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EU Gives Microsoft 8 Days Until Fines
kaysan writes "European Commissioner Neelie Kroes has presented Microsoft with an ultimatum: Before Thursday next week, Microsoft must hand over all secret information on Windows protocols to its competition. Should the company choose to ignore this demand, it will be severely fined. Microsoft's history with EU fines so far amounts to approximately Euro777.5 million. Both linked websites are Dutch, but then again, so is EU commissioner Neelie Kroes."
While I know that what I say might come off as a troll or a Microsoft-fanboy (I am neither), I really don't understand the State in this situation at all.
First of all, the State creates laws which give some companies preferential treatment over ideas or the way a person can use their hands and mind to create something. We call these useless laws "copyright," "patent" or "trademark." The State is the only way to enforce these laws which govern how you think and use your body, it is impossible to cover these restrictions without force or the threat of force.
So companies go out of their way to try to protect their easily-distributed-and-duplicated resources. In a free market, if a widget was hard to make and reproduce, but everyone wanted one, it would be very expensive. If someone else discovered a way to mass produce widgets to outstrip demand, the price would plummet down to near $0. This is why software and music and content has a very small value compared to future work -- once the product is produced, it falls to worthless except for the law.
These companies that create content also know that even with the law, it makes sense to try to keep competitors from discovering how their products work. If I invent a new engine, I'd want to obfuscate the operation enought to keep my competitors from duplicating it, at least until I've made it more efficient. This is how manufacturing works -- you want to be the most efficient, but you also want to fight off competition who wants to be more efficient than you. This is why the market is great -- people work hard to make more efficient products.
Now, we have various competitors that are locked out of a market because the State decided to give preferential treatment to certain companies (in this case, Microsoft). Copyright, patents, trademarks can all be used to keep other people out of a given market long enough for a company to grow to a size that makes it hard to defeat. This is not what happens in a relatively free market (I'll say most deregulated). If Microsoft didn't have the backing of idiotic laws like the DCMA (in the US), overextended copyright, overencompassing patents, and overbearing trademark laws, other companies would have had access to compete many, many years ago. Microsoft itself was able to get into the information market from the start by developing products and acquiring products before the laws became unbearable in terms of the barrier to entry.
Microsoft is not a monopoly, it is just able to use the preferential treatment of the law better than their competitors. If you voted for the State, you are part of the reason that Microsoft has grown. Sure, some will say that they violated anti-trust laws, but those laws have enough loopholes to let any big company get around them.
Let's look at reality here. The State wants these fines to pad their own accounts -- they same laws will exist, and the same problem will repeat itself. This is basically a legal form of asking for bribes, and Microsoft will be happy to comply. Any changes Microsoft makes will only be enough to make the State happy, and the next run against them will be strictly for income for those making new laws. That income helps provide for more loopholes and better preferential treatment for the companies that can afford it. Microsoft is being forced to hand over "secrets" but those are past secrets -- not future ones, right? They'll just make new secrets, or obfuscate the old ones in new ways so that anything they share isn't useful in the long run (everything changes every 18months right?).
The problem isn't in the bribe money, the problem is that you all are voting for the State to be more and more powerful, which means that it can do more and more damage to your freedoms.
Which would be extreme wishful thinking on the part of Bill Gates. Microsoft would be crucified by their shareholders if they did anything to even slightly endanger their existence in the European market - which has a population of almost twice the United States. Indeed, the shareholders could easily sue Microsoft's board if they were to take such an ill-advised act. Not to mention, the rest of the world would be scrambling to migrate away from Microsoft products so they don't get extorted in the same manner.
It would also demonstrate to the EU the urgency of which Microsoft's monopoly would need to be broken - so even the rumour of such a threat would be severely damaging to the value of Microsoft as a company.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
They will ignore the demands and accept the fine.
Then they will say they will pay with vouchers for MS software.
Same shit, different day..
I'm rooting for the EU to crack the back of this beast. It's high time that multi-national corporations learn that they are not above the law. Arthur Andersen doesn't seem to have been enough of an example, because corporate officers and billionaires in this world still play like they think they're masters of the universe.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
For the umpteenth time. Microsoft was tried and convicted in Europe for Anti-Trust violations, just like they were in the states. Part of the remedy was to document the protocols to allow comptetitors software to interoperate with Windows servers.
Microsoft refused to comply with the remedy as decided by the court. The court then decided to fine Microsoft. Microsoft refused to comply with the remedy and refused to pay the fines. That's where we are at the moment.
So the EU isn't against Microsoft because it's American, it's against corporations that break the law, get convicted then ignore the punishment that has been decided by the court.
Now do you see?
What power does the EU ultimately have to enforce the fines at this point if MS simply doesnt pay the fines: Are they prepared to ban the importation of MS products and quit the MS Windows habit cold turkey? I can't see many businesses appreciating being deprived of a standard business environment/tool such as Windows or Office. I'm fairly ignorant of EU politics but is there enough strength in the political system to push an embargo though and make it stick?
Can someone give me some examples of microsoft propriatory data formats, network protocols or APIs that:
A.Would be covered under what the EU is asking MS to release
and B.Would actually be benificial to competitors of Microsoft (including open source)
I don't know about that. Walmart doesn't pretend that it's a nice place to work. Walmart doesn't pretend to be anything more than a minimum wage shop. Walmart is a discount house, and really doesn't try to be anything different.
MSFT pretends to be open and standards following, and caring company, who you then partner with(playsforsure) and then stabs you in the back(Zune).
A simple fact, Outside of MSFT's monopoly their products are at best average and rarely long term profitable. Walmart while Evil, doesn't have all their eggs in one basket, and isn't a convicted monopolist.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I'm sure the various Microsoft subsiduaries in the EU member states have some nice assets like bank accounts and property that could be seized.
Predictably, many (US) Slashdotters trot out typical US hypocrisy and double standards. Spamhaus, a UK company, gets no sympathy in the US because "they should abide by the laws of the US when doing business in the US / jurisdiction of the US courts". OK, fair enough. But now a US company doing business in the EU is asked to abide by the laws of the EU - "no fair!" they cry.
We see this time and again, whether it's steel imports, GM crops or democracy. "We can impose tariffs, but you can't". It's the US way, or else.
I would have hoped that us nerds would be a bit more clued up on the world, and aware of being played like political pawns. Is it really too hard to pull your head out the sand and see the double standards that the US applies? This site is "news for nerds", but that often seems secondary to "knee jerk reactions by American patriots".
What would happen if there where no trademarks & copyrights ?
Simple. Small development companies would spend their money to develop new ideas.
Big companies would simply copy those ideas and with their experience + resources market the final
product\whatever, better, and get fruits from it. Startup companies would hardly succeed.
This is what Trademarks\Copyrights prevents!
How is properly documenting their APIs and protocols "giving away all their valuable IP"?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
While I am like most of Slashdot in that I think that Microsoft has a very tight grip on the computer market, I still will never understand why the EU is so against Microsoft. Is it because it is produced in a foreign market? I know many European countries have unhealthy feelings of xenophobia...
While I, like most people on Slashdot understand that Lee Boyd Malvo is a good shot, I still will never understand why Virginia is so against him. Is it because he is black and Virginians hate blacks? I know a lot of Virginians are Clansmen...
Microsoft broke the law. The EU has enforced this same law against numerous companies that are both European and based in other countries. What's so hard to understand?
Remember: they bought the software...
Do you even know what this case is about? The whole point is that because everyone pretty much has to use Windows on the desktop to get software they need to do business means it is illegal for MS to force them to buy their server OS as well by tying the two together with secret protocols that make it hard to use a different server with Windows desktops. Since doing so is clearly against the law both in the US and the EU and MS was convicted of it both in the US and EU, I don't really see where refusing to fix the problem by providing a level playing ground for Linux and Solaris and everyone else as far as their interactions with the Windows desktop is concerned is in any way confusing.
Listen, I know MS publishes a lot of FUD about this and tries to confuse the issue, but it just isn't that hard. MS built their business model around breaking the law. They knew from the outset what they are doing is illegal and why and they just figured they'd make more money by breaking the law then paying any fines than by obeying the law. So far they've been very right. Even assuming they pay the fines they've acquired they're still right. They're not going to stop unless someone makes them with a bigger stick than this. Stop buying their marketing FUD.
Why give them another 8 days? Isn't it a long time since the last "warning"? The whole give-you-another-two-year thing is stupid. Look at what happened in US. If they do not cooperate, apply *heavy* tax on every windows sales. This is another way to give advantage to competitors. When MS is trying to kill competitors and refuse to cooperate, you can *help* competitors to effectively reverse the situation.
Windows ? Nah, the E.U. isn't buying Windows according to your plot.
Linux ? But Linux isn't "Made in U.S. of A.".. They'd just buy SuSE Linux, or go ftp://ftp.funet.fi
Methinks the EU wouldn't actually be in such a bad shape, even if Microsoft really would stop shipping Windows to the EU. The already sold licenses are still valid ( although they'd be a virus trap on the scale of O(n$) once the patches stop appearing in the EU :) )
There would be a transition period, but business would recover soon enough and domestic solutions to POS, banking, TAX etc would appear. ( Although not an EU country, Iceland would suffer only for a brief period of time if Windows was banned. Banking and Tax returns are already multi-platform capable due to good back-ends, clueful programmers and a good browser
The EU might actually gain something from having Microsoft taken off of the market. Although it's only speculative, I think there's a lot of domestic tech-job-opportunities here :)
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Option 1: If it happened, it's not good for the EU at all (to be seen as toothless would let any monopoly run rampant). The EU is more than just a single unit, it's a collection of lots of countries - most of whom have absolutely no interest at all in seeing an MS monopoly. Plus, the chances are that it will end up costing an awful lot of "important" people in an awful lot of countries their jobs. Plus, currently, the financial incentive to the EU alone is worth continuing pursuing the case, even if it takes years and years to appeal.
Option 2: The MS software they had would not spontaneously explode, they would have at least until the end of support for XP/2003 (which is still a few years away) in which to migrate. The enormous inertia of dozens of countries migrating simultaneously will make this no more expensive than any other option (who's going to say no to doing one country's IT if they have sites in other countries that they can reuse their creations?) - sheer demand will mean that it would be worth creating an OS completely from scratch with real funding at a fraction of the money that they would STILL be making from MS's fine. And the final target would be complete independence of any company to prevent a future re-occurence. Even if expensive, that will save a lot more money in the long run.
If MS do decide to pull out of the EU (unlikely given the figures - at least 50% of their revenue comes from there), then the EU has already stated that it would be perfectly happy to say bye-bye to them. Nobody is MAKING them do business in the EU. However, they would still have to resolve prior, historical trading issues. So annoying the EU at this point will just mean a harsher perspective on issues that are still in front of them (and will be for several years yet, no doubt). Pulling out now doesn't cancel all the legal problems that they've generated in the past and this case itself dates back to at least 2004 (and relates to affairs from a while before that).
If MS pulled out, the "vacuum" created by absence of a product to replace MS stuff would generate a lot of easy revenue - the various governments, companies, institutions would look at replacing everything NOW rather than wait until they hit problems. They'd do it right to prevent a reoccurence and they'd (ironically) be using MS's own money to fund the replacement. Unix/Linux/Apple companies would make a killing overnight.
Remember the energy crisis? While the US went on to become even more dependant on middle eastern oil, Europe realized that the mid east had them by the short and curlies. France replaced their fossile fuel power plants with nuclear systems and Norway tapped into its undersea oil and natural gas fields.
I posit that word documents are less addictive than midddle eastern petroleum and that, should Microsoft force the EU's hand, Microsoft software shipments to Europe would be as common as crude shipments to scandinavia.
As far as I can recall, MS did endeavor to document a bunch of their interfaces. The response was that it was insufficient. MS tried to find out how it was insufficient, and was told that it was MS's responsibility to figure that out.
MS does produce technical documentation for a whole slew of its products. Look at the API-level documentation that is on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/. It's just not the most obvious documentation. Is it usable? For the most part. Does it cover every single idiosyncracy? No.
MS did make a good faith effort previously, and the only response they got was a thumbs down with no guidance on what to do differently. I don't really think such a risky prospect as actually having SECRET APIs would have been permitted by the company's legal department after the antitrust mess. Rather, I just don't think the documentation is that good. An uncommented header file would be documentation; it just wouldn't meet the needs of the EU regulators.
Providing MS with an EIGHT DAY deadline is just absurd. Even if everyone qualified as a technical writer was thrown at the problem, there still needs to an information flow, probably from some people who are on vacation for a month now that Vista has shipped. There's only so much that can be written at a time, and only so much that can be documented in any period of time. Add in the time for editing, and legal review, and to verify completion... eight days? It's just an excuse to charge Microsoft with more money. Even a month would be more of an indication that they expected Microsoft to be able to comply. Given that up until this point Microsoft was working at having it done next July, the scheduling cannot be compressed by 8 months.
Had the commissioner provided a more reasonable deadline, Microsoft could be cast into a harsh light by this ruling, as the request already existed, and the Commissioner just disagreed with the amount of time they were claiming to need. Microsoft has tried to provide documentation before, and was told it was insufficient -- doubtless this time they wanted to avoid this charge.
Anyone who has ever written technical API documentation will probably be inclined to agree that trying to compress even a three month timeline into 8 days will be well nigh impossible. The commissioner's demand is effectively a demand for money, not for documentation; I can't see any way ANY company, no matter their motives, would be able to meet the deadline.
These consideratioons are not present in the EU so you get more even handed enforcement of the antitrust laws. It's also a chance to stick it to one of the EU's main economic competitors, the US which I guess is the gist of your comment. But make no mistake about it, MS is as dirty as hell in both the US and the EU. Can you imagine what would have happened to MS in the US courts if it was a French company?
I'm not saying that's not the way things *should* be. I'm just saying that people always game the system to their best advantage. What you propose is a fantasy. Nobody would create software that way if they could use the system to their own advantage. I agree with your idealism. That'd be great. But it's also not the way it would be.
I write for two reasons: to gain insight from people's replies (which would be VERY costly to do if I hired them to reply, even the emotional ones), and to promote some free market thoughts as people work the problems back to their source: the lack of freedom under a State that wants to regulate and restrict everyone but those that can afford to bribe the State.
I'm never quite sure where I fall on copyright law. I write, and I know how hard it would be for writers to make a living without copyright protection. But, like you, I feel the prohibition against the free exchange of information is also wrong.
I write, but I repudiate copyright entirely. Everything I have ever written -- books, blogs, music -- and everything I have ever designed -- art, photos, machinery -- I let others copy freely and even use their own name on it with no attribution. I find that this increases the demand for that given market, which eventually helps me if I find a way to be the most competitive against others who are also in the market. I love competition, it has ALWAYS helped me. I've helped my own employees start competitive businesses against me, and I've still grown as more customers come into the market. I see no reason for "protecting" my thoughts or actions against mimicry.
And that the problem: any system that allows any behavior will result in exploitative behavior. The arguments in favor of a free, unregulated market (that is, "let the market decide") always remind me of vigilantism: if someone murders, let the family of the person murdered punish the murderer. An unregulated market would result in the larger corporations using their market force to regulate the market, and the citizens will never get much of a say.
That's a good opinion, but I'm not sure how true it is. Without a tyranny in the State, a company producing a product or service would have competition -- no matter how big that company is. Even billion dollar chip manufacturers have competition, because millions of individuals invest to try to compete on that level. The only thing the State changes is that they sometimes create an infinitely high barrier to entry through copyright and patent laws. Getting rid of that infinitely high barrier to entry may leave us with a high barrier to entry, but high is easier to jump over than infinitely high.
They *would* do this. They already do this to gain more control than copyright or patent law gives them currently. Yes, we should certainly strike down patent laws, and perhaps even copyright. But that won't change essentially destructive corporate self-interest. When the corporations control the market (such as IBM did years ago, and Microsoft does now), they warp the market to their own favor. They will do this no matter what laws exist or do not exist.
But while they're trying to maintain control through force, they'd have dozens if not hundreds or thousands of competitors nipping at their ankles. Eventually, all it takes is one bacteria to take down a giant. It has happened through all of history, and it would continue to happen unless the company in power was able to truly stay more efficient or cheaper or produce a better product. Competition never goes away in a less-regulated market.
This is nothing more than bribery for trade secrets. Period. The only thing Microsoft can do is retaliate.
1) Immediately release a statement that they are horrified that they are being pressured to make copyrighted works public or else face fines.
2) Announce an IMMEDIATE withdrawl of Windows software from the EU. They will buy back licences at fair market value, as long as there is proof that the OS has been removed from the system. Announce no more support for those that continue to use it.
3) Profit.
How? The EU would shit their pants if Microsoft pulled Windows from the market. They could not function without it. Try doing a multi country conversion to Linux without disrupting business, it can't happen. They would come crawling back with their tail tucked.
Call their bluff, Microsoft. This is grade A bullshit.
"I'm from Europe and the unspoken truth here is that the EU officials are severely corrupt"
Acutally you have it the wrong way round, it's MS and its lobbiests who are doing the corrupting. Batting on their side is also Charlie McGreevey a member of one of the most corrupt goverments in Europe. he's also behind the repeated attempts to get a US style patent system introduced into Europe.
was EU corruption (Score:5, lies)
davecb5620@gmail.com
Alright, I'm not going to argue about MS being a monopoly or not, to be honest, I don't care. I don't care because one company setting the standards and everyone complying with it creates an environment of stability in computers.
Sort of like how dictatorships create an environment of stability in countries, right?
Sure, they might abuse their power and kill some people, and the laws they dictate might be unjust, but at least you know what you have to comply with.
Most crashes, problems, and issues I have to diagnose and repair are most often caused by thrid party vendors that wrote software without bothering to read the existing Whitepapers on the subject...which is why this is POINTLESS.
Uh, so? You think nobody on the planet is doing, or wants to do anything outside of the issues you have to diagnose and repair? You seem to have a very myopic view of the world.
They're using legal action to ensure that people can play on a level playing feild. It's sounds liek a good idea, but it's a recipe for chaos in the long term.
Sort of like Democracy, right?
All you end up with is the establishment of new proprietary information from competitors of MS that eventually wil have to be sued to hand the information over as well, and the person who sues them, will use this ruling as the basis for their law suits.
Without monopoly power, a competitor cannot dictate proprietary standards onto the market. Their competitors will create an open, interoperable standard and support it instead and the proprietary vendor will end up marginalized. This has happened plenty of times in the last 30 years. In the absence of monopoly influence, the market tends to correct itself on those things.
If it did happen then, yes, someone would sue and this ruling could be used for the basis of their suit (actually it probably couldn't since i dont think the EU courts use prior cases as precedent in future cases the way the United States court system does). I'm not sure why you brought that up though, because that was just indicate a properly functioning legal system, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Making MS hand over documentation on protocols is pointless, there are white papers that describe eveything important to a real programer, with a single exception, file formats for Office products (Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, Visio, etc) The formats used in Office 2007 are completely different....making this a pointless ruling. They've already changed the very protocols they've been told to hand over, and since 2007 isn't out of BETA yet, it technically isn't covered by the ruling.
I think the Samba guys would disagree with ou on that first part. (unless, maybe you don't consider them real programmers?)
I fail to see how the Office 2007 format being different makes the ruling pointless. Do you not think people want interoperability with older file formats? Do you think everyone will immediately switch to Office 2007 and convert their old documents to office 2007 format? History disagrees with that.
Also, how can Office 2007 using a different file format make the ruling pointless if it isn't even out of beta yet? And how do you know the EU isnt requiring them to hand over documentation on the file formats for the beta software also?
Personally I don't think making them turn over anything beyond a table of file format struture is fair to MS or the consumer. LEts say they force MS to turn over documentation about security in Windows (crippled as it already is) you've just given evey hacker a road map!
So far, the only people who have demonstrated a need for a road map for windows security are the security vendors and MS themselves. The hackers seem to be doing just fine without one.
Besides, if looking at this documentation will make it so easy for the hackers to abuse windows, shouldn't it also make it easy for MS to find those holes and fix them? Are the hackers that much better than the "real" programmers at M
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
The lawyers and judges (who don't generally understand software development or architecture at all) keep making numerous faulty assumptions.
You're the one making faulty assumptions. Many of the people working on this case know all of the things you cite, but they don't matter. This is a punishment for MS breaking the law that MS bargained for after they were found guilty. They claimed they would do it.
Just because Microsoft doesn't publish documentation for every conceivable thing they do, it doesn't mean a competitor is incapable of interoperating with their stuff.
If they're writing something that connects their desktop OS in the market they've monopolized with the server OS in a different market, they bloody well knew it was illegal unless it was open and documented so they bloody well should have done so. Or, they could have used the original standards they corrupted in order to make these protocols and avoided breaking the law in the first place. It doesn't matter if the Samba team can reverse engineer well enough to get Linux to mostly work. By law they have to have exactly the same capability to do so that Microsoft has and that means clearly written docs or the original developers hired to help them and anyone else who wants it.
If Microsoft wants to take over the server OS space, great. Let them do it by making the best server OS, not with this illegal bullshit. In my opinion, MS should be fined a hell of a lot more than they have been and the money handed over to all the competitors they have harmed. The damage they have done to the entire industry will take many years to fix and it won't start until this is solved.
If this were a first offense or something I'd be a little more lenient but it isn't even close. They've done this same thing again and again and they continue to do so. It needs to be made clear that breaking the law as part of your business plan is not acceptable and you will be smacked down hard if you do it. The US should break them up, but since the US courts are too corrupt, the EU should make sure they walk away from the next meeting of directors with a clear message that breaking the law will not be profitable.