media players and browsers, none of which were produced by themselves and would probably be delighted to include others of sufficient quality. So the monopoly abuse question (which is what the MS issue is all about) would never arise and your example is total bollocks.
Also the fact that anyone is free to take the debian source, make a totally compatable distro and include whatever media players etc. that they like (which can't be done with windows) makes your example double extra mega total bollocks.
I wish I wasn't forced to post as AC (by slashdot's bizarre IP address blocking which seems to exclude entire ranges from logging on for no apparant reason) so I could see if you attempt to justify your amazingly ignorant opinion which always crops up at least once every time the MS/EU issue is discussed.
Relieving Microsoft of their copyrights within EU member states would only serve to worsen the addiction to Microsoft's proprietary software. The present path is best: financial incentives to comply with a demand for documentation so that other software companies can develop software to inter-operate with Microsoft's offerings on the same footing as MS has.
Were the EU to deny Microsoft copyright protection in its member states, I suspect that the Microsoft would lobby the US Government to act in WIPO and WTO (with other small countries bullied) to impose sanctions upon Europe. It's been a while since we've had some empire-wrangling (well, since the allegations that Saddam Hussein was planning to sell Iraq's oil in Euros before 2003's 'liberation') and that could interesting times indeed.
Welcome our new monopoly-abbusing and >US$2500000/person paying overlords
Not relevant. In. The. Slightest. Debian wouldn't be locking you in to using only that free media player and web browser, like MS are.
You have to have IE loaded on your Windows box for it to work. Media Player cannot be removed entirely from the system. MS' protocols are undocumented heaps of proprietary shit.
Hell, it took the Samba team months/years to reverse engineer the protocols Windows uses for networking. How much less time would it have taken if it had been documented? How much closer to 100% compatibility would Wine be if it had full documentation for the Windows APIs?
Goten Xiao
Just because something is yours does not mean that you have the right to do absolutely anything you like with it. Otherwise I could say "This is my knife and I will stab whoever I want with it". By your logic that is acceptable, so please come and meet my friend Mr Sharp here.
In the marketplace, there are certain rules to make sure everyone gets a fair bite of the cherry. Certain business practices are expressly forbidden because they do direct harm to others. You are free to make cars, but you must not try to stop anyone else from making accessories that fit the cars you make. And you are free to write software, but other people have to be allowed to write software that will work in conjunction with your software -- e.g. reading its saved files and speaking its network protocols.
Microsoft have been deliberately withholding information from developers. This means that other software companies cannot produce software which interoperates properly with Microsoft software. Worse, Microsoft even try to pretend in their licence agreement that you aren't allowed to probe about in an attempt to discover for yourself how to do it {although the Law of the Land gives you a statutory right to do just that, so that part of the licence is invalid; but how many people knew that?}
Thanks to Microsoft's misleading and incomplete documentation, supposedly-interoperable software products suffer mysterious failures, costing time and money in lost productivity. And otherwise-perfectly-serviceable hardware becomes unusable in the absence of working drivers, costing money to replace it and more money to dispose of it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if at least one death somewhere in the world could be attributed to Microsoft's behaviour {funds that could have been used for medication spent on unnecessary software licences, prescribed wrong drug due to error introduced by poor interoperability, ambulance arrived too late due to rebooting computer, killed by pollution from improper disposal of unnecessarily-obsolete hardware, just unlucky and got kicked by IT tech in abject frustration, &c}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If my calculations are correct, then as of 7/5/2006, 568 days have passed, and therefore, Microsoft owes the EU $1.42 billion. From this perspective, piracy just might not look that bad of a statistic after all! Additionally, I'm afraid that Microsoft now has an excuse to jack those dang prices up... -.-
The EU is a woman?
Free market is leaking, and there are laws that (more or less) patch the holes. They're workarounds for some fundamental problems: There isn't an auto-correcting mechanism in the system that splits up companies getting too large and too powerful.
We could abolish those laws for the principle of it but you'll have to accept the consequences.
Try lobbying up against corporations now and consider what would happen if they were even more powerful?
The governments would all be on their paycheck. That would be terribly out of control because the corps would then exceed their purpose in the system: To keep people working and to fill in a demand. Making the shareholders rich is only a trick to keep them lil companies popping up.
It's one big sim and the end-game hasn't been balanced yet. MS should get a nice screen telling "Congratulations! You won! Highscore! Created by Sid Meier!" and start all over again trying to beat their previous record.
Unfortunately that's not possible so there's some harsh rules to slow the winners down. You either live with it or fix the system. Go ahead.
Forgot to mention:
Even Sid's games have mechanisms built in to slow you down at the end: global warming, terrorists, whatever.
They don't. The problem is that the EU commission won't specify exactly what's "good enough" documentation. It's like I asked you to give me some fruit. You're looking for a kumquat. I give you an orange, and you say "no, that's not good enough". I give you a lime, and you say "no, that won't do either". I ask you what kind of fruit you really want, and you say "no, you just have to give me the fruit". Actually it's more like this EU: we need you to reveal your kumquats. MS: How about we give you something better (reveals an apple) EU: No that is not good enough you need to show your kumquats. MS: OK we will give you something better (reveals loads of apples) EU: those are not what we want or need, why don't you give us the kumquats we asked for? MS (in a press conference): We don't know what the EU is asking for so we think a fine is unfair. MS fanboy on Slashdot: how is it fair that Microsoft are fined when they don't know what the EU wants? (Uses an analogy that they think proves there point despite the majority of slashdotters showing they (unlike Microsoft ) do understand what the EU wants. How come your average slashdotter can understand it yet MS and there lawyers can't?)
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Why not use the SI (metric system) prefixes and avoid any ambiguity?
US Imperial SI
10^3 - thousand - thousand - kilo
10^6 - million - million - mega
10^9 - billion - milliard - giga
10^12 - trillion - billion - tera
10^15 - quadrillion - trillion - peta
10^18 - quintyllion - quadrillion - exa
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Er, there are TWO countries in Western Europe that don't belong to the EU, if I disregard Turkey and Belarusse for a second.
1) You're from Norway.
You pay over 25 Euros for a Pizza that costs 5 Euros in Sweden because Norway became, like, really rich off oil-money, and then completely squandered that money on bad investments, leaving you with the highest taxes in the world and a pension fund that dwindles in comparison to what you should have had from the beginning. A car that costs 25.000 Euros in Sweden costs you more than 3 times that amount, and 95% of that money goes into the losses of said bad investments. You have nice fjords, but tend to commit mass suicide because it's cold and dark all year, and a pint of beer costs more than a car.
2) You're from Switzerland.
Your parents didn't do anything as the Nazi's were slaughtering Jews, Gypsies and Homosexuals during the holocaust. Moreover, you gave the same Nazi's bank accounts in which they dumped property and money from said Jews, Gypsies and Homosexuals. When the Nazi's lost the war, you basically kept the money to yourself. With that money you built a nice country which is clean, has nice buildings and good roads, and where all the clocks run very accurately. You pay 20 Euros for a meal at McDonalds in spite of the fact that social welfare is something you have to save up/pay for in advance. Also, in spite of a hard attitude towards drugs, you have more junkies in Zürich's central station than in all of the BeNeLux.
Now tell me, does that sound as though you have a right to complain about the EU? It doesn't sound to me as though you should open your mouth for one second even.
By the sound of it, you are French- or Italian-speaking Swiss, because no Norwegian would ever speak English that badly. This means three things:
1) You know all about vague bank accounts in which money from dubious parties disappears. You know far more about it than any country or government in the EU.
2) We don't want your lot in the EU in the first place, thank you very much.
3) I currently live in Israel. I want my wife's granddad Avi's golden teeth back, with 60 years of interest, thank you.
That would be the largest economy in the world...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
If you take how many days it has been since the December backdate till today, July 5th, then the total fine is a whopping:
$1,425,680,000
I wish I was a benefactor of that much cash...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Jan
FairPlay is quite well documented - it is currently un-licenseable, but that's a separate issue. Also, "compatibility with only one brand of music players"? How do you possibly get that? iTunes has been around since 1999, two years before the iPod. You think people were just staring at it the whole time, saying "gosh, if only I had a player this would work with." The Nomad, the Rio, etc. all worked fine with iTunes. Also, you can download Quicktime separately from iTunes... maybe you meant the other way around? iTunes is bundled with Quicktime because it uses the Quicktime engine internally for playing videos. Otherwise, you'd download iTunes, purchase a movie from the iTMS, and then have to download an additional component. It's like WMPlayer downloading Divx codecs, not some grand conspiracy. And as for the bundling with the OS? Sure, but it's also removable, unlike Internet Explorer under Windows.
Finally, there's something else you've forgotten... Apple isn't a convicted monopolist. The rules are different for Microsoft.
That's really a straw-man argument. Historically demand for operating systems was very low, no more than a few tens of thousands of units per year. So many machines are sold these days that the operating system can be commoditised.
Your argument also falls down in other ways. For computers like the C64, Apple II, Sinclair Spectrum, etc. the operating system was free.
You could also argue that Linux is only free (as in price) because it's the only way to compete with a monopoly. If it operates outside the capitalist system, perhaps that is because there is no capitalist system in operating systems. There is a monopoly, and everything else.
I know this is a little upside down compared to other parts of the legal system, and that counterintuitive element is probably one reason why the issue is sticky. For example, in the realm of personal conduct, the law works better when it tells people what they can't do (you can't hurt other people) instead of what they can do (Conduct Code Article 2,334,202 (a)(iv): you may brush your teeth with either your left or right hand).
But with the Microsoft situation, it's different. I think it hurts consumers when you tell Microsoft they can't bundle office and media player and IE and whatever other functionality in with the operating system. I'm a consumer, and I would like those things bundled. So I don't think it is necessarily a good thing for the courts to tell Microsoft "you can't include this or that feature with Windows." But I think the court definitely should be able to say, "you must provide documentation and APIs and whatever else to make your stuff interoperable with other company's products and services." That makes much more sense to me.
Basically, it levels the playing field not be crippling Microsoft, but instead by enabling others to better get a toe in.
In principle, I don't think it is fair to cripple the more-able just for the sake of making things fair for the less-able. When I was a kid in Michigan we had 'accelerated' gradeschool classes for gifted kids in math and whatnot. Then during the political correctness craze they got shut down for being 'unfair' to other kids. Maybe it has since changed back, I'm not sure.
It's basically the Harrison Bergeron Principle (after the 1961 Kurt Vonnegut short story). In that story, "equality has been achieved by handicapping the most intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society down to the level of the lowest common denominator." [wikipedia]. The point is, that is the wrong approach. While I may not be Microsoft's biggest fan, I think it is the wrong approach with Microsoft as well.
A-Bomb
Matters of national security are exempted from WTO rules:
WTO-AGP: Articles XXIII: Exceptions to the Agreement
1. Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent any Party from taking any action or not disclosing any information which it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests relating to the procurement of arms, ammunition or war materials, or to procurement indispensable for national security or for national defence purposes.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
The EU competition minister, in addition to imposing fines, also has the power to void contracts. Normally this is used in specific cases, like for example, if airbus made an illegal deal to undercut some other vendor, their contract could be voided. It would be interesting to speculate how that power could be applied on behalf of a market as a whole. The logical application would be to void the Microsoft EULA europe-wide, since it is essentially a contract of unfair barganing. This would answer the question, first, on how one could punish Microsoft by removing it's ability to operate in the market, and secondly, how to do so without disrupting current users. Given the potential powers granted to the EU competition minister, perhaps they should be thankful they are only being fined.
And I believe this link may be of some use to me!
(In my defense, coffee is stil 2~5 minutes away.)
In Kentucky a few years ago it was time for the state police forces to replace their side-arms. They tested several models and chose some model of glock (I'm not a gun person, I dunno). At the same time, some government fancy pants worked out a deal with Smith and Wesson for a 7 year contract for S&W firearms. 1,000 of the guns were purchased. The first set were handed out to the SWAT and other special forces for testing. Their report was VERY poor. The guns were totally inaccurate. Anyways, to make a short story long several of the officers wrote the state legislature. When S&W refused to let them out of the contract the state legislature drew up a bill to not allow any law enforcement officer in the state to ever carry a S&W firearm. Three days later S&W withdrew the contract and now all the officers carry the glocks. What's the point of this long stupid story? Don't discount the power of the government, even local government, to throw around very big weight in order to get the right thing done. They really just need one person who's up for election to get on a soap box. [I am not affiliated with any gun manufacturing companies]
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
If you think a goverment is anything more than a corporation with guns, you're fooling yourself.
All the more reason to keep the corps and the gov against each other since when gang up together against us it's the worst of both worlds.
I could not agree anymore. Otherwise many Amsterdam coffeeshop owners would start a store in the USofA. I am sure there are several that would be interested in doing so. There is demand, so no problem there.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I can run a mixed Windows and Linux system in either a flat TCP/IP network or a Microsoft style Active Directory. I can even use a Linux box as the DC. How exactly does that not mean "interoperability"?
Because MS does everything in its' power to make it not interoperate.
because offering a peek at the goddamned source code didn't go far enough, right?
No, it didn't. Not when the "peek" meant that you can't actually fscking use anything you might learn from it. If the "offer" didn't include a draconian NDA, then it might have come close.
What great MS spin you have there. You must work for the justice department.
You're funny. You think that Microsoft keeps all their assets and money in a big vault in the USA where the EU can't reach it. Do you think Microsoft only exists as a walled citadel in Redmond and a big delivery truck drives out every week with a 'Europe' sticker on its side? Do you think that once the EU is thwarted they will throw a huff and outlaw Microsoft products?
What's more likey, (meaning it's only slightly more likely than something that's never going to happen in a billion years) is that if MS doesn't pay, the EU would withdraw all legal protection from MS products and licences. Effectively make them free in the EU.
itunes is not a 'required download' to get quicktime, apple have a stand-alone quicktime player available, here http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone .html
on the quicktime download site, look on the right column, under the 'upgrade now' section, just above the ipod ad.
oh, and as far as i am aware, itunes is provided as the upload software for your ipod, to enable you to transfer music to your device, unless of course you would prefer to buy a £200 music player and not have the ability to put music on it.
i suspect the important point is that they do allow competition. as far as i am aware, an ipod can play just about any mp3 you put on it, using itunes or any other means (for example, amarok can also talk to ipods).
oh, and the other companies do appear to have provided the support, or at least accessibility. nullsoft are very helpfull in providing documentation to plugin and skin developers, and there doesnt seem to be much trouble talking to ipods either.
fyi i neither love nor hate apple, i'm a linux user, i just hate misinformed opinions. oh, and i suspect MS will magicly produce the documents at the last moment, just to provide maximum hassle and cost to the EU, just because they can.
FallenSword, a free MMO you can play at work!
Well, assuming what you're saying is true, what teeth does the WTO have to actually collect the fine? I'd wager 'none.'
Thanks, actually. It's no good making a mistake like that a lot.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Let me tell you a fable.
Let's say that one day I come to work and decide to park my car right under a "no parking" sign. Hey, it beats walking all the way from the parking ground, and surely I'm so big and important that such laws and city ordinances don't apply to me. So a cop comes around and writes me a parking ticket. Let's say (as a number pulled out of the butt) for 25$. So I ignore it and park my car in the same place tomorrow. So I get the same fine tomorrow. And ignore it again the next day.
So after almost two years I look at the total bill and go "whaaa? A whole 14,000$ for just parking my car??? It's so wrong and unjust! I'm being victimized by the police!"
I'm sure then you'd say, "well then you should have fucking stopped doing that earlier. If for a whole 19 months you decided to ignore the fine, it's _your_ fault that it added up to such a large sum."
The same applies to MS. It's been given a daily fine for each day when they don't comply with the court's order. And they continued to ignore the court's order for 19 months straight. So now it's added up to 1.4 billion dollars.
Well I say the same thing: "then they should have fucking stopped doing it earlier."
It's that simple. It's not some number that was pulled out of the hat now. It's been the daily fine that MS knew about all along. If MS chose to ignore it for so long, tough shit, but it's their problem then.
Heck, in this case the EU had been kinder than even the cop in my example. MS only had to comply at any point in the last 19 months, to be forgiven of the whole fine retroactively. Imagine a cop giving you the same deal: "dude, if you stop parking your car there, I'm going to forgive you of the whole last year's worth of parking tickets." Because seriously that's the deal that MS was given.
So excuse me if I don't see it as disproportionate or anything. They could have stopped at any time, if the total sum was getting too high for their taste.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Better hope they take Visa... rake in those frequent flyer miles!
That's cool, like The Linux Apocalypse. No sign of Transmeta anymore though :)
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
They would just seize MS property, rather than ban the sale of Windows - after all, courts have been doing that for years....
IT is NOT, i repeat NOT a money grab - seriously, have you read ANY of TFA? If this really were a money grab they would have not given MS 18 months to comply with a court order, and instead started fining from day 1 - remember there has been ONLY REMEMDY so far, and no PUNITIVE for the original illegial actions.
Disclaimer: I'm an American.
You're the kind of idiot that makes us look bad.
You want to sell products in Europe? Play by Europes rules.
You want to sell products in China? Play by Chinese rules.
Tell me, how do you feel about it the other way around? Do you think BMW should be "forced" to abide by American safety standards on its cars?
Do you think the Airbus should be "forced" to pay attention to the FAA when building its planes?
Do you think that French wine manufacturers should be "forced" to agree to FDA labelling requirements?
What about the U.S. "winning" the battle against European subsidies for Airbus. Sounds like 'foreigners' doodling with a European company.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If you're going to play on the world market, expect to following the rules of other jurisidictions. Otherwise, pull your products out.
MS doesn't have to pay the EC. They could simply withdraw from Europe, and totally ignore the EU's rules & fines & taxes. It's no one's fault but Microsoft.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I will probably modded down as troll with this, but..
Now let me be Microsoft. Ok, I have to pay $1.5billion or so + daily fines.
Right. Now what does the EU if I don't pay and don't comply?
More than probably nothing but more fines which I don't see why I would pay...
Honestly, the only way to make them comply is to declare MS illegal and make illegal the use of their products and fine people who still use it. But I don't think that's possible either.
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Because Honda and VW aren't monopolists. It's really that simple.
Monopolists don't play by the same rules as everyone else. Monopolists have to play by much stricter rules. Especially Monopolists that acheived their status through government regulations and government subsidies.
What's that? You want me to point at the government grants that allowed Microsoft to become a monopoly?
No problem. Here you go.
Let me remind you what copyright is. Copyright is a government grant on the monopoly distribution of an intellectual work. The Constitution established the Congress's ability to issue copyright in order to promote the Arts and Sciences. Copyright is an economic tool; not an inalienable right.
Are VW parts, or Honda parts copyright by their creator companies? Last I checked you could go to an autoparts store and by replacements parts from a variety of vendors. The interfaces and connections between various vehicular parts are well documented, if not standard.
The government granted MS a copyright. MS took this copyright, and established a monopoly in the OS market. They then used this monopoly to harm the market, and as such, are subjected to government regulation that their competitors are not. That's the long and the short of the matter.
Irrelevant comparisons to other companies has nothing to do with this.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
"Why should a corporation as a whole be held to a lesser moral standard than an individual is?"
Because legality is not morality. You cannot hold a corporation to a moral standard any more than you can hold a person to one. Morality varies from person to person, country to country. Legality is defined rather more specifically. So specifically, in fact, that it takes lawyers, judges and a massive system to interpret it.
We don't hold companies to morals. And we shouldn't. A judge might be able to tell me what's illegal, but I'll be damned if I'll let one tell me what's wrong.
What are you talking about? You can't find Microsoft! They've patented all their code!
4 227&special=1998
see?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130?issue=
The best part is... after that a European company can set up a website called AllofMS.com and sell legal copies of Windows to American buyers for $5
Then of course the U.S. government will have to kick the EU out of the WTO.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
i hate windows but even i think the way MS is being treated over there is unfair
i mean.. wtf? they bunded a media player with their windows WOOPTY DAMN DOO...
how many billions of dollars should they have to pay out for giving you free software with their commercial software..
microsoft has done plenty of other shady things that they got away with, for them to be getting skewered and raked over the coals for something that ISNT WRONG is pretty stupid..
Near as I can figure the gist of the EU's complaint is that they can't take a monkey who can slap away at a typewriter and train him to work with network protocols using the Microsoft-provided documentation.
Microsoft has maintained the position that the documentation provided is sufficient if the reader is already familiar with general OS and network design principles. Is that really an unreasonable assumption?
Clearly that documentation IS usable - Microsoft has used it successfully for many years, through many generations of coders. The EU didn't "like" what they got - and made that decision within days of receiving an huge shipment of documentation. How could they evaluate it so quickly? Frankly, there's no way. I don't defend Microsoft as a rule - I leave zealotry for those with more time on their hands - but I still say that in this case the EU's position is a load of horse crap.
Microsoft has been suspected of using illegal practices a long time ago. In the early days of Windows 1.0, Windows would crash on Dr. DOS and not on M$ DOS. People stopped using Dr. DOS. It is suspected that Microsoft wrote code into Windows to crash on Dr. DOS.
Then comes Netscape with their Navigator. I was a boy at the time and I was wondering which was better, Navigator or Explorer. My dad insisted on Navigator, which I didn't mind. Eventually, Navigator crashed when I used it and so I switched to Explorer and found it not so crashy. I hear the same thing with SAMBA and other such projects. Microsoft is also suspected of having secret interfaces in their Windows operating system so that Office runs better than other products.
Microsoft may be trying hard to hide this information. If they are forced to document their protocols, it may become obvious that the eccentricies found in the protocols, and maybe interfaces, are anti-competitive. Everyone will sue Microsoft, and there maybe supeneas (sp?) for experts to review Windows code for evidence. This could get very nasty for Microsoft as they will be forced to pay out to oblivion.
You forgot that a corporation can't use force to get you to do something, and that they compete, and that you are free to associate with a corporation or not.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
So what you're saying is a joint ESA/NASA project is doomed to failure.
We have enough trouble with the footmeter problem. Allowing NASA to calculate how many liters of fuel are needed to send a probe a billion miles could be a real problem.
Just out of curiousity, is the same true goint the other direction (milli-, micro-, nano-...)?
"not to mention how many companies would leave the EU rather than convert would be far too great (likely in the trillions)."
So you think TRILLIONS of companies will leave the EU?
Dude, the whole world population is only 6 billion.
well.. i doubt i'm an idiot, first.. and secondly, you can't possibly be serious about comparing auto safty and governing how MS does business. Just a little 101 for you. Auto safty laws are there to prevent serious injury or death to human beings. ok? How MS sells its products causes ZERO physical harm to anybody. EU wants to punish MS to gain financially. You can't convince me otherwise. Its legal extortion.
and your "It's no one's fault but Microsoft"... what?!?!?! how's that?? If lawmakers passed legislation to tax hippies at a higher rate, would that be the fault of the hippies or the lawmakers???
Wow.. what wonderful drivel. Your an angry hippie, and I can understand that. When making a point, you really should not litter your verbage with "douchebags", "retarded fanboy", "idiot", and so on.. Nobody's going to take your point seriously, anonymous or not.
Your message is just full of anger, hate and intolerance. I have a differing opinion, and your not ok with that. You resort to name calling. How little of you. -Sparky
Sorry, but no... Apple OSX Tiger is $129 retail through the Apple store online. And I assume you don't remember the ones fallen by the wayside; Be, DOS, DR DOS, CP/M 86, GEM, OS/2 and a host of others. Microsoft has never been "cheap," just ubiquitous.
Sorry, but no... Apple OSX Tiger is $129 retail through the Apple store online. And I assume you don't remember the ones fallen by the wayside; Be, DOS, DR DOS, CP/M 86, GEM, OS/2 and a host of others. Microsoft has never been "cheap," just ubiquitous.
That's upgrade pricing - you can't buy OSX in the first place without buying a Mac. Comparatively, Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade is $99.99 - which is cheaper.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
And XP professional upgrade is $199. Are you saying Mac OSX is closer to XP Home than Professional?
That excuse is already taken twice, this time they will have to come up with a better lie.
HTTP/1.1 400
Admittedly, it depends on the country, but there is such a thing as immigration...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
oops, I meant to say as the cost to convert would be fat too great (likely in the trillions). The number of companies that would leave is irrelevant, as it's total dollar figures that matter.
As for the comments about eventually software converting to mac/linux, that might be true, and they probably would, however there is a large extra cost required of all the developers to port applications to multiple OS's and keep them supported. Do you think this cost wouldn't be paid by the consumers in some way shape or form?
Besides, while the long term is important, a short term (a year or two) upset of all of the EUs computer systems would have a devastating effect on the countrys economy. The EU can not afford a deppression over a software vendor.
Additionally if companies chose to simply violate MS's IP, there would be even more havok laid out. First MS would step up it's antipiratism measurements preventing updates etc, while cracks might work, they represent a major pain for large corporations. Additionally there's the problem of multinational corporations. What are they going to do when MS tells them that they can't do business with them in other countrys (where IP is enforceable) unless they buy legitimate versions of their softwares in the other countries? While clever restructurings might avoid some of those problems, they are costly. MS has ways to strike back if widespread IP violations became government sanctioned. Small businesses might manage alright, but larger ones make up a sizable portion of the EUs economic forces.
Plus the raw power that the EU regulatory comission would have to yield to allow such widespread disregard of IP would definately scare potential companies from moving. Additionally member states of the EU might pull out under local pressures, and the entire EU might end up falling apart.
I really think the ball is in Microsofts court, it's really hard to truely enforce vague notions of anti-trust law.
Phil
And I quote...
o verview.aspx
Q: Why can't I distribute my implementation in source code form? And why does Microsoft care about "other licenses?"
A: The specifications used to create your protocol implementations are confidential and, along with the source code of those implementations, include Microsoft trade secrets. However, because other MCPP licensees have agreed to MCPP license terms (including distribution and confidentiality provisions), you can distribute the source code of your implementation to them. The license agreement also permits you to allow others to view the source code of your implementations on-site at your place of business for evaluation purposes, under suitable non-disclosure agreements.
In addition to not disclosing your source code directly (other than as just described), you also need to make sure not to subject your implementation to any other licenses that would require such source code disclosure. For example, under certain circumstances, other licenses may require your implementation to be disclosed in source code form when you distribute your implementation with other technology that is already subject to that other license. In short, you can't subject your authorized implementations to any license that requires you do things that are contrary to the scope of your license and your obligations under the license agreement.
http://members.microsoft.com/consent/info/License
It doesn't really mean all that much. Microsoft will do some kind of wheeling and dealing efforts to 1) lower the fine and 2) establish an even stronger marketshare in the EU
Except the EU is notorious for not caring about wheeling or dealing and thus not lowering the fine and not enabling MSFT to increase marketshare.
We tried to warn them, but they just don't grok that the EU is not the US.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You forgot that a corporation can't use force to get you to do something
the only reason they can't in modern western society (they do in some others) is that the goverments won't let them.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
judgements like this are the reason windows sells for $300-400 instead of 50-100, as future judgements like this are part of their pricing model
So what you're saying is that since the fine is for noncompliance with a court order, MS is figuring breaking the law and then ignoring the courts into their pricing model?
Damn, I knew I was making a mistake. If only I had including regular speeding tickets into my considerations for negotiating my salary, I could drive as fast as I wanted to everywhere!
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
you cease to enforce their copyright. (Which they regard as "property rights", but isn't.)
Indeed, my phrasing was a bit off. Of course Belarusse and Turkey are in Europe, and not Western Europe. I mentioned Western Europe to demonstrate that even if you leave off the East (including indeed the whole Balkan region), we still have more than one country that is not in the union. Although I must say Norway is definately Western Europe. Not only geographically (it's due north from Holland, might stretch east in the north, but still... give me a break) but most certainly culturally and socio-economically.
:-D
But as you so rightly surmised, my reply was far from scientific or complete. I just touched upon a number of things that actually happened. There were catastrophic losses from investments which caused the pension situation in Norway only to be kept afloat by the grace of oil money, the financial history of Switzerland isn't exactly laudable, and both countries' respective fixes on several issues is far from 100% correct.
To cut a long story short, I am a citizen of the Netherlands. I lived in Sweden for six years, and now reside in Israel. In my life I have noticed that a lot of people are taking pot-shots at the EU, member states or other entities without thinking for a second about the flaws and troubles of their own nations. My statement, albeit sarcastic and harsh in tone, was aimed at maybe making someone out there realise that outright de-humanisation or demonising of entities or people is seldom productive. I see that on a daily basis here in Israel, as a matter of fact.
To end this on a biblical note: Before commenting the splinter in your neighbour's eye, you should think about the beam in your own.
I must say I much enjoyed reading the specifics behind your reply. If you're Norwegian: Jag är inte avundsjuk på Pizza-, bil- och bostadspriserna i Norge, men gratulerar med en fortfarande substantiell pension. 1905 måste sticka lite i Svenska ögon med tanke på alla härliga resurser de går miste om. Däremot sticker perioden före 1905 samt 1940-1945 mycket mer i Norska ögon.
Well, Wikipedia lists more free trade aggreements:
EU Agreements with third states with FTA provisions: Algeria, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Mexico, Chile, South Africa, Faroe Islands, Switzerland, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Andorra, San Marino, Turkey
I have yet to find a list of US Agreements with third states with FTA provisions.
I think voiding MS copyright in EU would be really good . -That will effectively make legal using the stolen source code(win2k source was stolen) and selling products based on it . ReactOs/Wine could legally use it in Europe code to implement better windows compatibility (effectively avoiding current lock-down by M$) and opening MS standards.
.That would be huge market for companies to compete in without ,and M$ effective de-facto lock-in would instead become the base for open standards. -WE would get compatibility with existing hardware/software and openness in the future.
I don't believe M$ OS and products are bad -they are very good , problem with them is that they are all closed and try to impact interoperability in every imaginable and unimaginable way
"The EU fine will increase the marginal cost, driving the price up."
No, it won't. The marginal cost is the cost of adding one more unit of production. The EU fine won't have any effect on that, as the fine doesn't vary by production. It's a fixed cost. Fixed costs only matter in perfect competition not with monopolies nor even monopolistic competition (unless the fixed costs eat up *all* of the profit; then bankruptcy occurs).
It is worth noting that in my previous post, I wrote revenue where I should have written profit. Mea culpa.
Why not give it to Oracle?
You are forgetting that we are talking about politicians.
That money us not going anywhere!
They would rather spend it on more confortable chairs and new cars.
Most of it will go into administrational costs...