Posted on 09/17/2007 6:13:24 AM PDT by webschooner
BRUSSELS/LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Microsoft suffered a stunning defeat on Monday when a European Union court backed a European Commission ruling that the U.S. software giant illegally abused its market power to crush competitors.
The European Union's second-highest court dismissed the company's appeal on all substantive points of the 2004 antitrust ruling.
More importantly, it endorsed Commission sanctions against Microsoft's tying together of software and refusal to give rival makers of office servers information to enable their products to work smoothly with Windows, used by 95 percent of computers.
It annulled only the EU regulator's imposition of a Microsoft-funded independent trustee to monitor compliance.
"The Court of First Instance essentially upholds the Commission's decision finding that Microsoft abused its dominant position," a court statement said.
DOWNBEAT
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith was downbeat in speaking to reporters at the courtroom, promising the company would obey the ruling in full. He said there was no decision yet on whether to appeal to the European Court of Justice.
"It is clearly very important to us as a company that we comply with our obligations under European law," Smith said. "We will study this decision carefully and if there additional steps we need to take in order to comply with it, we will take them."
Microsoft has used every recourse open to it in every case brought against it by governments and regulators.
The company has weathered a series of defeats in antitrust cases in the last decade and sees legal setbacks as almost part of its business model and a price for its near-monopoly.
Microsoft has already moved to new battlegrounds such as seeking acceptance of its technical standards across the industry, while continuing to bundle new features into its new Vista desktop software.
Rivals welcomed the EU court decision as a signal that authorities do not intend to allow Microsoft to pursue anti-competitive practices with impunity.
The Commission ordered the company to sell a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player application used for video and music, which few have bought, and to share information allowing rivals' office servers to work smoothly with Windows.
Microsoft has not demonstrated the existence of objective justification for the bundling, and ... the remedy imposed by the Commission is proportionate," the court statement said.
A spokesman for Microsoft opponents, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, said the ruling confirmed Microsoft had abused its near-monopoly in computer operating systems and set ground rules for the company's behaviour.
"This decision establishes principles for the behaviour of this company. Microsoft should now finally comply with the Commission decision on operability," lawyer Thomas Vinje said.
Another winner was the Free Software Foundation, which makes free, open software for work group servers. "Microsoft can consider itself above the law no longer," said Georg Greve, president of the FSF Europe.
The judges ordered Microsoft to pay the costs of FSF and those of the software giant's business rivals, which had supported the Commission's case. By contrast, Microsoft's allies were forced to bear their own costs.
The Commission must pay 20 percent of its own costs and 20 percent of Microsoft's while Microsoft must pay 80 percent of its own costs and 80 percent of the Commission's.
The ruling was made by the 13-judge Grand Chamber of the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, the first time such a matter has been broadcast on live television.
Since the original decision, the Commission has fined Microsoft a further 280.5 million euros, saying it had failed to comply with the interoperability sanction. The EU regulator is considering a further fine for non-compliance.
(additional reporting by Mark John in Luxembourg, Sabina Zawadzki and William Schomberg in Brussels)
Microsoft shares traded in Frankfurt were down 2 percent at 20.40 euros at 1021 GMT, underperforming the European technology index which was down 0.4 percent. About 15,000 shares had changed hands, roughly the 30-day average daily trading volume.
The court said Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, was unjustified in tying new applications to its Windows operating system in a way that harmed consumer choice.
The verdict, which may be appealed only on points of law and not of fact, could force Microsoft to change its business practices.
It also gives EU Competition Commission Neelie Kroes a green light to pursue other antitrust cases and complaints involving Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm and Rambus, and to issue draft new antitrust guidelines that were put on ice pending the ruling.
"Microsoft must now comply fully with its legal obligations to desist from engaging in anti-competitive conduct. The Commission will do its utmost to ensure that Microsoft complies swiftly", Kroes said in a statement.
The court upheld a record 497 million euro ($689.9 million) fine imposed on the company as part of the original decision.
> So MS kept their API’s in house allowing them to write programs for windows superior to what could be done outside of Microsoft. That is using one monopoly to abuse companies in another sector..
Then it would appear that the correct course of action would be to not write for Windows.
Orrr, you could get the government to make them show you their APIs.
I was thinking that they should simply refuse to load Microsoft on any new European CPU...and simply set up a site in Russia where if you want Microsoft...you download it and charge it to your credit card. Cut the EU out of the tax revenue they claim for all Microsoft products...just set them all back $300 million a year in revenue that they claim from all the various countries. The EU will have no control over the company via this method...and the Russians like “free-market”...especially when the EU looks bad.
“Then it would appear that the correct course of action would be to not write for Windows.
Orrr, you could get the government to make them show you their APIs.”
—
So someone ask ‘what has ms ever don e thats wrong’ I answer and in response I get ‘so what’
> So someone ask ‘what has ms ever don e thats wrong’ I answer and in response I get ‘so what’
Really, what kind of sin are we talking about here? I guess the perfect company would write open source software, dedicate an paid army to make sure it’s always perfect and cutting edge and of course not charge a cent for it.
Next thing you’ll be telling that there are bugs in software.
Kakes plenty of sense, to me.
Thanks.
“Are you upset because people mostly prefer MS over the alternatives?”
No, you haven’t been paying attention to what I’ve been saying. I’m “upset” because the general public, due largely to computer illiteracy, has allowed proprietary MS formats to become de facto *public* standards. That means that I have no choice but to buy their crap software if I want to communicate with other people.
Actually, I’ve been lucky enough to avoid MS Office for everything except Powerpoint. My workplace insists on Powerpoint, unfortunately, so I need to maintain an entire PC with MS Office just for Powerpoint. Otherwise, I do everything else with my unix workstation.
I have heard that Google is coming out soon with an online competitor to ppt. I can’t wait.
Too bad you can't get your company to provide you with a laptop or something to do that stuff on.
“ALL business look to new markets. Even within “Windows”, there are new ways to do old jobs. New applications. New technolgies. Remember when TCP/IP was new (to the desktop)? Should MS have stayed out of that?”
No, but they shouldn’t be allowed to leverage their monopoly to control public standards. TCP/IP was implemented as an open standard when the Internet backbone was dominated by unix. Had it been invented or co-opted by MS (by adding proprietary “extensions”), you would not be able to access the general Internet without MS software. Is that what you want?
MS is constantly trying to pull tricks like that — and the scary thing is that they are almost big enough to get away with it. If they were allowed, they would bastardize http and html protocols, for example, so you could only use them with their software.
You may think I am paranoid, but we are darn lucky that MS didn’t get heavily involved in the Internet until open standards had a chance to take hold. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to access it without their software.
That means, by the way, that FR would probably not run on Linux as it does. Instead, FR would be paying the Microsoft tax. Do you think that FR has too much money and MS doesn’t have enough? Then why would you want FR to pay a tax to Microsoft?
“Too bad you can’t get your company to provide you with a laptop or something to do that stuff on.”
Actually, my company does provide me with the computer I need to run ppt. It doesn’t come out of my pocket, but it is money that my company should not need to spend nonetheless.
Years ago I worked for a University and they made me take a Mac Powerbook to do some stuff with. After a few years they made a shift from Apple to IBM PC and the Powerbook became useless. I've always been given PC laptops since.
Ditto that, look at the latest F1 fine for the McLaren/Mercedes Team for allegedly stealing racing technology from Ferrari to the tune of $100 Million Dollars!
No, its not. I know of nobody with a cable or better connection that use a relay mail server from their ISP account to send messages via their company mail server or their private accounts.
e.g. My wife uses her apple mail client to send mail via her google, yahoo, and a private account on a mail server related to her job, all of these smtp right to those servers.
Most people use either their ISP's server or web based mail.
The trend of using web based mail clients is declining, as evidenced by yahoo and others opening up pop and imap for clients to pull down mail. you used to not be able to pull mail from them in this manner.
What I said was that it is possible for ISPs to block unintentional mail servers, in other words, spam zombies.
And if you had followed the thread you would see a zombie is *not* a mail server its a mail client. Sending mail to other domains is generally not the job of mail servers (unless maybe your server is exchange) its the job of mail clients. If my ISP is NEWB.com when I sent a mail to JS.com from my client I never talk to NEWB.com I make a connection to JS.com on port 25 (remote) and port 12007 (random) on my client.
Now if you want ISP's to force you t orelay through their mail server unless you sign up for smtp access good luck. Firstly (because such networks are generally DHCP) they would have to do this at Data Link layer which means they would have to do an inspection of *every* FRAME sent on that subnet to inspect the MAC address!
I can only suggest that the people reading this thread take a look at their mail configuration. There's usually an entry for SMTP server, and it's usually filled in with with the ISP's server.
If you look at incoming mail headers, they are generally sent from an ISP server, not some transient IP address.
“If you look at incoming mail headers, they are generally sent from an ISP server, not some transient IP address.”
Look at this:
root@Linux telnet mail.somedomain.com 25
Trying 10.10.10.10...
Connected to mail.somedomain.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 mail.somedomain.com ESMTP Exim 4.04 Wed, 13 Nov 2002 16:27:42 -0700
HELO mail.someotherdomain.com
250 mail.somedomain.com Hello mail.someotherdomain.com [10.10.10.20]
MAIL FROM:Jim@someotherdomain.com
250 OK
RCPT TO:Joe@somedomain.com
250 OK
DATA
354 Enter message, ending with “.” on a line by itself
Subject:Test Message
This is a test message.
.
250 OK: queued as 18C6vd0005Ey-00
QUIT
221 mailhub.somedomain.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host
root@Linux:/
This is what goes on under the hood from the client. The ‘From’ part of the mail header is nothing but what the client inserts into the smtp session. This is why a poorly configure mail server can take messages from a domain that it does not verify because mail is not typically delivered from a mail server but from the mail client!
Please read this again: I can without a mail server or even a mail client send email! I can do it via a telnet prompt and proper knowledge of smtp syntax. The onus of filtering out the crap is on the mail server to which the message is bound not the source.
—
Sorry about the last format there were some greater and less thans in the telnet snippit that made FR try to post it as html
You say the responsibility for filtering spam is the responsibility of the receiver rather than the sender. Fine, but I have observed a small server receive something like 50,000 spams a day. These can be filtered, but it occupies an extroadinary amount of resources. The only practical approach is simply to drop any message not addressed to a valid user. That eliminates about 98% of all spam, but it means you can’t send delivery failure notices.
Your example of sending mail directly is beside the point. No ordinary person sends mail that way. Again, I invite people to look at their email configuration. Nearly everyone has their email client configured to send mail through their ISP’s server.
No, I'm trying to help you understand how email works so when you say 'well just block port 25' you have some way to gauge (a) The implication of such an action (b) the ineffectiveness of such actions with some level understanding.
as far as filtering its the responsibility of Both:
Senders: keep your machines patched: Home users just let the default auto update do its thing, Companies for the love of pete get SUS working and set up your corporate network.
Receivers (Mail servers): Practice basic mail filtering and setting up quarantines. Its not hard nor expensive
Fine, but I have observed a small server receive something like 50,000 spams a day.
Sounds about right, I ran a server with about 4-5 hundred users that was 60-70% incoming spam.
That eliminates about 98% of all spam, but it means you can’t send delivery failure notices.
Well if a server send a no such user the sender (if they have sent a proper smtp header with their true address will get a message from most mail server. it will look something like this
Server replied: 553 5.3.0 ... No such user here
Your example of sending mail directly is beside the point.
No, its really not. This discussion started with *don't let people send out on port 25*, actually I think you said don't let them receive on 25 but you have now been corrected that such a lock down would not help with zombie spam. If youre backing away from that position fine we can have a good discussion about other means.
Again, I invite people to look at their email configuration.
Only if they *use* their ISP as their email provider. If they are a college student, use a work email, or if they use multiple accounts on servers like google and yahoo and want a central client to manage them then no, they probably don't relay through their ISP and why would they? ISP's for the most part *dont* block outgoing smtp and its more complicated and risky to set up a third party mail server to relay your mail.
No ordinary person sends mail that way.
Yea, There is a Google and yahoo smtp tool for apples mail client because mac folks are know to all be super technical folks, just ask my 60+yo mother... For the average user its far easier to simply type smtp.google.com in the smtp field of a mail client then to set up a really and if you think otherwise youre seriously deluded..
Server replied: 553 5.3.0 ... No such user here
There are all kinds of approaches to filtering spam, but the most common kind of spam involves sending messages with 50 or more recipients, names drawn from a dictionary of common first names.
Responding to such a message simply provides the sender with information.
1) Most spam sent nowadays is from bots who themselves don't have a mail server to the error message will timeout and disappear in the ether
2) The Spam sent from dedicated spam server generally don give you a well formed and correct header, they don't want you to know where the spam came from! So like #1 the message will have nowhere to go and die of old age in the ether
3) The few, and I mean very few, spammers who send mail to you from a legit mail server with a proper return address end up on the RBL within a week! and so long as you keep your RBL up to date they wont be a problem for very long.
4) The days of spammers probing for legit address in the manner you described ended at least five years ago. Im sure there is a straggler out there but it takes far more time and effort for them to work that way than it does just to keep sending out to huge list.
There is some legitimacy to saying 'dont tell them if they failed' and its not an entirely a bad idea to set things up that way just out of practice (just like when you code you dont tell someone 'wrong password' you tell them 'invalid login information'). Less info given out is a good thing.
I posted the error code to you because thats how most mail servers behave..
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