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EU Official Labels Microsoft's Behavior Unacceptable
InfoWorldMike writes "EU commissioner Neelie Kroes has lashed out at Microsoft in comments to European parliamentarians Thursday, saying it is 'unacceptable' that the company continues to gain market share using tactics that were outlawed in the Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against the software vendor. 'Three years later Microsoft still hasn't complied with the main demand imposed by the European antitrust ruling: that the company share interoperability information inside Windows at a reasonable price to allow rival makers of workgroup servers to build products that work properly with PCs running Windows.'"
...and until someone actually gets serious and imposes a penalty against them that will actually induce them to change their behavior, like preventing them from selling their products until they comply, this is what's going to continue to happen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why is it that only Europe is standing up to them?
Looking through the article I don't really see the EU taking any more action against MS that will actually make them comply. This seems to just be a single guy saying MS is abusing its power, a standard course of action.
Sounds made up.
I don't buy it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That has as much practical effect as the Democrats calling Iraq a mess. We know ... but unless you're actually going to do something about it do us all a favor and shut up.
Microsoft goes from a 30-40% share of the market to 60-75% share, and the EU concludes that this is completely due to its "unfair" practices? And yet, Europeans continue to purchase more and more MS products... This just harkens back to the ruling the EU made that MS had to remove Internet Explorer because it was anti-competitive to give away software... boggles the mind. Let the marketplace decide... MS gets lazy with IE, and the next thing you know the hottest browser on the market is Firefox. Why can't Sun do the same thing with servers on its own without government interference???
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Help competitors build products that work properly with PCs running Windows? Even Microsoft can't do that!
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Why should Microsoft obey a made up organization like the Eiiiuuuu?
BTW, MS doesn't make servers. They make software. Those "rival" server makers should be suing Dell or HP.
Maybe Microsoft is expecting the same kind of treatment Iran is getting over its nuclear program. Lots of diplomatic gas, no action.
*gets out checklist*
Microsoft getting publically owned: Check.
RIAA getting publically owned, thrice: check.
Thinkofthechildren law pwned: check.
This has been one hell of a day!
But I would like to see what would happen if Microsoft just said "We're not changing our practices, so we won't sell our products in Europe." Would computer users revolt against the EU? Would they be angry at MS instead? Meh, it'll never happen but sometimes just to watch the debacle of it all, I wish it would.
I mean, who do the EU think they are, forcing an Ireland-based company like Microsoft to comply with EU laws!
...
Next thing you know they'll fine them - again - for beaucoup Euros
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think it is impossible to comply unless MS opens source code to share.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
3 years huh? Well obviously the EU has no teeth.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Because they don't have any successful tech companies of their own to boss around?
...
Hmmm. I'll just ignore all the medical genetics, biochemistry, and biotech labs running Mandriva and SuSe then, shall I?
OK if I take back those HIV vaccines from the world and the genome sequences that Cambridge did, too? And you don't need those heart medications for your cloned beef
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
first, "EU Weighs Copyright Law" in benefit of end users,
then "RIAA Caught in Tough Legal Situation",
after that "Judge Strikes Down COPA, 1998 Online Porn Law"
then "RIAA Balks At Complying With Document Order" and judge is not happy with it
then the story about nebraska university wanting reparations from riaa for wasting their time,
after that, nbc embraces internet revolution in "NBC, News Corp Join to Create YouTube Clone"
then as of now, "EU Official Labels Microsoft's Behavior Unacceptable"
if things and stories in slashdot goes like that im gonna quit sex and just read slashdot.
Read radical news here
Here are some interesting quotes from Wikipedia.
.. and we knock 'em down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes
"Kroes attended conferences organized by the Bilderberg Group in 2005 and 2006."
"In 2004 Neelie Kroes was appointed the European Commissioner for Competition. Her nomination was heavily criticised because of her ties to big business and alleged involvement in shady arms deals."
perhaps explaining the reason why:
"Kroes refused to become minister of Defense in 1988"
"As a minister she was responsible for the privatisation of the Post and Telephone Services." - she was put in charge of supervising this, which seemed to be time-coordinated with actions by other governments in Western Europe (killing the old left).
"After her time as minister Kroes became a member of the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce, furthermore she served as a board member for Ballast Nedam (shipping), ABP-PGGM (a pension fund), NIB (an investment bank), McDonald's Netherlands, Nedlloyd, and Nederlandse Spoorwegen (the privatized Dutch railroad company)."
We [Bilderberg] build 'em up:
"As chairperson of Nijenrode University, Kroes awarded an honorary doctorate to Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 1996."
"As a European Commissioner for Competition one of her first tasks in 2004 was to oversee the fining brought onto Microsoft by the European Commission (see European Union Microsoft antitrust case)."
A loyal servant of the Dutch aristocracy:
"Kroes is Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion since 1981, and Grand Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau since 1989;"
Sinister cow. One coal-miner is worth ten of her.
> Europe is trying to force its socialist business practices on the the free world.
Where is this free world and what do you call it when the US uses the WTO to dictate trade policy for the rest of the world?
Microsoft are free to stop breaking the law anytime they please.
Ahem this is called antitrust laws, and is basically market economics 0-1, every economist will tell you that a capitalist market targets monopoly, in the end you will have no capitalist market anymore, the downside of this is, while governments have stay away from markets as much as possible, they have to interfer from time to time to break the monpolies. Nothing communistic there, if you want to see something communistic than look at the behavior of certain economic monopolists in the USA...
Talk - Action = 0
Bill has correctly figured it out that it is better to cheat,steal, and lie, pay a hefty fine later and OWN the market than it is to play fair. The longer that a gov. takes to play these games with MS is only to MS's advantage. If EU really wanted to stop this, they would tell MS if you have 1 month and then we charge you 5 x all of the EU sales/month each month. Only when it is not in Bill Gates best advantage will he comply.
Since it has been 3 years and MS has not complied, it is obvious to me that EU will not really be cracking down.
I may not like BG but you have to admire him. He knows how to run circles around govs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The only way to "beat" Microsoft is to come out with something better. No amount of fines will really matter as long as they still hold the dominant market share.
The reason is that people creating software for computers have the greatest number of opportunities if they make them windows compatible. And since making something cross-platform is a bitch, it's much easier to get 90% of the market by doing windows alone. And so that's what people and companies will do.
So we can either do one of two things
1) Force people to develop cross platform software and hardware (yeah right)
2) Create an operating system so much better that the majority adopts it (extremely unlikely, but better than "yeah right")
The only other thing I can think of is FORCE companies like Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony, IBM, Lenovo, Gateway etc to stop forcing Windows down our throats on computers we buy from them and sell the bare machine at a REDUCED price. I'm sure Microsoft is strong-arming some of them to some degree, but if we just flat out make it illegal to force-preload then they have little choice.
Question everything
impound microsoft products at the port of entry, and no sales at all in the EU.
nothing else will get their attention.
old joke revisited... steve jobs dies and is waiting at the pearly gates. long line. suddenly, with a rush of clouds and chorus of angelic voices, a chair goes skidding across the horizon, and A Power rushes by and through the gates without slowing down.
"hey, what's the big idea?" says jobs.
"Oh, that's God," says St. Peter. "Every once in a while, he thinks he's steve ballmer of microsoft."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Coward: one man may toast his muffins before the fine fireplace of privilege, whilst another contracts pnuemonia in the knackers of non-entity. Get back to non-entity coward.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
The EU is 'standing up' to Microsoft the way the UN 'stands up' to the problems in the middle east and Africa.
Which is to say: they've issued several strongly worded complaints.
Calling the bully a bully and saying that you're going to stand up to him is great and all.
But that's not quite the same as actually standing up.
If all you're looking for is strongly worded complaints and empty fines which effect no change, then the US has done its part.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
It may be *labeled* antitrust law, but the EU is interferring too much. Regulation is pure socialism, not capitalism.
I've had the same notion in my mind a long time, but the parent has said it more succinctly than I ever could have.
Europe seems to be viciously attacking most American(Capitalist) software companies - Google, Microsoft, and Apple have all three had suits brought against them. Every last one has lost, too. After a point, I wonder if they're really preventing monopolistic practices are just preventing competition altogether.
I'm confused... is this supposed to be a joke? Too stereotypical for words...
JUDGE - Mr. Gates, let vendors see the InterOp code at a reasonable price.
BILL G - Of course. Here's the code for Windows 98
JUDGE - Something more recent, perhaps?
BILL G - Windows 2000?
JUDGE - More recent, Mr. Gates
BILL G - Okay, okay. Windows XP, but that was the last OS covered under your judgement.
JUDGE - Sigh. Fair enough.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
It's interesting how every time there's a news story of EU slapping Microsoft for breaking EU laws, the slashdotters suddenly come out siding with Microsoft.
:)
Never mind that they were bashing Microsoft just one news story below and complaining how monopolistic and evil Microsoft is
Isn't it about time we updated the /. icon for Microsoft?
Bill Gates has aged a *lot* since the current one was made. I suggest using something like OLD MAN as a base.
Your attitude is infectious...
.. feel free to throw some rotton eggs at him. One thing though, when he is in Europe he doesnt dance about like a monkey spreading his BO of death, he actually is calm and business like. While he is here he will be "leveraging" his demands to various government officials and using the businesses he has aquired there as a bargining chip like he has done over software patents. Do as I want or I close shop and you have to pay unemployment, and lose the tax, and so on. Thats how he does business. He also will have the press in tow. He really does love his tours of self importance.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
If MS wants to sell to Europe, then they have to deal with European laws. Unless you think that a corporation should be above the law.
corporations are artificial persons in US law, and artifical collectives in many other countries'.
kinda like country governments and boundaries are ginned up out of whole cloth.
they are all artifices of man's invention.
you don't obey one, why obey any? that's where MS is at.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The EU only wants to regulate the way US credit card companies deal with EU citizens.
Welcome to the global community. All the EU is saying is that a fair set of rules need to be put in place so that people don't get abused. What EU proposes against Microsoft would help US companies too, it is just that the US goverment lacks the balls to do this.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Unrelated situations. Fallacy - two wrongs (if such) don't not make a right. Your whole attitude is why, instead of complying to the EU's totaliarian practices, Apple ands Microsoft should just pull out of those markets. China and India have more potential consumers.
Steve Jobs is the KING of Self-Importance!!! All bow!!!!
The US government is a completely gutless pet of the plutocracy that really rules the country, so unless there is dramatic change of regime nothing will happen there.
The rest of the world, except the EU (it seems) doesn't really care because they are too primitive to to realize that being dependent on a single US company is a problem.
The funny thing is that the EU has a very simple solution to the MS problem; simply fine MS 10000 EUR / day / undocumented protocol identified and use the resulting money hire 10-20 hackers pr. protocol to reverse engineer it and publish the docs.
Anyone should be allowed to submit protocols, if MS has implemented both a server and a client then it needs to be documented.
Ideally this principle should extend to other areas as well, there are tons of secret protocols that do nothing more than serve as a weapon of vendor lockin.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
"After a point, I wonder if they're really preventing monopolistic practices are just preventing competition altogether."
It's difficult to imagine how the EU would prevent competition altogether if they fine corporations for anti-competitive behaviour.
The notion that *only* USA companies would be sued for that is totally bogus and plainly untrue. It may be that USA-ones *seem* to happen more because:
1)It gets a higher profile when one is sued, because they make more fuss about it (together with the 'look, it's the EU against USA' attitude)
2)USA corporations are more prone to anti-competitive behaviour (maybe due to the inherent strong corporatism in the USA where one easily buys politicians)
3)EU-corporations are as bad as USA ones, only they can cover it up better
Those 3 options are each more likely than the EU-courts singling out companies because they're from the USA.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Didn't they just open up a whole host of stuff?
SUddenly all of EU would need to turn to illegal distributors. Lets see how fast THAT gets MS to change there ways.
Plus, even though the users would complainghn, that is lost revenue.
OTOH, a 20,000,000,000 dollar fine might get them to change their ways to.
I mean they gat a lot of cash, a measly 4 or 5 billion dollar fine will get them to argueabout it, and then pay it, and...not change a thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Or the other way around. Since it now runs on x86 I could just buy OSX for $150 or whatever and run it on my current machine (obviously I would have to check for hardware compatibility first).
I think it's interesting that the license for OSX forbids it from being run on non-Apple hardware and everyone lets them slide on that. I understand that Microsoft has been convicited of abusing its monopoly, but if given the chance Apple would be even worse.
Maybe because Europe has real politicians who can do something other then raising campaign money and smiling for the news bite? When was the last time a politician in Washington actually... gasp! ...govern and govern well?
The EU could declare that Microsoft's licenses were unenforceable by Microsoft or the BSA (or their EU counter-parts) in the EU. Then Microsoft would not make any profit in the EU because they wouldn't be able to sell their products there, and the EU businesses wouldn't revolt because they know they still need MS products.
Essentially it would be legal to pirate MS products, and the only thing that MS could do in retaliation is drop their European support services. An EU-friendly corporation would immediately take advantage of this and sell MS support.
The EU then demands MS to comply or their licenses will remain invalid, and soon after MS would comply. Just an interesting scenario to think about.
I've never really looked into it, but I keep wondering why the US is allowed to have a nuclear program, but every other country in the world can't.. if there's one country that's highly 'emotionally' unstable, it's the U.S.
..
The US scares the shit out of me. More than, say, Iraq, Iran or North Vietnam did or does. US's war on Foo scares me. US's blatant disregard of civil rights, freeedom of speech and freedom of the press scares me. The american notion of 'democracy' (e.g. a two-party system with no other viable options) scares me. The american sense of patriotism scares me. It's been scaring me more and more.
And I'm talking about your political leaders here or anything. I'm talking about the US citizens. The way you look at the United Nations - the last thing that could at least seemed like it could hold the US down a bit. Damn, it scares the living shit out of me. How long before they start invading my (very western) country because we don't agree with something they say? Not going to happen? Their government has already issued threats against my country before... threats that, you guessed, scare the fucking shit out of me.
And the worst thing is.. nobody dares stand up against them. That what scares me most. That, or the the fact that they may actually think they're doing the right thing!
Wow. What a rant! I guess that must've been really stuck in my head. Please mod this down as off-topic.
But guess what? This is how most of the people in my country think of the US. And I wouldn't be surprised if we wheren't the only country at that. We're scared of the US like we're scared of the big bully in kinder-garten. Until we learned to stand up for ourselves.
I'm not going to argue the EU commisioners overall contention but am I the only one that thinks the parts of her argument included in the article are sort of strange. She argues that Microsoft is gaining marketshare due to the fact its workstations work better than other companies such as Sun do. Isn't it Suns problem that connecting its workstations to each other is harder to do? If in fact the protocols that MS is protecting are so intuitive that they don't deserve protection why hasn't thier example Sun come up with thier own set of protocols that work just as easily?
That said part of the problem is the protocols changing from version to version and update to update on the Microsoft side. I maintain that even if MS provided the ideal specifications for free that were out instantly when the product released, that the industry would still struggle to make interoperable components that were as easy to use as the microsoft components purely for the fact they would have to be hitting a moving target.
Anyways, back to my original point, I don't argue that the EU has the right to take action on MS if they feel that they are breaking the law in regards to how they handle licening of protocols for the purpose of interoperability but siting market growth due to products that work better together seems like a poor argument. Its sort of like saying (and this is a bad analogy but I'll use it anyways) that GM should be fined billions because they did not make it easy for ford engines to interoperate with thier vehicles and GM. Of course neither GM nor Ford are anywhere near a monopoly so different rules apply.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I'm beginning to think the leaders of the EU are a bunch of boobs too. They are obviously clueless about software and what they're asking Microsoft to do. Microsoft has done a better job of documenting Windows interop than any other operating system - and probably software in general - in the world. They have a couple of hundred people working full time on the documentation that the regulators want. Imagine if they made the same requset of MacOS? Apple would takee 10 years to document all the interop details of MacOS.
and that is the crux of the argument here.
is the EU going to do something useful, or just yap and whine?
and will MS do anything except spit unless they have a market shut on them for monopolizing it?
MS has basically entered gutless consent agreements ("we plead to nothing, but here's a bag of cash to spread around,") in the US and done zippo in the EU. the US smiled, and the EU is still whining after three years.
so it surely looks like MS doesn't follow the law here. so should Oracle, or HN Bull, or EADS/Airbus?
slippery slope for the EU if they don't step up.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Why do people in the US buy German cars, you'd think they'd be able to make there own premium brand cars.
We do make our own premium brand cars. However, the way our car manufactures make their profits is different than most other countries' car manufacturers. In other countries, car manufacturers make their money on the sales of automobiles. In order to increase profits, they make a very good product and hope to sell it to more people. In the US, car manufactures rely on "Patriotic Americans" to buy American made cars. They make these cars poorly because their real profit is made when the cars are taken in for repair. This is the strategy that got Chrysler out of debt in the 80's, and is still going strong today (Trust me, I bought my last American made car in 2004. Never again). Man, I miss my Toyota Corolla.
oh, please. OpenOffice, Linux, unix, MacOS, AmigaOS, every mainframe has its own OS and apps, web apps... shoot, a Korean refrigerator with a touchscreen and an Ethernet connection can replace MS apps and OS. a blackberry can replace MS apps and OS for lots of folks with web apps.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
When the Commission began its antitrust investigation in 1999 Microsoft held between 35 percent and 40 percent market share. By 2004 it rose to around 60 percent and now it stands at between 70 percent and 75 percent.
Does this ring as a stall tactic to anyone else? Last article that I have seen is that MS owes: 281 million euro's .
Now MS makes about 10 to 12 billion in a quarter. This is something likes a months of pay for Microsoft. How much money have they made from their customers in the EU; while going from 35% to 70-75%? Not a bad payoff for being a monopoly.
Any thoughts?
You're just forgetting one small detail: the person decding if Microsoft complied with interoperabilty demands was picked from a shortlist that Microsoft themselves provided. In essence Microsoft to pick the own jury with no intervention and yet they failed. I belive that speaks volumes.
The free market seeks a monopoly, and once a monopoly position has been achieved, the free market ceases to exist. As a result of this, regulation is necessary to either prevent or break an abusive monopoly situation, ironically re-creating the free market.
It's one of those situations where you can be a dick about it, as you obviously are, or you can face up to the reality of a monopolist crushing your much vaunted free market.
> first, "EU Weighs Copyright Law" in benefit of end users,
:(
Umm, while it didn't penalize end users, it pretty much would've outlawed any company that might provide internet access. After all, they lose out bigtime if you misuse the internet in any way.
So the law proposed would've either put everyone out of business (i.e. "no internet for you") or forced them to create ridiculous walled gardens separate from the internet (i.e. "you can look, but not touch, and you can only look at the things we control").
If implemented, that law would suck
The rest of the stories were pretty good, though, I guess, although those RIAA stories were dupes (but still good news!) and I question what NBC will actually come out with, although it's nice they're at least considering joining the rest of the world.
----
It's been 1 hour, 48 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or...
Don't feed the trolls, but I'll bite. You do know Mac OS X is BSD? As such the kernel itself is open source, although there are propreitry extensions (such as the user interface)
--- Duey Finster http://www.dueyfinster.com
Linux isn't Finnish. Probably more of the kernel is created in America than in Finland. Linus Torvalds didn't write even close to all of Linux. Any large open source project probably has developers from multiple countries.
Your parent is not necessarily a dick. This is a meme that's desparately being kicked into life by the friends of monopoly. They want idiots to equate rule of law, and worse still, non-US rule of law, with them goddam commie preverts in yoorp intent on destroying the american way.
It's truth manipulation, not dickness, and it's dangerous to dismiss it as stupidity.
Yes but that doesn't mean MacOS is well documented. So you can look at sourcecode? Wow. That's not the issue. The issue is providing documentation that explains how to build applications that interop with Windows.
Where is the punishment already? Stop whining and get an injunction to ban all microsoft product imports and sales until they comply with the rulings of the court.
Haven't seen one in Europe either. *gasp* Maybe that's because.. they're still politicians!
problem with todays goverments is, that company need to be monopol and rich as hell to be able to fight them.
OSX is riddled with undocumented APIs.. like the transition effects used in fast user switching, the dock uses an undocumented API to do minimization, etc.
This person has been trolling slashdot for weeks now with exactly the same post. $DEITY only knows what he/she's trying to say with it.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Chrysler is actually doing so badly that Daimler-Chrysler is trying to sell them off but noone wants to buy them. Also Daimler-Chrysler would probably count as a German company so in effect you bought a German car, just one designed for the US market.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You can fine someone, but what happens if you do not
have a POLICE?
What Microsoft is doing: I am forbidden by the EU to
do this, but, the EU? Where are its policemen?
The most likely scenario:
WWTTD?
LMFAO! This is great. Do you think this is off topic too?
I wank in the shower.
Aha, so in the same fashion Windows Vista isn't American but from India.
Remember when they stopped IE for Mac? "We cannot compete with a browser that is part of the operating system". MS knows that, OK, it ignores it when they are the ones benefiting, but you don't?
>They want idiots to equate rule of law, and worse still, non-US rule of law, with them goddam commie preverts in yoorp intent on destroying the >american way. Those same idiotic arguments were used in Nazi germany and sowjet russia... once you dont have arguments which can be justified anymore, simply say it is anti works every time it is applied, Original quote by Hermann Goering, propaganda minister of nazi germany, just a little bit food for thought!