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Microsoft Responds to EU With Another Question
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has responded to the latest round of EU requests by asking how much the EU thinks they should charge for Windows Server Protocols. The EU has stated the Microsoft should charge based on 'innovation, not patentability' and that they have 'examined 160 Microsoft claims to patented technologies' concluding 'only four may only deserve to claim a limited degree of innovation.' The EU is also starting to discuss structural remedies as opposed to the behavioral remedies they are currently enforcing. At what point has/will the EU overstepped its bounds?"
The EU isn't communist but it's by and large *very* socialist in nature so you're close to the mark.
Somehow given some of the economic problems the EU is facing (inflation, rampant unemployment, etc.)they are the *last* people who should be telling *anyone* how to run their business.
The only mechanism that should set prices is the market. No government should be involved in pricing, and that includes the US as well as the EU (here in the US various agricultural subsidies are used to provide this effect, such as keeping the prices of milk and sugar at certain levels).
Attributing Microsoft to massive death in Africa and supporting the nuclear attack on Redmond is an example why nobody will take you or your like-minded peers seriously. Ever.
The answer to that, of course, is "never". It'll be about time the EU does something useful to its member-state citizens.
-- Soruk
Isn't it strange that 99% of the time a country wants the other country to charge more for their products, not less. If you don't charge more, they will add tariffs such that they do cost more. All in an effort to give their own companies a chance to compete on price. But in this case, they have no competition, so they instead want just the opposite. They want the other country to charge less for the product.
They do the same thing with medicines I suppose...for medicines they can manufacture, the skys the limit, for those they can't, they want the maximum price controlled.
Seems what this really boils down to is the EU doesn't like paying for Windows because it is an imported product. The EU can impose whatever laws they want on Microsoft, but ultimately the WTO is going to decide this issue, not the Europeans. If the EU slaps around Microsoft too much, the WTO will find them in violation of free-trade agreements and European manufacturers will be the ones suffering as tariffs limit their exports.
Europe is still a free-enough economy that when Airbus is slapped with a 30% tariff in retaliation and can no longer compete with Boeing for American contracts, you can bet the EU politicians will feel what real pressure is like.
The Eu keeps fining microsoft these huge amounts of money . At what point do these fines equal up to more then what microsoft is getting from its cudtomersd there. Even with microsoft, europe would be in serious trouble because it would take time to change over to linux.
As to the question of the topic, I'd say world government (which is what the EU is leading to) has no bounds to overstep (that's why it has to be stopped).
"I raise my hat to the EU for giving Microsoft a rough time. They deserve it because Microsoft are a form of the Anti-Christ."
Kind of funny how you point your finger at MS when the EU is the real problem.