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Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
61–70 of 130 posts
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
>committing the crime If a someone in a corporation is actually committing a crime , then, yes they can go to jail. If they have committed some kind of civil offense or if it's a criminal offense with no jail term attached then they don't go to jail. There's nothing special about corporations that prevent the people in charge from serving jail time.
Serving time for a purely corporate offence is very very rare. Health and safety negligence is most common, but even the horse war scandal in Europe (where unfit horses were sold as beef and then into ready meals) it's unlikely and people there committed fraud as part of course of business
That's a matter of prosecutorial discretion. The point is they can serve jail time. What's the point of changing the law so that they can be fined 100% of revenue. The same discretion will still apply.
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#63I think more companies should be fined like this, as a percentage of their anual revenue. Except that I would further increase the percentage - up to 50% or even 100%. It's very simple: citizens go to jail, companies can't; so we have to make them pay, a lot. When fines are a fixed amount, the corporations have to simply earn more by committing the crime than they would have to pay if caught; banks are very adept at…
So you would send people to jail for not giving dumb users a browser choice that is only going to confuse them anyway?
Laws should be followed. If laws are bad, you should change the laws, not disregard them.
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#64That's about $50 per user believed to have been affected by the error.
It's meant to punish Microsoft for failing to comply with the ruling, rather than compensate other browser-makers for the users potentially lost.
Isn't this the primary difference between civil and criminal law? Additionally, isn't this a civil case? It would seem to me that the entire point of the trail would be to deal with the lost compensation/opportunity cost issue.
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#65Microsoft will probably counter-fine by raising its prices by 1€ in EU. Europe will happily pay for it.
I disagree with this kind of reaction:
1. I don't think it's useless, when companies raise their price they loose customers so Microsoft will probably be more careful next time.
2. If it is useless in practice, we should change the law but surely not let them do what they want, just because it's useless.
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#66EU competition law is a completely different beast from US antitrust law, and whilst I disagree with both forms, the EU definitely suffers from more of a Tall Poppy Syndrome: if you're a market leader with a disproportionate share of the market, it's almost assumed that you're acting in bad faith, and it's up to you to prove you're promoting 'fairness' and 'competition'.
If anything is 'anti-competitive' it's rulings like these, which punish people for producing quality software and increase the uncertainty of doing business in the EU.
There's a good comparison of the two systems over here: http://www.iie.com/publications/chapters_preview/56/10ie1664...
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's completely crazy. There's nothing crazy about it. > We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time We've accepted that browsers are necessary, the EU seems to have not accepted an OS natural monopoly can be leveraged into a browser monopoly. Sounds perfectly sane, and a good thing. > what's next fining Apple for not promoting Mozilla or Chrome on iOS? Apple does not have a monopoly marketshare, whi…
Then why stop at browsers? Why not do the same thing with AV, audio players, text editors, file browsers, CD/DVD burners, etc... ?
The EU did in fact do the same with media players (Microsoft had to bundle "Windows XP N", a WMP-less version of WXP). The rest has precious little importance in the grand scheme of thing and their regulation is thus pretty pointless.
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#68This still seems rather unfair, why are other proprietary operating systems not obliged to incorporate a similar feature? It's Microsoft own operating system and they should be allowed to incorporate whatever piece of software they'd like, albeit to a reasonable extent.
On the other hand, I do find it weird there are no repercussions like this for Windows' new secure boot "feature".
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#69In my opinion this sheds some light on Sinofsky's departure. That's quite a fuck-up and it happened on his watch.
Re: Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
#70Why don't they start fining car manufacturers for not providing customers with a choice of seats made by other manufactures? Antitrust law in the EU is a load of bs, coming from someone who uninstalls IE first thing after installing Windows.
You're misunderstanding. The problem is that Microsoft is using its OS monopoly to try and create another one. These special anticompetetive triggers only come into effect when the company has a monopoly. To be more clear, there is noting illegal about HAVING a monopoly. It's what you do WITH a monopoly that matters. If you don't have a monopoly, you're much less restricted with what you can do. To correct you analog…
Fair, I get you. I still wouldn't have a problem with the corrected analogy. Firstly, I consider the web browser an integral part of an OS even if you have the choice to replace it, so it's not creating a further monopoly, it's just part of the package (just like tires and the body of a car).
But more importantly, problems caused by some monopolies (e.g. extortion), and monopolies themselves, have historically been the RESULT of government intervention. Other web browsers obviously can compete considering IE is not the most widely used browser anymore.