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Microsoft Loses EU Anti-Trust Appeal
Kugrian writes "Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute. The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position."
The biggest problem is that it took 10 years to get to this point, and Microsoft still hasn't disclosed the specs for how to make interoperable products. We're fortunate that the Free Software way of doing things is rebost enough to survive in spite of this, but profit-oriented companies simply can't hold out long enough for this kind of legal system to really help.
What we need is clear legal rules that vendors with dominant market positions must adhere to genuinely open standards for all protocols and document formats, and of course we also need a genuinely non-corrupt standardization organization Microsoft doesn't sell us something as an "open standard" which really isn't.
...given the size of MS coffers.
Of more significance is the fact that MS will be forced to release more code to allow competitors to compete on a level playing field with MS applications...
I think Microsoft lost its appeal a long time ago...
The Court of First Instance's judgement, like the commission's before it, sees Samba as the means for competition, in the Work group server space (i.e. file servers, print servers, etc). All potential competitors to Microsoft are using Samba, (the commissions own research found that 98% of competing products in this space use Samba), so it is good that the commission and the CFI are keen to get the documentation from Microsoft in a form that open source projects such as samba can use.
P.S. Shamless plug, I ranted a lot about this on my own site
My little Linux and tech blog
They have not yet paid another fine that was imposed on them for not paying this fine, as the BBC article mentions, although in no great depth:
Last year, Microsoft was told to pay daily fines adding up to 280.5 million euros over a six-month period, after it failed to adhere to the 2004 decision. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4552214.stm - another BBC piece specifically about the daily fines. Does anyone know if they've paid them or not by now?Ignore the fines, they're nothing.
The important thing is that when MS eventually publish their specs, they will not be allowed exclude free software from using them.
This is what FSFE and Samba have been working for since 2001, not fines.
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
The problem for them is not the fine, but instead, from now on, the compliance to the ruling, which will lead them to change the content of Windows software, the parts they will be able to install on new computers. That's a lot more important than money.
Don't forget the ruling is 152-page long, and therefore, they will have to digest and comply with all the court orders to avoid paying even more fine. That may be difficult for them in a market that becomes more competitive.
Won't queue anything here. Anyone who knows a bit about the EU, know that this is bollocks. They go after anyone abusing the market. As Volkswagen, for example... Not a US company at all...
"Every MS machine I've used quickly had firefox installed."
How many had IE uninstalled?
Just like the browser wars any competing media player had to fight against one that was installed on just about every PC anyway. An advantage MS used to sell their WM tech. Unfortunately as somebody already pointed out, it was too little, too late and more of a symbolic gesture. Other parts of the ruling (documenting the APIs) were more important.
XP(N) was just a side effect that MS milked for propaganda purposes (Look at those stupid eurocrats! Noone wants a crippled Windows, they just want to punish a successful company, stupid socialist French, yaddayadda)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Surprise surprise, a European court punished a company for breaking the law. Don't blame the EU for not slapping them on the wrist like the USA did. Perhaps if the USA enforced its own laws properly then it wouldn't have been necessary for the EU to pursue this case.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The fines will increase (exponentially I believe) until they pay. The court can freeze and seize their European assets and they have much of their money within the EU in Ireland as a US tax dodge. Also, the EU is by far MS's largest market. Not complying would be a BAD idea.
BTW, the legal detail is over at Groklaw (basically the court sided with the EC except a minor point about the EC giving too much power to the MS appointed monitoring trustee) and there is a joint FSFE/Samba press release. Also, the the court published the full judgement and other court docs.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
It a mainstay of classic economic thought that competition is good and monopolies are bad, the classical definition of monopoly was actually 25%. The problem with having companies have more than that is that they start to wield control over the rest, their size allows them to game access to customers and suppliers.
You argument seems to stem from the misbelief that Operating System software is a competitive market and that Microsoft got to 90% by competing fairly. If so then you would be very wrong.
If you read today's judgement, you will see that Microsoft has regularly abused its' position by bundling, threats, bribes, agreements with OEMs and so on.
Operating Systems is not a competitive market at all, if you use Linux then you will know that the biggest problem is not Windows itself but the fact that it is so dominant. As soon as you use Linux you find that shops, ISPs, firms, manufacturers and so on treat you as a second class citizen. This needs to be broken for the social good.
My little Linux and tech blog
What I would really like to see is that the customers of MSFT see that it is in their best interest in having an alternative to MSFT in the desktop, server, office documentation products arena that will benefit by perfect 100% compatible interoperability. No customer would buy a Samsung TV that can play only Samsung DVD player. But why these corporations don't demand such compatibility?
One answer is that, MSFT tax is not very big. Just 40 billion dollars a year max. For most companies, payroll, medical insurance, office rent, furniture, liability insurance, transportation, travel etc cost more than office PC/laptop. So they are not looking for savings here.
Second, companies only focus on the differentials with their competitor. Stated differently, Coke does not care how much it spends on pc/laptops and office software as long as its competitor, Pepsi, is not spending a significantly lower amount on the same category. This explains the herd like behavior of the corporations. No body looked to outsource to India till about year 2000. One did. Showed some possible cost savings. Whether or not the savings were real, that first company's investment in India is real. Suddenly every suit is asking, "what if it pays off big time for them? What if we get left behind. Let us play it safe, hedge our bets and let us also have a presence in India."
I don't know when it will happen. But at some point some big company would make it a priority to have a second vendor in the office software arena, and invest a sum to show it is serious. Like a herd every suit who was asking, "What is our India strategy?" would be asking "What is our second vendor for office strategy?". Of course, not without some serious kicking and screaming and "Total cost of ownership" studies funded by MSFT. But when the corporate pendulum swings, it swings inexorably and usually it will go well past what is reasonable reach the other irrational extreme, corporations investing so much on "second vendor" strategy that the saving don't justify the investment. But that won't deter these suits, It never has.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As for a CD player "bundled" with a car, CD's follow an ISO standard so with all manufacturers following a standard the consumer is completely free to replace the player with another from a different supplier. This means that competition is unhindered so the market can work as intended - the case of providing a CD player with a car is a matter of convenience for the customer not an anticompetitive act.
Shh.
Abusing a monopoly (anti-competitive behaviour) is illegal.
When a company has a monopoly, they get some extra rules to play by. Microsoft has not been following these.
It's ironic that you chose your particular car analogy, because there was a famous USA court ruling that car manufactures could not artificially restrict the ability of third parties to install car radios not supplied by the car manufacturer. USA auto manufacturers tried to force customers to buy radios exclusively from the car manufacturer by using non-standard electrical connections and deliberately restrictive physical constraints. Then the car manufacturers claimed that their physical constraints and connector designs were protected intellectual property.
The fight continues to this day: See the "Right to Repair" act. http://www.aftermarket.org/Government/Government.asp
Yes, I know you didn't mean it literally, but only to evoke the emotion of injustice and pitty for the poor victim - which is exactly why I point it out. MS isn't a poor victim, but a legally convicted criminal - btw. in the US as much as in the EU. after said company complied with order after absurd order to change its practices. The court says different. Last I checked, courts and not random
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org