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The EU Commission's Fine on Microsoft - What's Wrong With It? ~pj | 120 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
The EU Commission's Fine on Microsoft - What's Wrong With It? ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 10 2013 @ 10:30 AM EDT
>> No. It's different. It's not illegal for women
to vote today. It is illegal for Microsoft
to behave anticompetitively, and if given a
punishment, it shouldn't be able to squirm
around it.

What constitutes 'illegally anticompetitive' seems to to
stray awfully close to 'a cool new business model that
delivers what users want' in these cases (also Google vs
whoever is suing them for anticompetitiveness). These days
many companies do effectively the same thing as Microsoft is
being punished for, or worse; you can't replace Safari as
the iPhone's browser. Depending on what metrics you use they
could be considered to have the dominant market presence;
and there are all kinds of other operating systems and
computers which are bundled with software.


>> I mean, if you were sent ot jail for x years,
and you escape and they don't catch you for
14 months, do they say, oh, nevermind?

Depends. In some countries its not a crime to escape from
jail, and they just let you serve the rest of your term. You
can also get released from jail if the law you were accused
of breaking is changed. I think the big deal here is that
*consumers* don't care anymore, and microsoft is being
prosecuted for something that isn't relevant to today's
industry.


>> And it's not true that everyone can download
a browser nowadays. I have family members
who wouldn't do that in a million years.

I think we'd be getting into a very bad situation if laws
cater to the least technologically able members of society.
Anyone *can* download a new browser, they're all free these
days, the are a number of companies reporting on just how
many people *do* download a new browser.

I know I've probably missed many nuances of the laws
involved, but I'm just relating the general vibe I and many
people I talk to about the case get from this issue..

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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