Microsoft Responds to EU With Another Question 545
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?"
At what point? (Score:5, Insightful)
A: Is it really necessary that every Slashdot summary ends with a very polarizing question?
Appropriate price? Zero Euros and redistribution (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Which bounds? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I'm No Great Fan Of MS... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:At what point? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish they were this aggressive on medicine (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if the EU dumped its focus on trivial crap like software patents and applied the same reasoning to medicine patents.
Re:Trade Wars (Score:3, Insightful)
Those tech companies would pull out if and only if the EU's punishment were worse than losing the EU market. For example, what would happen if MS stopped selling Windows in Europe? The entire continent would switch to Free Software almost instantly. I'll bet Microsoft is willing to put up with a Hell of a lot to prevent that from happening! And that's not just because of the lost sales directly, but also because it would prove to US businesses that Free Software is viable on a grand scale.
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Government interference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too late... (Score:1, Insightful)
No, the existence of patent monopolies in the first place is a blatant example of corporate welfare. The EU shouldn't fine microsoft - it should simply definitively abolish patents in the EU and restore free-market competition. While patents exist, free markets don't.
It's about rent (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too late... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Appropriate price? Zero Euros and redistributio (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
At what point would the EU overstep its bounds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Which bounds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all of us, I'm glad someone isn't putting up with MS's crap.
Re:At what point? (Score:5, Insightful)
At what point should the EU government stop protecting its citizens from a convicted monopolist? Is probably a better question.
Re:Too late... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which bounds? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned, the EU hasn't gone far enough. But to be fair, and to avoid attributing to EU regulators a moral high ground they don't in fact possess, I have my doubts that the EU would have gone as far as it has if Microsoft was a European company. On the other hand, it's questionable whether, say, French agricultural subsidies affect nearly as many people as Windows.
Re:Publish or Perish (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Do you even know what socialism is?
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?
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.
Re:Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Which bounds? (Score:2, Insightful)
Overstepping Bounds (Score:4, Insightful)
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. :)
Re:Too late... (Score:2, Insightful)
By doing that you would basically eliminate free market, or at least damage it, because there would be no incentive to innovate. As soon as you designed some great product, say Slicedbread v2.1, some yahoo comes along and decides to copy most of your work and name it Slicedcheese v1.0. Because of this you would make less profit and are less motivated to work on your next project... Slicedmeat.
Come to think of it you just reinforced the quote from the parent.
I'm fucking tired of United Statians (Score:2, Insightful)
Utilities (Score:3, Insightful)
In the analogy: software = service, area A = Microsoft Windows, and moving = changing platforms. For some people changing platforms is even more expensive than moving physical locations, and for others it's actually impossible (if they need Windows-only software to operate). Sure you could argue that they shouldn't have gotten so tied to the platform in the first place, but saying that doesn't actually help anything.
Re:Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Publish or Perish (Score:1, Insightful)
If they lose the EU, then Linux *will* fill the void. If it does, then Microsoft's competition in the US gets a lot stiffer.
I am same AC as top of thread.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too late... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Appropriate price? Zero Euros and redistributio (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Publish or Perish (Score:3, Insightful)
Well considering that software patents are forbidden in EU, I don't see why EU should take the number of patents MS owns as a metric for innovation.
That sounds benign, but I think a lot of people fail to see the reach of this claim : an expert EU commission just stated that the number of software patents is completly uncorrelated to the amount of innovation a company carries. If investors and shareholders finally manage to understand this, the patent system could fall.
Re:Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE is forcing ANYONE to use ANYTHING from Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't go around holding guns to people saying you MUST use our shit...millions of OSX and Linux users prove that point.
Why do people care what they charge? Just like any other company, if you don't like the price....DON'T FUCKING BUY IT.
Re:Something I don't get about the whole MS-EU thi (Score:3, Insightful)
They can't just drop the EU market because it's the same size that the US one. It's a publicly traded company and investors would very much like to know if was a fiscally sound decision (i.e. did they lose more than staying would have cost). If they don't get the answers they want the stock tanks and I doubt shareholder lawsuits would be far behind. And add to that the worldwide worries wether you can trust Microsoft with your IT infrastructure. Buyers would ask themselves: will they try the same tactics in our market? what will they demand of us to keep on selling their products? can we afford that?
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Which bounds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite right.
My only wish is that they didn't keep on giving Microsoft chances and simply hammered them for their existing crimes. Break them up into OS and apps and have done with it; we all know that's what's needed. The EU can, and has the power and moral right to do so. Forget all this "its a US company", it an international company that has played a monopoly hand in the EU. If the US can get away with hijacking legal EU businessmen, the EU can get away with imposing breakup on a company even outside its borders. From a practical standpoint, if the choice was "break in two or all your copyrights are cancelled" what do you think would happen? What do you think China would do?
The funny thing is this is Microsoft bringing it on their own heads. If they had made this data freely available years ago there would BE no case. Its purely because they decided to play cute that they are here. Bluffing on a weak hand is never a smart move.
Re:Too late... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Publish or Perish (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Contempt of court (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that, Slashdot being US based, seems to randomly hate the EU and their decisions. Quite honestly, it doesn't matter what Microsoft want here, and the EU probably don't care what economic damage their going to do to a US based company. Bear in mind that for Microsoft to release all their protocol specifications, it'd probably cost an extremely small amount of money compared to the amount they wasted* on Vista.
Considering Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and to interoperate with over 90% of the market, you need access to Microsoft's specifications, I hardly think it's unreasonable to demand MS provide access (even free access) to the specifications. I don't think Microsoft has a reason to demand that they maintain an illegal monopoly by not releasing their specifications that would merely allow others to interoperate. If anyone's dragging their feet here, it's Microsoft. I doubt a multi billion dollar company couldn't have just spent maybe a few weeks writing specifications and then released them on their devnet site. Hell, they could have bought a specifications firm to do it for them... It really isn't as difficult as they're making it out to be. The fact that their original specifications were deemed to be too low quality speaks volumes. I wonder how many of their file formats are internally undocumented other than the library itself.
And hey, if MS hates it, they can pull out of the EU. The EU could nullify the Windows copyright in the EU and we could all legally pirate Windows
* I don't mean all of Vista was a waste, but there was probably a considerable amount of money wasted on things like WinFS that have been all but dropped now
Re:Oh for goodness sake (Score:2, Insightful)
But they won't. By it's very nature, a bureaucracy tends to NOT make "final" decisions - they would then find themselves unemployed.
Tha EU's response will be "It is not our place to dictate commercial terms in licensing fees. Our role is to judge whether those terms are fair AFTER the fact". This way, the bureaucrats in charge are ensured of continued employment for a few month waiting for MS to erspond, then another few "evaluating", and then probably another finding that the MS terms are unfair. Latehr, rinse repeat.
I say from my experience with US regulatory agencies, but I can't imagine their counterparts in the EU are any better.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
What it's all about (Score:2, Insightful)
For not complying, they were fined again. And again. And...
One of the requirements was opening up the specs so that third-parties could use the same API as MS media player uses, thus actually having competition on that part.
However, MS argued that this spec contained innovations, and should not be opened up freely, as there were costs involved.
The EU found this reasonable.
MS opened up the specs, and set a price based on those innovations.
Upon investigation by an independent party at the request of the EU, the independant party found nearly nothing innovative.
As the amount of innovation was tied to the cost, it meant that microsoft was way overcharging its specs.
This of course is not part of the deal: the cost of the specs should be reasonable, so that third parties could actually use the spec, and compete.
This is where the EU is upset about. The fact that Vista is way overpriced is not the issue here. The issue is MS abusing the wording of the ruling and the subsequent settlement of the antitrust case they had against them.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Micro
Re:Too late... (Score:2, Insightful)
Stalin was a Stalinist, which is not anything like Communism. Stalin used communist ideals as the springboard for his new form of government. Stalin's system of rule is different from dictatorship only in that a dictator is still morally bound to do that which is best of his people. Stalin was bound by nothing.
I would ask that you stop disgracing a perfectly good form of government by associating it with Stalin's horribly corrupted form of that government. Communism is a very noble concept, and deserves the respect due to such a well-developed solution to the unsolvable problem: "which form of government is best?"
Re:Contempt of court (Score:3, Insightful)
You didn't consider the possibility that different people are attracted to different headlines? If you try to assign a set of opinions to "the Slashdot crowd", you are certain to get some conflicts, simply because this crowd consists of a whole range of people, many with very different opinions.
Re:I remember what it was like before (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't even know what point you're trying to make. MS did not invent something, but did popularize it many years ago so we should let them break the law now?
Actually this is my first language and I am fluent enough in it to take note of, but not call attention to your numerous grammatical errors. This is, after all, a rather informal forum for writing. As for your statement about, "announce their increased intelligence" I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to convey. I mentioned that people on Slashdot tend to be above average in intelligence, not that my intelligence is increased by... well, whatever it is you think I was saying.
That is a typo that was meant to read "decides."
A spell check should not catch "decidedness" since it is a proper, if little used word.
Bundling is not a big deal. Bundling with a monopolized product is a big deal. The fact that you still can't seem to understand the significance that those are different things, speaks to your ignorance. If you bothered to read anything about antitrust law you would note that only the latter is illegal. That might be your first clue to try to figure out why it is illegal.
Actually, those are both the most popular applications in their respective categories, used more than any other. Just because you don't seem to know a lot of people who use them, does not make them less popular.
So imagine you're in business as say, a baker. Now suppose you make really good baked goods at an affordable price and are doing well, but then the electric company starts bundling baked goods with people's electrical service. They raise the cost of electricity a bit, but there still aren't any other good options, so now everyone already has baked goods and don't need yours. Now the baked goods from the electric company aren't great, but they are eatable without much fuss. So you go out of business and consumers end up eating inferior baked goods that cost them more money, even if they can't tell exactly how much.
You honestly don't see a problem with that? What about when they start adding more and more products to said bundle and driving more and more people out of business? Still no problem? What about when all innovation or advancement in those markets slows to a crawl since there are no competitors left for people to move to? Why invest when it doesn't get you any more money? You really can't comprehend how monopolistic bundling can be a bad thing for the economy and people in general?