Thats not a fine... THIS is a fine..
 

MS to pay $1.4b.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7266629.stm

I'm not sure if I actually agree with all of this. I mean competition is competition and free market is free market and I don't see the EU going after anyone else who does the same things.

Says who? Nobody actually promised to pay up. And the only reason this "fine" is so much is because they refused to pay the previous "fine".

And even if they DO pay, that kind of money is just operating expenses for Microsoft. They make enough profit continuing their monopoly to pay those fines easy money.

I will say, though, that their intransigence makes Apple look more like a viable option.

Free market means that you compete based on the quality and cost of your products and services. That's not at all what Microsoft does. Leveraging your market dominance in one area to squeeze competitors in another area is the opposite of free market competition.

The fine is too low, and they deserve a similar one here in the US.

So, the fine is for tie-ins with their media player and including a web browser with their system. And you see, this worries me, because I know of another company that does the exactly same thing... I hope Apple was paying attention.

Yeah, *COUGH* iPod + iTunes *COUGH*

The EU is being dumb. I don't see anything wrong with bundling your products to make them work together. What I do see wrong is bundling your products and making them work with nothing other than your products, which by their logic Apple should be sued as well. Also, so should Novell, Citrix, and every other technology company:rolleyes:

No, that is not correct. The new fine is for Microsoft's noncompliance with previous demands to end anticompetitive practices.

The older fine had two parts. The most important was because Microsoft was not allowing other companies to have the technical information necessary to allow them to write products that can interoperate with Windows. So Microsoft was ordered to release technical information to other companies. They did not do this.

The second part was because Microsoft leveraged their monopoly status by refusing to allow hardware manufacturers to sell a version of Windows without Windows Media Player, which in turn forced other media player companies such as Real to not be able to compete. Microsoft was ordered to sell a version of Windows without WMP, but they sold it for the same price as the version WITH WMP, which was recently judged as non-adequate for compliance.

Cite: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a7588d2-e...0779fd2ac.html
Cite: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...28/2174694.htm

That is completely unrelated in any way to the bundling of Windows Media Player and Windows. Windows runs just fine without Windows Media Player. The iPod does not run without iTunes. Apple must bundle iTunes (or a similar program) with the iPod, otherwise they don't have a product.

Nobody is saying that all bundling is anticompetitive. You are making a straw man argument.

Trevor

Trevor,

I am not going to argue this, but it is the same thing, just like the itunes+quicktime bundle. They are cornering a market and allowing no third party access to it. Microsoft may be the bigger fish in the pond at the moment, but sooner or later they will look at Apple with their monopoly on ipods and itunes.

Doesn't MS have a music player as well, and aren't there other ways to deliver music besides through iTunes music store?

People are choosing to buy iPods, which work only with iTunes, because they want an iPod. That's not a monopoly, it's a popular product. If one wants to break this "monopoly," one simply buys another music player that will work with lots of other music vendors. Trevor's distinctions are valid, imo.

you know I am secretly gutted that no one has spotted my clever Crocodile Dundee reference in the title of this thread..

Phil,

Perhaps you are right, but when Apple tries to make it so iPods owners can not download music from other services to their ipod, and that only itunes works with the ipod, and doesn't support every format out there, what choice do you have? Is that not the same thing?

I haven't bought an ipod yet, not because I don't like them. I think they are great products. I just plain out hate iTunes. I don't want to use it and I don't want to be forced to use it. yes there are third party with ipod and all the one's I have tried don't really work that well. That is because Apple will not release any source code at all to allow third party to develop for either, and why would they when they are making millions of dollars off of it?

Here is the thing i don't understand. So, windows bundles IE and WMP with their OS, which I think are two bloated crappy programs, so I download free open source alternatives that run fine. So, I don't get it when Real player cries about how it can't compete. WMP sucks, and you can't even play a DVD movie out of the box with it unless you download a third party codec. If real player really made a superior product (which their media player also sucks) then people would download it. I mean Firefox and VLC are two prime examples of third party which flourish because of how crappy software is out of the box with windows. I haven't used WMP or IE in years, but every major release I test it out, and I tested it out with vista and got the same results. Had to download a DVD codec to play a DVD movie out of the box - wow, not impressed.

Apple bundles quicktime + itunes on their downloads now for windows, forcing you to install both. I don't really like quicktime either, and I don't want it on my system. I am not defending Microsoft by any means I am just saying every company does this. How about people who don't own iPods but own another MP3 player and want to use music from the ITMS? Does Apple release its DRM code to third party?

I don't see a difference in any of this really, it all seems like they are all trying to corner a market to me.

So, I see you've played knifey spoony before!

Tom, the difference is that if you want an iPod, you know that the software it works with is iTunes and that only. Apple doesn't prevent you from downloading music from other vendors; you just have to use iTunes to sync your music to iPod. Controlling syncing linkage doesn't seem so unusual to me, much less specialized software to work with certain hardware.

The only reason the term "monopoly" is being thrown around concerning iPods/iTunes is because the product is so popular. I'm not seeing "unfair competitive practices" here.

Phil,

The same logic can be used to argue the other side. If you wan windows you know you are getting windows media player and IE. I still don't quite grasp how they are truly different. I see what you are saying, but to me its almost the same thing just accomplished by a different method. Apple is killing every other online service because they are locking down the market. They just reversed the way they did it. Does that make them genius? Does it make them void to the laws? Are they exploiting the laws on purpose this way?

You are not seeming to see the enormous difference between bundling (which nobody is objecting to) and leveraging a monopoly in one market to gain a monopoly in another market. iTunes & iPod is NOT leveraging, it's bundling iTunes (which is required by the iPod) with the iPod. You can't sell the iPod without a music library program, so Apple includes one.

If it will help you, I'll gladly give you an analogy.

If you buy one of those "Scrubbing Bubbles" automatic shower cleaners, it will come with your first two bottles of the liquid shower cleaner solution. As it's required to have the solution in order to use the shower cleaner, they are bundled together. I'm not aware of anybody who objects to this bundling. Another example is buying a razor and getting the blade refills bundled with it. Gillette may be the most popular razor company in the US, but nobody is objecting to them bundling blade refills with their razors.

This is a completely different situation than what AT&T used to do before the 70's or so when they required you to only rent telephones from them. That's a company leveraging their monopoly as the only major US telephone company at that time in order to become a monopoly in the telephone rental market.

Leveraging a monopoly is what Microsoft is doing. Bundling is what Apple is doing.

Trevor

All of this over IE and WMP? I don't get it they are free products that also come 'bundled'. And on top of that you aren't forced to use them. I don't use them on my windows box.

I can't say I've ever understood the distinction. This forum is frequented by plenty of people who use other browsers over Safari which comes with OSX. Just because IE comes with Windows doesn't mean people won't seek out alternatives. And if IE didn't come with Windows wouldn't people say how can they ship an OS without something as basic as a browser?

ps. That's not a fine... this is a fine.

To expand on this -- iTunes can be considered the "driver" for iPod. Lots of devices have drivers and without them won't work. That didn't prevent Hamrick from selling VueScan as a unifying alternative.

OK, but what about third party MP3 players that can't be used with the ITMS or iTunes itself? Isn't that by design, forcing you to buy an iPod if you want to use iTunes to it's fullest extent?

I mean I am not trying to be an ass here I just can't grasp the differences between what MS got fined for, and what every other technology company does as a standard in their business model.

iTunes is a library program for the iPod. Of course you can't use a third party MP3 player with it. You can't use the Logitech mouse driver with your Microsoft mouse either.

Nobody objects to Microsoft bundling their mouse driver with their MS Intellimouse. The fact that Microsoft's mouse driver gives you more functions than, say, Macally's mouse driver is just good competitive business practice on Microsoft's part, and nobody is going to be attacking them for THAT specific act of bundling. It is not the bundling that is the problem.

If a third party MP3 player was better, they would include their own music store. Doesn't Zune have their own library software and music store, for example? If they do, that would be good business practice on Microsoft's part. And wholly different than the bad business practices that they have where they leverage their monopoly in one area to gain a monopoly in another area.

Trevor

I hear you, and I think it would be great if Apple sold drivers for third-party MP3 players to work with iTunes. iPod sales are based more on the quality of the product and so I don't think sales would fall. As things stand, however, it is possible to purchase products from ITMS and load them onto 3rd party players, only an extra step or two is required. What 3rd party owners are missing is the convenience of a direct sync with iTunes; they're not missing out on ITMS products.

Re. MS -- as I recall the problem wasn't simply that they bundled IE and WMP with WinOS, it was that the way these two applications were coded, they prevented the installation of competing software (Real Player, Netscape), or broke them when they were installed. Reference. The issue of WinOS being bundled with WMP was part of the complaint, especially since Real Player was free. So was Netscape, Opera, and others, which were not included with WinOS; only IE was. So the virtual monopoly of WinOS insured that only IE and WMP were widely disseminated, thus edging other other free alternatives. These all being MS products, I can actually empathize with MS saying they were under no obligation to include competitor products with WinOS. I can't agree with them sabotaging the installation and performance of competitor products, which was part of the complaint, as was MS forbidding PC makers to bundle alternatives to IE and WMP.

Phil,

Another thing, if I recall correctly, was that MS got sued back in windows 98 for this same thing in the US. They were just then for the first time integrating explorer as part of the OS GUI, and IE was a huge part of it, and they tried to force you to use IE. However, that was a decade ago, and they lost their case in the USA. So, I am failing to understand how Windows XP, and Windows Vista forces you to use IE and WMP, because I don't ever use either in my windows machines. I hate IE with a passion and I think WMP is a chunky crappy resource hog. I almost exclusively use VLC and FireFox on all my machines across the board regardless of OS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Check out the pics of Billy on the wiki page, one of his facial expressions is priceless.

Now, is DRM into play with any of this?

That's because you think of yourself as an average user. What you're not understanding is that it doesn't mean anything that it is easy for you to avoid IE. What matters is that most users cannot avoid it. More importantly, there are many sites that even you cannot avoid using IE with, and that is because of Microsoft's abuse of their monopoly power to avoid real competition.

... and the fines imposed by the US court have yet to be paid.

The EU case relates to the same period and covers MS activities inside the EU - these were not covered by the US case. The latest fines have been imposed due to non-payment by MS of the original fines.

While denying your competitors access to your products/software may be perfectly legal in a free competitive market, it is usually illegal in most capitalist economies when you have a monopoly on the market. Apple does not have a monopoly - MS does/did(?).

um, firefox is the #1 used browser, so it seems the average user, uses firefox.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
IE 6 & 7 combine for more than 50%. So much for the average user.

*sigh*

It is still the number 1 used browser regardless and its numbers grow every month.

Just to throw in my random two since. Are you really popular just because you have to be used? I mean, we all have to go to the dentist sometimes, does that make the dentist popular?

...just attempting some tension diffusing humor, sorry :).

To be fair, iPods can work with software other than iTunes. People use iTunes because they like it best, can't be bothered changing their player's software, or can't be bothered researching available alternatives. On the other hand, iTunes users are, in theory, locked into using iPods as their portable players.

Similarly, Macs can run operating systems other than Mac OS X, but most Mac owners stick with OS X. Macs are not locked into OS X, even if OS X users are, in theory, locked into Macs.

There is some lock-in when it comes to ITMS and iTunes, but even that is limited, since DRMed files can be easily converted to DRM-free files with minimal quality loss, and as Apple offers a larger percentage of their offerings as DRM free iTunes Plus tracks.

Oh, really, I didn't think anyone else's DRM worked in an iPod and that is why there was that lawsuit against apple for it. Though I never followed up on it.

How could Apple be held responsible for not supporting someone else's DRM?

Photek, I think the "That's no... this is a..." has become such a culturally recognised phrase, most of us never even blinked at it. Sorry. :o

No, music from the ITMS only works on iPods, they dont allow anyone else access to that. So, they are doing the same thing because they have already cornered the market on online downloads.

I still don't see a difference from what MS did to what Apple is doing now.

What Apple is doing now:

If you go to almost any site that is not owned/operated by Apple, you can download music that will play on an iPod and/or some other mp3 player. You can also use that music in iTunes or any other music software, assuming it doesn't have somebody else's DRM in it.

Any complications in this system arise solely from DRM, which is imposed not by Apple or other mp3 player manufacturers, but by the recording labels.

What MS was doing and is still doing:

If you go to many sites not owned/operated by MS, they will not work properly unless you are using IE. There is no valid technical reason for this. It is and always has been Microsoft's intention to use proprietary software to lock out fair competition. They have the power to do this because of their monopoly, and for no other reason. It is classic abuse of that power.

Pardon my ignorance, but when someone downloads a song using Limewire, is that copyright infringement?

Usually. The only cases where it would not be copyright infringement would be

1. if the song is in the public domain. This is so rare as to be almost unheard of, but there are a very few songs that have been placed in the public domain. Note that public domain is different from people who allow you to freely copy their songs. People who let you freely copy their songs retain the copyright, but they have granted you a defacto license (see #2 below).

2. if the person downloading the song already has a valid license to the song in another format or has been granted a valid license. Note that some record label folks have made noises indicating that they don't believe that a license for a song in one medium (say, for example cassette) gives anyone a license to have this song in another medium (say, on your computer). This seems to be a minority opinion even in record labels, though, and is not shared by most copyright lawyers NOT in the employ of a record label. Also, US Supreme Court decisions regarding allowing you to make backups of software argues strongly against this minority opinion. It has not been fully tested in court, though.

But yes, 99% of songs downloaded from places like Limewire are pure and unadulterated copyright infringement.

Trevor

iTunes Plus tracks are DRM free 256 kbs AAC files. IIRC, these tracks make up about a quarter of the iTunes library.

FairPlay tracks do have DRM, and are only 128 kbs AAC. These can be burned to a CD and reimported to iTunes without DRM, as AAC, MP3 or lossless. There is a minimal loss of quality, but let's face it, audiophiles don't typically buy their music in a compressed format.

Nearly all players will play MP3 files, and most support the superior AAC format. DRM sucks, no doubt about it, but we can hardly blame Apple for that. How many other major corporations have taken a public stance against DRMed music like Apple has?

Thanks Trevor.

Yeah but if I get an iRiver or any other MP3 player I can't use the ITMS because its DRM only works with iPods. So, if I want to use the largest online store of music I am forced to use an iPod.

Every technology company does these things guys, and their DRMs aren't compatible with anyone else's.

The thing i dont get is how come limewire is still in service, and hasnt been shut down?

No, you're forced to use iTunes software. You can use any player you want.

If you use iTunes and downloaded their DRM music, you are forced to use an Ipod, unless that is no longer the case? Right or wrong? You can't purchase music from the ITMS and load it on other media players, unless that has changed.

Would iRiver, or other mp3 players, be able to utilize some Microsoft software, on a winbox, as we would use iTunes for managing songs, and then use that software to put the songs on the player?

I once had an mp3 player, the brand of course I can't recall, which used compact flash cards to store the songs. It came with some proprietary software with which I was able to either drag songs from where iTunes had stored them on my old OS 9.1 powermac, or navigate to them and click on them. This added them to a playlist which could then be copied to the compact flash cards.

It wasn't as convenient as an iPod, but it worked pretty well. The sound quality of my second gen nano far exceeds that of the old mp3 player, and having an extensive library of songs at the touch of the scroll wheel is quite nice.

Do other mp3 players' software enable one to do something similar now on a mac?

No, but the iRiver works with a third party company like Real, to download their music for example.

I listed the easy steps necessary to play ITMS tracks on a non-Apple player previously in this thread. Furthermore, those steps are unnecessary for about 25% of the ITMS library, which do not contain DRM.

Went googling for mp3 players compatible with the mac.

Found this url for the Creative Nomad, which mentions a freeware app enabling its use with Panther and Tiger.

Found on Apple's website, this page regarding third party mp3 devices, which describes converting the aac files to mp3, so that they can be loaded into third party devices. It also lists compatible devices. Quite a long list.

C/Net Reviews had this to say about third party players for the mac. If I follow it correctly, DRM protected files can't be played on these players, but files that were stored on the computer from CDs can be. On page 2 of this thread, J Christopher mentions burning Fairplay tracks onto a CD, then importing the tracks from the CD, so that there is no longer an associated DRM. (did I say this correctly?)

Googling found quite a few more interesting sites.

I think when I'd had that other mp3 player years ago, I'd had no problem using the files stored in the library by iTunes because all songs had come from imported CDs.

And today, all my songs are from CDs. I've yet to use the iTunes Music Store, as I prefer having the whole album. In the days of vinyl, I rarely purchased 45rpm and primarily purchased 33 1/3 albums.

Yes, I think so. It's not as convenient as syncing an iPod and iTunes, but it works, and creates a backup playable in nearly any CD player.

Fighting for open standards
 

I couldn’t agree more, cwt. A free market necessitates effective antitrust laws and practices in order to avoid de-facto monopolies. (A monopolized market is UN-free.)

In Norway there is a huge stink right now about Microsoft’s highly questionable strategies for fighting against the government’s preference for implementing open standards with regards to publishing documents on the Internet. (In other words ODF instead of Microsoft’s Office Open XML.) The leading business daily (Dagens Næringsliv) has had a number of articles on this, as have other newspapers and publications.

I hope to get back to you on that one as soon as time allows -- perhaps in a different thread.

Respectfully,
:) ArcticStones

DVD-Jon offers a Double Twist
 

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One more thing: You may wish to take a look at the latest development from my compatriot, DVD-Jon -- Double Twist software.

Here is Wired’s article on Double Twist.

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