http://nytimes.com/2004/12/22/technology/
22cnd-micro.html?hp&ex=1103778000&en=6d97cca6f115e57d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

December 22, 2004
European Court Rules Against Microsoft on Windows
By TERENCE NEILAN
and STEVE LOHR

Microsoft Corporation lost a major appeal today in a European court, which ruled that the world's largest software company must comply with sanctions imposed by regulators and strip features from its Windows product.

It must also share information about its products with other software companies and pay a $665.4 million fine imposed by the European Commission in March, when it found that Microsoft had abused its virtual monopoly of operating systems.

"Microsoft has not demonstrated specifically that it might suffer serious and irreparable damage," said Bo Vesterdorf, the president of the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, which handed down today's ruling.

Mr. Vesterdorf added in the 91-page ruling that Microsoft's request to delay the commission measures pending an appeal was "dismissed in its entirety."

The immediate impact of the ruling is uncertain. But it may well open the door to continuing legal challenges, both in Europe and elsewhere, to Microsoft's business strategy of adding more and more products and features to its windows operating system. More than 90 percent of the personal computers in the world run Windows.

Under the ruling, Microsoft must sell to computer makers a version of Windows without its Media Player software for playing music, movies and video clips sent over the internet on personal computers.

The commission ruled in March that Microsoft bundled Media Player with Windows in order to damage audiovisual rivals like Real Player and Apple Computer Inc.'s QuickTime. Personal computer makers can offer those alternatives already, but until now they could not sell Windows without Microsoft's Media Player. That choice can now be made by PC makers in the European market; a version of Windows without its Media Player could be available in the European market within two months.

Whether PC makers will widely offer the stripped-down Windows is unclear. Microsoft has said it will offer the two versions of Windows at the same price.

Microsoft has made a number of settlements with rival companies, which make the $665 million fine levied by the commision pale in comparison. Microsoft had already paid that money into an escrow account, after the commission ruled against it last spring.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, Novell, RealNetworks, Sun Microsystems and Time Warner all accused Microsoft of using its dominant position in the operating system market to give it an illegal advantage in other markets. All but one of those, RealNetworks, settled with Microsoft this year.

It was Microsoft's settlement in April with Sun, a longtime adversary, that was the most indicative signal of its new approach to regulatory affairs. In a broad agreement between the two companies, Microsoft agreed to pay Sun nearly $2 billion, including $700 million to resolve antitrust issues.

Microsoft stock opened 24 cents down, or .89 percent, at $26.83, on the Nasdaq today.

Goldman Sachs, which does some work for Microsoft, said in a statement that it believed the decision itself was not harmful to Microsoft's business, but that it set a precedent under which the commission could argue that "future enhancements to the operating system such as search or antivirus must similarly be unbundled." It was the precedent that was "really at issue," the statement said.

Although today's ruling came down squarely against Microsoft, the company, based in Redmond, Wash., can still appeal to the European Court of Justice.

A statement from Microsoft today put a positive face on the order, saying "we are encouraged by a number of aspects of the court's discussion of the merits of the case."

It added: "While the court did not find immediate irreparable harm from the commission's proposed remedies, the court recognized that some of our arguments on the merits of the case are well-founded and may ultimately carry the day when the substantive issues are resolved in the full appeal.

"While we had hoped that the court would suspend some or all of the remedies in the case, we are encouraged that the court has recognized that Microsoft has a number of powerful arguments that must be considered in the full appeal."

The European director of public policy for the Computing Technology Industry Association, Hugo Luders, called today's ruling "discouraging news" for the computer industry in Europe and consumers around the world. Mr. Luders, in a statement issued in Brussels, said information technology companies "will be less willing to innovate, fearing that their intellectual property will be appropriated by government intrusion into the marketplace."

This decision now sets precedent becuase it can also affect M$ in bundling IE into the OS. I love it.

I don't suppose that means they will offer unbundled products here in the US. Personally I like WMP8 -- it has HDCD decoding for compact discs, and sounds better than Winamp for MP3 decoding.

But I draw the line at number 9.

And you cannot, to my knowledge, download WMP8. It only came bundled with Windows. (?)

This is good news. Microsoft continues to claim that they can't separate the Media Player from the operating system. As if we're stupid.

I have felt hopeful lately that more vendors such as the Weather Bureau understood the security management advantages of using Open Source software.

But I have a big career and equipment investment in the intersection of home computer networking and broadcast TV. Maybe you'd call it People's TV. In that regard, it seems like Microsoft Media Player has been creeping in everywhere and taking over, like a foot fungus. (Especially in the conversion of movie theater projection systems to satellite.)

Personally, I see a big future for a Bit Torrent type of distribution. And under that scientific principle, the FCC has no excuse to continue spectrum scarcity, corporate giveaways, or static on the airwaves.

I see no compelling superior quality of compression codecs that Microsoft claims. I see no reason why the FCC shouldn't guard against one corporation taking over the nation's spectrum.

Think about this, the nightmare scenario: Turn on your TV or attend a movie theater and the first thing that comes on is the Microsoft flag logo.

This is a well-known argument to the FCC, that we cannot trust any one corporation not to give favorable transfer speeds or visual quality to a favored ally, such as the textbook example-- ABC and its owner, Disney. They've done it before by blacking out The Millionaire over Comcast in a rate dispute. Unfortunately for them, a FCC Commissioner tuned in to see the finale! So some big shit quickly hit the fan.

So don't say that a corporation wouldn't black out an entire region for its own vertical integration purposes. Hey this was exactly *WHY* former rules (known as fin-syn) forbade the network distributor from owning the program producer.

Microsoft for example is in bed with Disney already and could give it preferential treatment and sharper resolution. Don't think they wouldn't do it, either.

All this Broadcast Flag stuff that Michael Powell is considering is a slippery slope. If you let Microsoft Media Player codec compression into the last mile, add Microsoft's vicious corporate practices to the mix and you've got trouble.

Microsoft has managed to get the WM9 codecs as part of the HD-DVD and blu-ray standards, so they will soon be crawling into consumer electronics on a large scale.

They can offer a WMP-free windows, but no OEM will be intrested. Opening up their protocols is a good thing of course, but in most cases the licences used for those will make any open-source implimentation impossible - the infamous 'identified software' clause.

"And you cannot, to my knowledge, download WMP8. It only came bundled with Windows. (?)"

You can versions 5.1 through 9(XP) at
Old Version

Soryy about that! It's www.oldversion.com

"Microsoft continues to claim that they can't separate the Media Player from the operating system. As if we're stupid."

Or they are.

And yet they have managed to prevent Windows users from buying from iTunes, a new "undocumented feature" in the latest XP service pack.

It's very similar to the way they helped Java's success as a platform-independent tool.

Gnomalarta, if you'll look carefully at oldversion, I think you'll find that they skip version 8. You can get 7.0 or 7.1 or WMP 9, but not 8.

This should also be in effect for other countries including the US, it's home office.

Microsucks has pulled many stunts over its lifetime. In doing so it has reaped untold profits.

Ask Netscape if they think Microsucks is predatory. They have yet to unbundle IE from the package. I for one won't use IE for web browsing, too many security holes in it and no one knows when the next one will surface. Nor is Microsucks too concerned with fixing them unless there is some kind of feedback in public. It took the homeland security to issue a warning to computer users not to use IE for security vunerabilities in order for SP2 to show up with a poorly designed firewall. Rushed to service it has poor support for anything but the most common computers and many still complain of crashes, apps not working, and lockups. Only with a fresh install does it actually work for most applications and this means that you must either do a total backup of programs (and hope they work afterwards) or a total reload of them.

Till then they were most happy to say they were working on them. Many have warned Microsucks of holes in the security and a year later no action has been done on said holes. Only when threatened that users will stop using those products will action occur in a timely manner.

With spyware, phone home programs, and further intrusions I am less an less inclined to use Microsucks and if it were not for the predatory practices of this company we would most likely have other OS's out now that would make suitable replacements rather than using an OS that is so full of holes that complete industries such as spyware and spam have sprung up to make a living off of those same holes.

Hackers and virus writers have had a feild day from the same holes and each and every one of us (those 90% of computer users) have those holes, no matter how much you update and patch. Microsucks has become a computer monopoly and one that has done service to computer users but has now outlived its usefulness in that feild with more problems arising day by day.

So far for the most part it has been successful in buying off the problems and competition. Day by day sees more people seeing problems with this OS, certainly if you want to make some sort of software that is compatible. With its battery of lawers it has managed to hold off the legal entanglements for the most part. It will not continue forever as is demostated in the ruling here in this article.

"and so it begins" -kosh
soon the GOOD versions of windows will show up on servers for people to grab. the so called "pirate" versions will be better than the original, and will begin to compete. M$ will have their own hand forced, and will have to market playerless versions in the US.

"Microsoft's vicious corporate practices", including monopolistic tendencies and pre-emptive abuses;
"The infamous 'identified software' clause" preventing open-source from being implemented;
Unauthorized borrowing of Apple's operating system in making Windows 95 and 98;
Churning out operating systems which are tantamount to beta versions, choosing to let frustrated customers be the guinea pigs to deal with their haste and sloppiness;
Various security holes that they don't want to be bothered with until they practically have no other choice;
Outright lying about their bundling of IE and Media Player with their operating systems;

and the list goes on and on!

I wish one day some person or entity would gather up all their indescretions and improprieties that can be reasonably documented, and pull these together into one gigantic litigation against them.
That would force the big picture to be seen as it needs to be.

. . . on a national if not international scale, I mean.

Take THAT Microsux! (now, if they would only make this retroactive and applicable to MY computer.) sigh...

Someone PLEASE tell me how to get rid of windows media player ...but still allow the media players I choose to use to work uninhibited!

And, folks... do NOT ever upgrade to WM9 no matter what you do! (You will be sorry!)

Run Command (copy & paste) ...

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %SystemRoot%\inf\wmp.inf,Uninstall

"and so it begins" -kosh

LOL, awehr. Good one.

Microsoft Windows Media Player: the coming of the shadows.

hmm... somehow, I don't think it is all that simple kyodylee. (But, bless you if it is!)

...and if it WERE that simple, why ain't we got it printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers yet?

Not that I am fan of MS. But what does the media player have to do with anti-trust. You can download hundreds of different players if you want, and costimize WinXp not to use WinMP. I just think of all the things to change, the media player? Really? Oh well.

Azurre - true, you can download other players. But they takes time, effort and inclination. The vast majority of users will download their media files, double-click and a player conveniently loads - they just have no reason to bother finding an alternative.

More seriously from the purely legal perspective, this also gives ms formats another advantage. A content producer can produce a WM-format file with 7.1 codecs in the assurance that almost every user will have the capability to view it immediately. Were they to distribute in another format, the potential viewers would be forced to install additional software at least once - a player and/or codecs. If those viewers are also customers, very few content producers would want to risk losing potential sales to frustrated customers who are not willing to download and install new software.

Of course this can be convenient for users, for the same reason - but its still anticompetative. Besides, Microsoft media technology is no longer the highest quality available. It was once, argueably. But not now.

But, like a rich, spoiled brat...the company keeps wanting to have things their own selfish way.
(And the execs viewpoint is likely, why not? No stateside court has bucked the bully in the last ten years.)
Tom Barger wrote that this ruling marks the first time in a decade that Microsoft is held accountable in a court of law.
Hopefully, a precedent IS being set. Many more issues need to be hung around their neck like albatrosses.

So they are is a little trouble for bundleing WMP. But what about Windows Messanger? Outlook Express, which alone is responsible for the rise of the hated HTML email (carrier of spam and viruses, devourer of bandwidth)? ActiveX, loved by spyware writers?

Oh, man, good points!
I don't know why those things had slipped my mind.