Microsoft Accuses European Union of Collusion 265
GarbagePailKid wrote to mention the news that Microsoft has filed a formal complaint alleging that the EU colluded with company rivals and hid critical documents during the EU regulation hearings. According to Microsoft: "While the documents provided do not include the direct correspondence between the commission and its technical experts, they show that the commission, the trustee, and Microsoft's adversaries were secretly collaborating throughout the fall of 2005 in a manner inconsistent with the commission's role as neutral regulator and the Trustee's role as independent monitor..."
Known Fact? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MS blames everyone else. (Score:5, Interesting)
One wonders if an antagonistic relationship will be beneficial to our favourite monopolist in the long run... Is this a sign of desperation or of arrogance?
So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Big fish, meet bigger fish. [Nelson]HAH HAH![/Nelson]
Nothing new, move along! (Score:1, Interesting)
A killer sentenced for 25yrs in prison is suing for libel the parents of his victim. He raped and killed their daughter and when they publicly told (after he was convicted) that he is "animal" he sued them for libel.
Robert
PS Since he is currently in prison, w/o any source of income, the state will provide him an attorney for free, while his victims will have to pay for an attorney. Hope that MS won't get free legal advice.
Re:The EU is more corrupt than Microsoft. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, perhaps you could list a list of SPECIFIC cases where the EU is seen as corrupt? Also, please refresh my memory about how the EU is even remotely as bad as the Bush administration (Halliburton, oil companies etc.) in this regard?
Re:Isn't all forms of government (Score:4, Interesting)
Jay-walking is against the law. Do you ALWAYS obey it even though it is a stupid law? Should you be shot in the leg after the first, second, or third offense to discourage you from doing it again? And I am not saying that the anti-trust act is stupid, I'm saying that declaring a corporation a monopoly and fining them because the OS THEY made comes with THEIR internet browser that is an integral part of the system and THEIR media player installed by default.
Stick to the topic. This is not about the browser, this is about the interfaces to the server OS. Bundling is illegal in almost every jurisdiction because it is a simple and easy way to use a monopoly to move into and take over new markets with products that are no better (and often worse) than the competition. Tying, is slightly more complex. The gist of it is, Windows server editions have an advantage over a Linux or Solaris box because they can speak all the secret protocols used to communicate with the desktop. This includes exchange, active directory, etc. As a result of this, Windows servers have an advantage based solely in the fact that they are made by the same company as Windows desktop. Windows servers are generally slower, less secure, less reliable, and can't multitask for crap, but they are tied to Windows desktop and Windows desktop OS's have a monopoly so everyone has to talk to them.
Thus MS was convicted, as they had been in the US and several other countries and as part of their punishment they were ordered to document all those secret interfaces by which their server was being illegally given an advantage. They are in the process of trying to weasel out of that. The reason: they know they can't compete in a fair market but they want to take over that market anyway and they don't mind breaking the law until someone manages to force them to stop.
If you'd like an explanation as to why bundling the browser and media player are illegal and bad for the industry (and can't already see the parallel) just ask, or go ahead and do a Google search. Antitrust law is very well explained many places online.
The long and short is they broke the law and it hurt everyone in the industry. I know a number of sysadmins who run Windows servers as well as Linux simply because they need something that can talk to exchange and active directory. Those servers usually only run one application, since Windows becomes unstable with multiple ones under load. They basically suck, but MS was paid for them anyway. How many billions of dollars did that suck out of countries around the globe? How many cool new technologies were not developed as people struggled to reverse engineer these secret protocols? How much manpower was wasted? How much did the computing industry suffer?
Re:MS blames everyone else. (Score:3, Interesting)
In doing this, MS is trying to force the EU commission to spend more of it's time and resources explaining to journalists and members that it's not actually picking on MS, that this is just something MS is creating to boost their image. It's also forcing the EU to go back and review their communications with MS, to clarify points that MS is pretending to be confused about. In the meantime, MS doesn't have to do anything more than keep spewing statements like this, and can spend the rest of it's efforts on finding a loophole to exploit.
Of course, the downside of doing this is that it only works for so long. Eventually they will have to come up with a means of escaping the mess, because once you use this kind of tactic, you make it real unlikely that the other side will be willing to accept a deal at the same level as they might have before. In fact, it's more likely that the other side won't accept anything less than total surrender, if it goes on long enough. However, it can be a signal of capitulation, if the weaker side simply want's to threaten to do as much damage as possible before the inevitable ending, something of a bargaining chip.
It all depends on how deeply MS tries to wound, and how long they play this game, but I agree, it's not a good sign for MS. If they were simply being "picked on", they would be able to toss up examples of other companies that do the same thing, and most people would agree, and it wouldn't be much of a debate.
Though it might be a bad comparison, it's still interesting to think of it in terms of MS being the Japanese army in WWII, and the Allies as the EU. The Japanese army at least seemed to be willing to fight to the last soldier, and the allies were gearing up for a gruesome fight. The Japanese simply didn't have the resources to fight every single allied soldier, so the tactic was to wear them down, create too many casualties to continue, as we've seen in wars since that time. However, I think MS can't fight a guerilla war like this, simply because the EU probably has a few nukes at their disposal as well, and MS is simply too big an entity to fight a guerilla war properly. At a fundamental level, despite their attacks on the EU, MS needs the EU's business and support, so fighting too hard may do more harm than just tempering the EU's attempt to balance the market. One thing MS doesn't need to do is inspire european nationalistic tendencies, as it did when it received it's non-punishment from the USDOJ.
Re:MS blames everyone else. (Score:3, Interesting)
Support open document formats: The EU could declare that all official electronic documents have to use the OpenDocument format (where appropriate), effectively forcing Microsoft to provide OpenDocument support or face the fact that people will switch to OpenOffice because they can't use MS Office for stuff like tax declarations. This stuff is going to be done electronically in the future and if MS Office can't do that many people will consider it a showstopper. Note that support for OpenDocument will dilute the value of the MS Office document format because "it does the same but no one wants it so why not use
Promote free software procurement policies: Just imagine what happens when the EU deicdes that all member states are to completely switch to Linux in the next ten years. That's a whole market that Microsoft uses. Note that this implies that MS is forced to support OpenDocument and other open formats.
Permanently block software patents: This would greatly reduce Microsoft's power to kill off competitors in the EU through litigation. It would also allow European software companies to use technology patented in the rest of the world, leading to much stronger competition. Those patents even come with public disclosure of how the stuff works. How handy.
Note that we have a very strong anti-patent lobby which has already stopped the last attempt at legitimizing software patents. They were not banned but the bill was rejected - because the European anti-patent lobby is strong, has good media presence (through things like website strikes) and directly gives them positive feedback for acting against patents - for example they presented the thanks of thirty thousand supporters to the Polish parliament when they stopped an attempt to pass the bill. Software patents are not banned in Europe, but we have people working at it and they're working well.
Implement more stringent anti-monopoly measures: This would mean more legal trouble for Microsoft, whose business model is built on "own a market and then take advantage of that". More stringent anti-monopoly laws would make the European market much less profitable for Micosoft - but they can't pull out because that would hurt their OS monopoly in the rest of the world, which they need to make money.
None of these practices are mutually exclusive and combined they could make Europe a very unpleasant place to be for an IT corporation (but paradisiac for small-to-middle sized businesses). The EU is currently in the process of partially implementing some of them (some governments are moving more and more of their stuff to Linux, which will make open standards a necessity sooner or later), some might happen if we don't stop fighting (the banning of software patents, even more government OSS, open standards) and some will probably happen if certain companies don't stop blatantly ignoring rules they don't like (more stringent anti-monopoly laws, more government OSS).
Re:This is irrlelevant (Score:1, Interesting)
They don't use their monopoly to illegally push their products, and that is the key.
Monopolise their own OS... do you even know what you're saying?
Re:I'm with M$ (Score:3, Interesting)