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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?"
Q: At what point has/will the EU overstepped its bounds?
A: Is it really necessary that every Slashdot summary ends with a very polarizing question?
The EU's goal is ostensibly to ensure proper competition in the market, right? And let's face it, MS's only real competition is Free Software. Therefore, the only possible fair price for the protocol specs is free, and with free redistribution, so that it's able to be used by Free Software.
(Note that I'm talking about interoperability specifications (and patent licenses) only... Microsoft should be able to charge whatever it wants for its reference implementation.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Its bounds? The EU pretty cannot overstep its bounds - if Microsoft wants to do business here, they'll have to play by the rules, just like - and this is important - EVERYONE ELSE. If they're unwilling to do that (and I'm not saying "unable or unwilling" since it's pretty much impossible for them to really be unable), well... nobody's forcing them to do business here. There's no dog-given right to act like an arse, and our politicians haven't been bought out 100% yet (just 99%).
On a side note, it's really rather funny to see that all the hatred for Microsoft on Slashdot suddenly vanish as soon as it's Microsoft vs. the EU - then suddenly, defending a fellow US-American company suddenly seems to become more important than pointing out how much Microsoft as a convicted monopolist engaged in illegal anti-competitive tactics is hurting innovation/the industry/society.
butter the donkey
Imagine if the EU dumped its focus on trivial crap like software patents and applied the same reasoning to medicine patents.
So the electric company should just charge you whatever they feel like whenever they feel like it? Because, hey, if you don't like it you can always move.
Yes, unless it has a monopoly, at which point it's subject to intense regulation.
Namely, renting access to your own data.
In other words, how much should customers have to pay to get at their own data, which happens to reside on Microsoft products?
Lets take MS's argument seriously for a moment, to see where that leads us.
Suppose there is software A, which holds the data, and software B, which accesses the data. How much does MS charge for that A-B interface? There are two possible answers to this. First, they charge 0. Then everybody should pay zero. The second possible answer is that the cost of the A-B interface is part of the cost of A,B, or both.
In that case, they are illegally bundling it, forcing users to buy access to the other product when they buy A or B, but not allow customers to use it to access competitive software. They should unbundle the interface and show that all three components are priced competitively and independently.
Whatever the piece of innovation that MS feels it should be compensated for, customers should be able to buy it without having to buy other MS products.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What point could it?
Well if it bankrupted the company then yes that would be too far certainly. If it made it so the company when complying with the law (ie not being fined) could not actualy make a profit after costs, that would be too far.
Many prices are restricted by goverments - I suspect even in the US though I don't know for certain. Things like the cost per unit of electricity, water, gas, telecoms, public transport when run by private companies. These are to ensure that companies that have effective monopolies cannot abuse the position.
Same with mircosoft. I agree they should be able to charge what they want for their software. But where they have a protocol or an API that completely separate instance of software talk to (eg from a different computer on the network of from a piece of software that is not part of the OS, or not part of the same software suite) then those interfaces, protocols and APIs should be documented and the information provided for free.
Yes they can protect their code and their implementations, but the fact you have a microsoft server should not force you to have a microsoft desktop in order to use it - other desktop made by others should be able to communicate on the same level. And vice versa, it should be perfectly possible, from complete and freely available documentation to implement a server that will behave from a clients point of view in the same way a microsoft server would. This is simply fair competition.
Microsoft would then have to get by on the merits of it software, rather than on vendor lock in.
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
From the US DOJ finding that Microsoft purposefully breaks Kerberos interoperability.
----[quoting]----
For example, Kerberos is an industry standard for encryption, in which certain fields are reserved for optional use. Microsoft, however, has used one of those fields to produce its own proprietary version of the standard. In itself, this is unobjectionable.
Microsoft, however, has gone one step further: it has manipulated its operating systems and middleware so that they will use and accept only the Microsoft version of the Kerberos standard.(16) This is diametrically contrary to the purpose for which standards, even with optional fields, are developed. Optional fields are included in standards to enable firms to add information to a message. Ordinarily, if an optional field is used in creating standard messages, those messages can still be sent and received among all products that comply with the standard. In such cases, the information included in the optional field may simply be ignored. Optional fields are never, however, intended to enable a firm -- i.e., Microsoft -- to subvert the standard and preclude its widespread usage.(17)
16. The CCIA explains that "[w]hile the Kerberos Version 5 Microsoft uses for their security services is a standard, the way they have implemented Kerberos is not a standard and renders it nearly inoperable with any other implementation." CCIA White Paper, supra, at 24.
17. Not content with Microsoft's corruption of the Kerberos standard, Microsoft has filed for a patent on its proprietary version. Consequently, not only will Microsoft products fail to interoperate with non-Microsoft products (because of the modification), but Microsoft will not allow anyone else to use its version unless they purchase a license from Microsoft.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
Well, the US convicted Microsoft of being a monopolist, then did nothing about it. There's clearly a problem (I don't think we need to argue about that on Slashdot.) So, is it just the idea that the great all powerful US isn't doing it that some people find annoying? Or would you rather some other "superpower" like China, India or Russia ends up having to do it (in 15 or 20 years time).
Reality needs to be faced. Your government can't deal with the wayward MS business, the EU wants to deal with your problem for you. Isn't that nice of them?
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
I see that companies are sovereign powers now, and that they are able to do whatever whenever because it is their god-given right to earn money for the share-holders, yada-yada-yada. Give me a break. If MS doesn't like Europe's laws, they can go and try to sell their products elsewhere. Nothing guarantees them the right to make a profit.
Microsoft has hurt the global economy to the tune of billions of dollars in lost productivity because of security vulnerabilities, unstable software, and proprietary formats. All the while better alternatives have existed but legal and marketing efforts by Microsoft have kept them out of the public's hands. Bill Gates has used his ill gotten wealth to push patented drugs on Africa which has probably lead to massive death since generic drugs could be mass produced much more easily. The Gates foundation has also funded The Discovery Institute, the main group preaching intelligent design lies. If the EU were to imprison all present and past members of the board of directors and executives of MS and seized all of Microsoft's wealth, they would not be going overboard. They would help millions of people and control a known industrial menace. Perhaps a nuclear attack on Redmond would be going to far, but I'm not sure.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
The EU should just tell MS how much they can charge and get on with it. Why the pointless back and forth?
The hell with it - MS should have to open them for free. In fact, I'd be in favour of mandating that _all_ protocols should be open. You don't need to open your implementation, but other people should be able to use your protocols.
My Journal
Sure, but I don't agree that a totally free market is the ultimate end goal that we should judge things by. Honestly, I'm not really sure what criteria would be best used as a measure, but I do believe that free markets are merely a generally good way to get there, not the end goal itself. As far as patents are concerned, I disagree that they are a bad thing. Besides the standard argument of protecting innovation, they also serve the important role of exposing most innovations to public record. Sure, the companies get a temporary monopoly, but once that time has expired we are left with all records of the innovations as a matter of public record. To my mind, that is a lot better than having to deal with a bunch of companies that hoard their trade secrets so that they never see the light of day.
It is only by the mandated rules of the government, speaking with the voice of all the people, that Microsoft has any rights to charge people for this at all.
It is only by the mandated rules of the government(s) that their money has any value period.
The EU cannot overstep their mandate where Microsoft is concerned.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
You do know this is part of a settlement for criminal activity right? You might as well argue that just because a cat food manufacturer put poison in their cat food, the government should not be allowed to mandate that they enact stricter testing measures as part of their punishment for breaking the law in the first place.
Forget the fact that the entire process is a blatant example of socialism...Do you even know what socialism is?
...it's just purely one-sided...It's strange how the punishment phase of a convicted criminal is often one-sided isn't it? I mean how come car thieves have to go to jail and aren't really given anything positive, like a new motorcycle?
...no matter what Microsoft does at this point the EU will just continue to abuse this implied authority that they've been granted until they can drive Microsoft off their shores or make all of the products free in EU.The EU commission has very limited authority, but it does include stopping MS from breaking the same laws they stop everyone else from breaking. Once MS stops breaking the law, their complaints might have merit.
"The EU has already overstepped their bounds."
Indeed. By granting copyright and patent protection to MS, they have interfered with natural selection. Your argument is invalid because without government, there would be no such thing as patents.
MS has abused its privileges. The people have a right to revoke them.
As others have pointed out, the cost of doing business in the EU is being regulated by the EU. That's life and if the fines/interference/etc is too onerous, Microsoft is free to abandon that market and concentrate on the US, Africa, Asia/Pacific Rim.
Personally, I'd love to see such a move coming from Redmond. It would accelerate adoption of non-Microsoft solutions in Europe. The resulting ripple effects would have some nice benefits for those of us developing stateside. :)
Myddrin
Assuming the EU has the power, the next question is should it? Well, I personally think it's going to be the only way to bring Microsoft into line. It has a long history of nodding yes to the courts and the authorities, and then just finding some new way of doing what it wants. The EU certainly has had limited success getting Microsoft to even adhere to the demands it has made already, and certainly cannot be ignorant of Microsoft's behavior in elsewhere in the world. Since Microsoft won't co-operate in any meaningful way, likely won't stop the behavior that has lead to the present impasse, what other option is there than to remake it into something that will obey European rules?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you're a company (ie, an artificial entity that exists only based on law and not any natural basis), then yes, you do exist solely by the legal grace of the real people in the jurisdictions where you conduct business.
Considering Stalin was a communist, and large international megacorporations are generally somewhat capitalist, I think you may have to repeat 7th grade.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
That's the prevailing attitude in the US. It's not the prevailing attitude of EU citizens (but I'm sure a large number of Europeans would side with American stance). Microsoft is free to choose not to do business in the EU if it doesn't like this.
In this situation Americans seem to be telling the Europeans how to run their markets and economies. Turn it around: as American, how do you feel about Europeans telling you how to run your justice system (e.g. death penalty and gun control?) and health care systems? Both sides think their approach is correct and that the other butt out and mind their own business.
In fact, it's funny that Microsoft tries to promote their own document format because they say that interoperatibility is important and that they support open protocols blah blah blah, and then they don't release the specs for the protocols they're using in windows server, because those protocols is what make windows server succesful (because 95% of clients are windows and only windows server can serve them)
The "issue" of this law would be that the EU commission doesn't accept the number of patents as a metrics for innovation ? Considering that software patents are not recognize in EU I only see a coherent decision and a good law.
There are also laws in some EU countries about interoperability that aim at forbidding a company to abuse a dominant position to prevent third-party interoperability. Call it socialist if you will, but I only see this as a way to guarantee a free competition in a free market (an objective which is harldy socialist)
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The commision ruled in 2004 that Microsoft broke European competition laws and directed them to release complete interoperability documentation on the protocols, MS pretended to not understand what the Commision was on about and released some source code. The Commision also said that MS acted to stifle innovation by tying Media Player to Windows.
The real question is whether a single company should get a lock in on PROTOCOLS, never mind what they should charge for them. Is this an example of the polluted protocols MS talked about in that Valloppillil email.
"By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can DENY OSS projects ENTRY into the MARKET."
'At what point has/will the EU overstepped its bounds'
At what point will MS realise it isn't dealing with the DOJ?
davecb5620@gmail.com
Not "should intervene", it must intervene as its duty to the citizens that elected the government. It's unfortunate that the US government has failed its basic mission of protecting its people from abuse, and has now turned into the abuser.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
...and are less motivated to work on your next project
So let me get this straight: In order to preserve the "free market", the government has to introduce special incentives to motivate people to produce useful stuff?
Maybe I missed something in economics class, but I thought the whole point of a "free market" was that the market itself created the incentives, and that government distortion of those incentives leads to inefficiency...
Of course, personally I think that intervention and tampering with markets can often be a good thing (by legitimate, functioning democratic institutions, not corrupt governments), I just had to point out that your own reasoning is contradictory: Patents are a distortion of a "free market", so abolishing them can't possibly jeopardize the freedom of said market.
GDP growth rates higher than the US, positive balance of payments, higher life expectancy and literacy, lower infant mortality, lower crime rate, TEN TIMES less people in prison, much higher savings rate, lower personal debt, ...
Oh yeah, you're right, unemployment is higher. Great. You know what? It doesn't mean shit.
4th quarter 2004, unemployment rate men aged 25-54: 7.4% in France, 4.6% in the US.
You're right, it (look)s bad.
At the same quarter, the employment rate, that is, the number of people working vs. the total number of people in that sex/age group was 86.7% in France as opposed to 86.3%. That's right, more people working in France than in the US. (Source: OECD Employment Outlook 2005 (pdf))
There's a few reasons for this discrepancy, one being that we don't put 1.5% of our active population in jail, most of whom are poor blacks, likely candidates for the "unemployment" row.
You, sir, are an idiot. Yes, an idiot. Let me explain what actually happened without your paranoiac comments about Stalinist Europeans. Despite the fact that most of the EU were allied with you for over half a century. Prick.
We have a large company who over the years have gained a monopoly. Congratulations! There is a problem, The US government and the EU have rules, some of which annoyingly prevent this monopoly crushing all-comers by abusing their monopolistic powers.
The US government convicts them, attempts to remedy this, faces legal challenges, and meekly cries off, having done all but nothing to fix the problem.
The EU takes a slightly different tack, and says "You broke the rules. You can't keep breaking the rules. One of the rules you're breaking the one about muscleing your competition using your monopoly so you're to 1. Stop forcing Internet Explorer, and your own solutions on everyone, let them make their own minds up and 2. Give others the information to interoperate correctly. You can charge for 2, if the patents that cover it are innovatve you can charge more. The innovative restriction applies because in europe you're not allowed to patent any and every kind of software no matter how obvious*."
So they're saying "fix your behaviour, or we'll get annoyed and do drastic things".
MS wibble off muttering and after acting outraged for a while, decide on a different tack, which is, to delay. The EU's response was, "Delay all you want. Incidentally, if you manage to delat too much, there's a time-based fine after April 3rd if you're delaying". Again, a behavioural solution.
As the request of MS, they extended the deadline to today, and MS's response is "How much should we charge?"
This is a delaying tactic again, and I think MS are going to get a nasty shock if they keep it up. Y'see, the EU WILL apply fines of 4,000,000 per DAY if MS keep it up, and even with reported cash reserves of $30 billion that'll sting. Espcially as it'll be retroactive to last August 1st.
For the next section, we've to be a bit more specific and informative.
The specs in question are technical information to competing groups allowing them to design better Windows-compatible server software, specifically work group servers. The ruling was some time back, the final appeal which MS lost was in December 2004. Yes, that's right, 2 and a half years ago.
They missed numerous deadlines to submit the information, finally coughing it up in July 2006.
The real problem here is that MS don't want to release those specs, and if they do, they want it to be extremely unattractive to actually license them. So much so that they're demanding up to 5.95% of a licensee's server revenues as royalties, which is completely unreasonable considering that the market rate for such specifications (according to IBM, Oracle, Sun as well the commission's expert, Prof. Neil Barrett, who was suggested by Microsoft.) is between 0% and 1%.
Mant of MS's other API's are available (for 0%, incidentally) at msdn.microsoft.com, so they've set a standard themselves. The ones that aren't are areas where they're using monopoly power to leverage a market, for instance, MSN Messenger had to be reverse-engineered (and that would probably be illegal in the states now!).
All the EU has been/is doing is trying to improve competition, for everyone, using behavioural remedies to attempt to correct a monopoly dominated market (as the DoJ tried, and failed, to do). All MS has been doing is delaying the inevitable to squeeze another few Euro's out of the market.
And if they keep it up, the behavioural remedy will become structural and Microsoft will not be allowed to trade in Europe as it currently stands. Which is fine by me, although it'd be a royal PITA for a while.
So do you understand what's happening now? And why you're ridiculous attitude makes you look ridiculous and an embarassment to your country ("Down with the commies" is very 50's. I suppose you still think pot is a commie drug?) ?
Also, as
Rational thought is the only true freedom
If MS decided to skip town (continent, actually) just because the court room hearings were getting rough, it would be quite sensible for the EU to freeze all their assets and issue warrants for the arrest of the executives. Once you start thinking of Microsoft as organized crime, it gets a lot easier to decide what to do with them.
It's about lock-in. Once you've bought in, back when it may have seemed like a decent idea, you're trapped because the cost of changing is greater than you cna afford. Someone else posted a reasonable analogy: Imagine a electricity company that offers cheap service to a particular area. Lots of people move into that area. Later the service charges are ratchetted up to the point where the customers are getting fleeced. In theory they don't have to keep buying electricity from that company -- there are other electricity providers in some more sparesely populated areas outside of town. The problem is that the cost of moving is more than the homeowner can raise, so in practice they can't change, and the provider can charge them as much as they can bear. The existence of competition doesn't make a difference if you can't afford to make the change.
The analogy is loose, of course, so pushing it too far is pointless, but the basic idea is there: people who bought into the MS platform early on when it seemed as good a choice as any are now locked into that platform. The costs involved in trying to migrate to the competition -- in converting all your software, retraining all your staff, migrating all your data, etc. -- is more than they can manage. The EU is essentially trying to offer a migration path. In our rough analogy it would be a little like requiring the monopolistic electricity provider to allow competing provider access to the area so they can compete on more even terms.
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