Microsoft Threatens To Withdraw Windows in S.Korea

RocketJeff writes "South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has been investigating Microsoft since 2001 for violations of South Korea's antitrust rules. According to a Reuters article, part of a recent Microsoft regulatory filing states 'it might be necessary to withdraw Windows from the Korean market or delay offering new versions in Korea.' Basically, Microsoft is threatening to take their marbles and go home if they don't get the ruling they want."

I hope Korea calls their bluff

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if South Korea were to decide that they didn't need new versions of Windows enough to justify changing their laws.

Re:Good strategy

[JavaLord]

I wonder what percentage of the south korean economy is made up of those internet cafes. Switching OS's won't really be fun for them (if it comes to that.).

Gaming is fairly big in SK also, somehow I think 'it runs on WINE' isn't going to fly.

Woot! More MMORPG games for Linux ;-)

[RunzWithScissors]

This would be excellent for us Linux users. The MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) industry sees Korea as a huge market. If they couldn't run their games on Windows, then the game companies would have to port their stuff to Linux to stay in the Korean market. I see this as a win-win all the way around.

-Runz

Re:Revoke their copyright?

[Stargoat]

Then Microsoft can file with the WTO. Korea is not playing by the rules of the WTO, so Microsoft is perfectly justified in picking up its marbles and going home.

As for all the Linux zealots proclaiming victory, that's just foolishness. There are corporations in Korea that require Microsoft to do their work. Migrating these places would cost millions, if not potentially billions. Think of all the issues. Training users, the actual migration, new support staff, in many cases new hardware. The corporations will never allow it.

Microsoft has not taken the high road, but neither has South Korea. But in this case, it sounds like MS has the advantage.

Isn't that their right?

[MoNsTeR]

If I don't want to sell you something, by what moral principle could you compel me to do so anyway?

The "if you're gonna be a shitty customer, I'm gonna ban you from my store" play seems perfectly reaosnable to me.

Microsoft said the same thing back in 2000

[zero0w]

When the Justice Department and other anti-trust parties asked Microsoft to separate IE from the OS, Microsoft said the same thing on withdrawing Windows 98/2000 running out there. Well, back then Desktop Linux wasn't ready to challenge it (remember, OpenOffice.org and Mozilla/Firefox didn't reach 1.0 until 2002).

Now, Microsoft wants to pull the same feat again; should Korean government back down? Hmm, tough call. But if I were to make IT procurement decision for Korean government, it should be a sign that they should NOT upgrade to Windows Vista and instead forming a task force to strengthen desktop Linux development. No government should be prey to a mega-corporation of this type of blackmail. They are already striving to support Firefox/W3C standard in all government websites [mozillazine.org], maybe it's time to consider go further than that.

Re:Their software

[Rakshasa Taisab]

The Korean goverment is also free to take the latest windows release, copy it and distribute it for free within their country. If MS goes complaining to the WTO, then Korea could just point out that said company didn't want their market and it is a vital part of their economy.

Re:Good strategy

[jxyama]

I never understood this reasoning. Private consumers aren't the only ones using PCs - enterprises and businesses use PCs too. And they do not get away with corporate-wide piracy of Windows. Even if 100% of ind. users pirated Windows in S. Korea, there's significant revenue to be had from corporate users.

Re:Good strategy

[Shakrai]

It's like if Ford decided to stop making cars, it would not cause all the Fords currently on the road to stop working.

That reminds me of a story about how Cuba is filled with classic American cars from the 1940s and 1950s that are (for the most part) still well maintained and still on the road after all these years. They can't get new cars easily because the closest nation won't trade with them and for the longest time neither would most of the Western World.

Granted, software isn't automobiles and there are ways around it (run the American version, pirate it, switch to linux, etc.) but it's kind of amusing to think of an entire nation running Windows 2000 and XP 40 years from now.

Great point made over at Groklaw

[It doesn't come easy]

PJ made a very good point over at Groklaw [groklaw.net]. Consider: If you are the South Korean government, and you have historical documents written in Word, Excel, etc., and you play by the rules (i.e. you honor Microsoft's copyright, you buy Windows licenses for all your systems, etc.), and all of a sudden you cannot buy a new copy of Windows legally, what do you do? Keep running the old copies and never upgrade from then on?

This is exactly the problem with proprietary file formats. I would say that Microsoft's statement is destined to show up in a large number of conversations about OpenDocument and why it's the right thing to do...

Re:Good strategy

[Pentavirate]

There are countries where piracy is more rampant than others. I lived in Venezuela in the mid 90's and I'd never seen such rampant piracy before in my life. People sold copies of copywrited material on every street corner. From bad duplicates of Simpson T-shirts to stacks and stacks of audio cassettes coppied onto blank tapes. I don't know anything about South Korea, but you can't say that piracy problems are the exact same no matter where you are in the world.

Re:Good strategy

[bigman2003]

First the United States
Then the E.U.
Now South Korea

How long until every government jumps on the $500,000,000 + bandwagon of suing Microsoft?

They really don't have many choices. Now they are at the point where their only answer is: "We don't negotiate with terrorists."

Re:Good strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Can't talk about piracy with a blanket statement covering all piracy. We're talking about software piracy. Otherwise, I could say U.S ranks #1 in Social Security card piracy. But that would be misleading because U.S. is the only country that implements a "Social Security Number" for a specific purpose. It's used for many financial purposes but isn't a national ID. So you can't compare it to other countries where the local National IDs are faked.

In Context, software piracy is just as ubiquitous in the States as it is in Sri Lanka (They have a seven storey mall with nothing but pirated software, among other things). My friend bought me a Delphi 4 & 5 CD for $1.00 from Sri Lanka when he visited there. Recently someone I know who works for a U.S. employer in the U.S. was asked by his manager to try and find Delphi 7 on KaZaA. Which he did! So the employer never paid for it. And it's not a mom & pop operation either, it's a big corp.

If you can buy it for a buck, it's better to just buy the 500MB of data instead of spending time finding it online and then spending anywhere from 2 hours to a day downloading it. But if it's not available on a pirated CD, just hit the net. When you don't wanna pay $200 for something, spending a little time online might not seem like much. Just analyze the amount of trackers posted on some of our favorite Torrent sites (I'm not naming any). Look at how soon information is available.

Thanks for listening. Cheers. :)

Re:Korean Strategy: All Microsoft IP declared Publ

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It means that South Korea is obligated to recognize foreign copyrights, and stripping that protection for (arguably valid) nationalist reasons would almost certainly be in violation of international law.

The Berne Convention only requires a minimum copyright length and that countries treat foreign copyrights the same as they do their own. If Korean law allows or can be changed to allow the confiscation rights from abusive monopolies there is no conflict. For that matter, the Korean courts can just declare the intellectual property to be the fine MS must pay. In either case, Korea is unlikely to be reprimanded by the WTO since they are dealing with a criminal in the first place and an abuse monopoly that has already been found guilty in the US and EU court systems. I disagree that this would be a problem for them, but I'm no expert on international trade law.

The door....

[Rolan]

Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out. Asia already has a high penetration of Linux, if Microsoft leaves....all the better for Linux.

Re:Good strategy

[xrobertcmx]

For some reason I don't think runs on Playstation would cut it either. Sony is from Japan and anti Japanease feels run fairly deep over there.

So...

[Anita Coney]

... how in the fuck does S. Korea get so damn lucky? What? Leaders with backbones?! What's that?!

Re:Good strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

First, the link is for 1997, not 96 (nice trolling, btw :)). Second, showing that in 97, italy was making triple-digit million losses.

Second, showing the current mission where South Korea isn't mentioned as being the biggest piracy player. From personal experience, I know that countries such as Singapore, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India are much much much more advanced in piracy. I can tell you that the Cubase edition that you pay $900 for in the U.S. will cost $0.50 in Pakistan. Furthermore, the CD will contains as many free VST Plugins as space will allow. Furthermore, if the price is raised by the pirate sellers, the public will protest and not buy from them until they bring it back down to about $0.50. If only we could do that to MS, Real, and others that charge too much here and teach them a lesson, eh?

Re:Good strategy

[ultranova]

Wow, $27-trillion! That's more than half of the global economy in piracy in South Korea alone. If we could eliminate global piracy, we would all be hundreds of times wealthier than we are now!

No. Microsoft, Disney, and the other Corporate Overlords would be hundreds of times wealthier than they are now. You and the other mere consumers, on the other hand, wouldn't see any of this wealth.

In fact, it seems that this is the only thing that stands between Corporate Overlords and total world domination. If they can rid themselves of piracy, they will get the resources to crush all resistance and cover the whole world into a Digital Dark Age. They want DRM, and are seeking it with all of their will... Dear Slashdot readers, they must never have it.

The real question is, what do we do about it ? We need the digital equivalent of Mount Doom. In the meanwhile, dear slashdotters, pirate, pirate and pirate - we must delay them as much as we can ! And the only way to do that is to deprive them of resources. And the only way to do that is to hinder their business models - so pirate ! Only you, warez dooz and massive copyright infringement stand between world and destruction !

So, how's that for a justification for copyright infringement ?-)