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Microsoft Meets EU Antitrust Deadline
An anonymous reader writes to mention a News.com article, which reports on Microsoft's attempt to meet the EU's requirements in their ongoing antitrust case. The updated documents that Microsoft has delivered, they hope, will put off the leveling of a several-millions-of-dollars-a-day fine against the OS maker. Whether or not the documents have accomplished that task will not be known for several months yet. From the article: "The commission set a deadline of July but delayed it until a court proceeding finished in December, 2004. In July, 2006, the commission fined Microsoft $357.3 million for dragging its feet, on top of a fine of almost $646 million in 2004 for its initial violation. In a statement calling the submission of documents a 'milestone,' Microsoft said it had completed the review and editing of some 100 documents, which number 8,500 pages."
Almost a year ago, Microsoft released documents to the EU, which later responded with an epigram similar to, "There is indeed more page volume, but the content is still worthless." As much as I'd like to believe Microsoft is still not contributing to what they were required to do, you can only stretch the English language so far, then the fluff becomes thinner. There may actually be something within those pages this time. Maybe.
Just maybe.
Then you'd get fired. Because you forfeited a large market to the competition as well as committing a large scale breach of contract (causing Billions of Euros of damage which the government WILL recoup from your company). Your local assets (MS has subsidiaries in Europe) get confiscated, you might be subject to extradition and a group of twenty countries will heavily invest in opensource while software developers will need to make Linux or OS X (most likely Linux because that's supported on the hardware that's already out there) versions of their software in order to reach that market.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If Microsoft is found to be in compliance, then the interest earned should go back to them. But if they are found not to be in compliance, then interest should go to the EU since their fine payments would be late.
Not neccisarily.
If the fine was X dollars to be paid on Y date and It ends up in escrow on that date pending the outcome of a review of obligations wich might negate the fine, then if it was found the obligations were never intented to be satisfied but rather a stalling tactic for whatever reason, then the interest from the money in question should goto the person who should have had control of it in the first place (the one doing the fineing) and not the person(s) who had no intent to hold to thier oblgations.