Slashdot Mirror
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.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,194 8086,00.html
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Slashdot continues its editorial nosedive towards irrelevance as they now ignore their own FAQ!. I wasn't aware that there is a significant portion of the American Slashdot reading public that could understand Dutch. Interesting.
A simple Google News search turns up a whole lot of items on this story in English.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Face it -- the fines aren't even petty cash. MS expects the Court of First Instance to rule in a few months, and it would be stupid to turn over information that can't be recalled before then.
At absolute worst, the fines are worth less than the ability to hold off competition for the same period; it's just part of the cost of doing business.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
" so is EU commissioner Neelie Kroes."
But what about his cousin Mie Kroes Offt?
Where were you when the voynix came?
The last time the EU demanded that Microsoft produce usable documentation (as in, sufficient specs to program at least a working prototype implementation of the relevant network protocols), they kept insisting that the EU had demanded that they hand over all their source code. And of course large chunks of the press believed them.
I wonder what story they'll try to feed us this time around.
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
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)
So they didn't exactly bash down the consumers' doors and force them to buy their software. They forced the PC OEMs to force it on them.
And you are correct with some of the xenophobia. Basically, the EU nations do not want to be purely beholden for this type of thing to a US-based company.
OCO is Loco
next week, Microsoft must hand over all secret information on Windows protocols to its competition.
But, but, your honour - we don't HAVE any competition...!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
quick translation:
0 .html
New Ultimatum for Microsoft bu the EU
LONDON - The Eurpean Union has issues a new ultimatum against the American software giant Microsoft: before next Thursday the company has to turn over all (bdb: information about the) secret protocols in its Windows-OS to its competitors.
If Microsoft does not comply with the demands, the company risks more fines, threatened EC Neelie Kroes in Wednesday's edition of the British newspaper the Guardian. "I do not live forever" Kroes said about the tightened pressure.
Accoriding to her Microsoft has not given all relevant information yet. She compared it to a puzzle from which certain pieces are missing.
In March 2004 the European Commission already fined Microsoft by an amount of 497 million euros in alledged abuse of market power. In July an additional fine was set which can go up to 280,5 million euros.
original story in the guardian: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1947759,0
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
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.
Even if the EU were more economically powerful than it is, I doubt that it could afford option #2
Before assuming that the EU is a relatively insignificant part of Microsoft's market which they could easily do without, you may want to work out the total population of the EU. Then calculate what percentage of the developed World's population (i.e. the people who actually pay for expensive operating systems and office software) it makes up.
Of course, being American you will probably first want to find an atlas and work out what country the EU is in.
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 :)
This signature is DRM protected. By the DMCA, you are not allowed to counteract or oppose to it.
The EU is so against Microsoft because Microsoft is so against obeying the law in the EU.
SMB/CIFS, MAPI, Microsoft DNS, RPC over HTTP, Office APIs, and so on... The list is here.
"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
The eu doesnt need microsoft to co-operate if it truely wanted their trade secrets. they could sieze them without all this fuss.
Microsoft can threaten all it wants but no corporation currently is more powerful then a state.
They'll simply be slaughtered both by the EU, and by their shareholders if they continue to refuse to comply with the court order.
step 2 above seems to assume that everyone would return their copy to microsoft, just because they asked.
Chances are they wouldnt, and all the EU needs to do is revoke all copyrights, patents , etc granted to microsoft and all businesses can continue to use it, legally while they migrate people over to other operating systems at their own pace.
you may say that microsoft wouldnt let them access the updates, and you're probably right - however there are sites which package windows updates into one big installer. Those could be used and indeed patched should there be anything to ensure that only those outside the eu can install them.
Furthermore, Microsoft needs the EU more then the EU needs Microsoft.
the EU is a huge market for microsoft, larger then the US is and their shareholders would certainly take action if the executives cut off such a large market through their arrogance and stubbornness.
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.
Bullshit. MS was given clear instructions. They need sufficient documentation so that competitors can re-implement these protocols in their own servers. It is simple and clearly defined and instead of complying MS published a bunch of lies and tried to both sway public opinion and provide the least possible info to satisfy the EU in the hopes that they could get away with something that was insufficient for their competitors in the server space.
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.
They do not publish reasonable documentation on the protocols as they themselves have admitted and the US courts have also judged them in noncompliance (although due to their lobbying we don't punish them). If they're going to use secret broken versions of existing standards, they can't use them in both their client and server. This is simple and obvious if you read the law. MS knew it. They still know it. They're just delaying the fines as long as possible.
Providing MS with an EIGHT DAY deadline is just absurd.
Again I call bullshit. This is how long they have to stop breaking the law in this one way. They knew the law in the first place. Zero days before a fine is levied is sufficient in my opinion. Listen Mr. Murderer, I know 8 days isn't a lot of time, but we need you to stop killing people within that time frame. I know it's hard to change, but that's just the way it is. Besides, they have 8 days till the fines kick in. They've had two years since they were officially convicted of the crime already. That is way, way, way too long. Every day weakens competition and hurts both consumers and the industry.
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.
APIs? They have had 2 years to document communication protocols, not APIs. The protocols were mostly copied from existing open standards in the first place. Either you've bought into their propaganda beyond all reason or you're being paid to spread this FUD.
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.
Good. Hopefully it will go beyond that. MS has built their business plan around breaking the law and paying off politicians and lawsuits. This is unacceptable. They should be progressively fined higher and higher amounts until breaking the law is no longer profitable for them and then they should be fined even more so that other companies understand such practices are not acceptable. If the US was not run by corrupt scumbags MS would have been broken up long ago and this would not be a problem. For political reasons the EU cannot order MS to break up, but they sure as hell should be fining them into oblivion until they obey they law.