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Date: 1998-04-27
Weltweit: Ermittlungen gegen Micro/soft-.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- Weltweit: Ermittlungen gegen Micro/soft Wo weltweit welche Untersuchungen der Microsoft/Geschäftspraktiken laufen, hat die heutige Ausgabe des Microsoft Monitor aufgelistet. The Micro$oft Monitor, Issue No. 28 April 27, A Global Perspective on Microsoft While most attention on Microsoft has been focused on investigations by the United States Department of Justice, the reality is that Microsoft is facing legal investigations of its predatory and monopolistic practices from governments around the world. This issue of the Microsoft Monitor will detail some of those investigations. With over 50% of its sales occurring outside the United States -- a share that is growing each year -- legal challenges to Microsoft in other nations are as important as the Justice Department's investigation here in the United States. This article was prepared by Nathan Newman, NetAction's Project Director for the Consumer Choice Campaign. Contact Nathan with questions or comments. Email: nathan@netaction.org or <mailto:nathan@netaction.org> Microsoft's global alliances and deals are as pervasive as they are because those foreign sales are much more lucrative for the company. Microsoft generates about $500,000 in revenue from each employee in the United States, but almost $1 million in revenue from every overseas employee. This is a phenomenal return, and sales are growing 50% a year in places like Africa & the Middle East, and doubling each year in countries like China. This global growth is a crucial part of Microsoft's long-term monopoly strategy, so NetAction lauds the investigations by foreign antitrust authorities and urges the Justice Department to coordinate its investigations with those other governments. ===== The European Union Since last fall, the European Commission -- what the European Union calls its set of government agencies -- has been paralleling the Justice Department's investigations into Microsoft. The European Commission's first area of concern were contracts with Internet Service Providers which required exclusive promotion of Microsoft browsers. In early March, with the U.S. Justice Department making similar investigations, Microsoft altered its contracts to give ISPs the freedom to support alternative browsers. The European Commission also played an important role in forcing Microsoft to stop interfering with the development of a key UNIX competitor to its Windows NT operating system. Back in the 1980s, Microsoft had developed its own version of UNIX called Xenix. A part of that code was incorporated into a version of UNIX owned by AT&T at the time. When the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) acquired that version of the UNIX operating system in 1995, Microsoft used court orders to not only collect royalties on the old code but prevent SCO from developing more advanced versions of UNIX that would no longer use Microsoft's code. With Microsoft's legal demands hampering SCO's ability to innovate around its operating system, and costing SCO $4 million per year in royalties to Microsoft, SCO filed a complaint with the European Commission in January 1997. (Microsoft's actions are ironic in light of the company's complaints about legal actions restraining its innovation.) The Commission agreed that Microsoft's legal actions had "hampered (SCO's) ability to compete with Microsoft's own products, particularly Windows NT." Before the Commission took final action, Microsoft, in November, notified the Commission that it would waive both royalties and requirements that its code be incorporated in future versions of UNIX worldwide. This is an important victory in assuring that UNIX remains a viable competitor to Microsoft on business machines. ===== Japan Japan began its investigations of Microsoft later than both the United States and Europe, but Japan's Fair Trade Commission has made up for it in the aggressiveness of its efforts. In early January, amid suspicion that the company was violating anti-monopoly laws, investigators from Japan's FTC searched Microsoft's Tokyo offices. With the evidence they collected, the Fair Trade Commission announced a full scale antitrust investigation of Microsoft. Japan's first major concern parallels the U.S. Justice Department's opposition to Microsoft requiring the "bundling" of the company's Internet Explorer browser as a requirement for computer manufacturers to license Windows 95. The Fair Trade Commission has charged Microsoft with unfairly pressuring those manufacturers. The Japanese government's second major concern focuses on Microsoft's bundling of Office software applications. Microsoft is charged with using the bundling of software to unfairly compete against a Japanese word processor called Itchitaro. Japan is exploring whether Microsoft made installation of Microsoft Word and Excel a precondition with some manufacturers for licensing Windows 95. ===== Brazil While much of the third world has not had the economic or political clout to take on Microsoft, Brazil's Justice Ministry this month opened an investigation into Microsoft's Brazilian subsidiary over alleged violations of antitrust law. Microsoft's Office suite of applications already dominates 95% of the Brazilian market and the newest complaints focus on Microsoft's Money financial software. Microsoft has attempted to lock-up the marketplace by giving its Money software away to Brazilian banks and bundling it with a general package of software for small business. Paiva Piovesan, a local competitor which makes a rival package called Finance for Windows, has charged Microsoft with unfair competition, and the Justice Department has followed up with its own investigation. ===== Israel In Israel, the Antitrust Authority is considering declaring Microsoft a monopoly under Israel law and subjecting it to new restrictions. Authority director David Tadmor sent a letter several months ago to Microsoft and informed it that the authority was considering declaring it a monopoly. The effort was launched in response to complaints from a number of sources regarding Microsoft's activities in Israel. ===== Grassroots Global Activism Even in places where Microsoft has threatened or cajoled support from local governments, grassroots activists are raising concerns about Microsoft. In the Philippines, activists within that nation's Green movement have criticized their own government for accepting $1 million in free software from Microsoft while, at the same time, launching raids on local public schools to root out software piracy at the behest of Microsoft. Accusing the government of being bribed, the Philippine Greens have suggested that, "The government may now hypocritically conduct police raids on others who continue to do as the government did, copying commercial software." Microsoft's competitors and local activists around the world have charged that Microsoft has used anti-piracy campaigns as part of its anti-competitive practices in the third world. One example, uncovered by the magazine Mother Jones, was the case where Antel, the national telephone company of Uruguay, was caught pirating $100,000 of software in 1995 by the Business Software Alliance. At the time, the BSA was funded by Microsoft, Lotus, Novel and other companies. After the BSA launched the legal case against Antel, Microsoft used this as leverage to get Antel to exclusively use Microsoft software -- and then pressured BSA to drop its suit. Lotus and Novell dropped out of the BSA's foreign operations soon after, with Novell citing this and other instances of Microsoft abuse of anti-piracy campaigns as a reason. Many other activists have complained of Microsoft's close collaboration with authoritarian governments. In China, Microsoft in 1996 cooperated with police raids on computer software stores after anti-Beijing phrases were discovered in Microsoft software produced by Taiwanese contractors. Microsoft halted sales of its Chinese-language operating system until the ideological content met with the Chinese government's approval. At least in the case of ideological censorship, Microsoft seemed quite happy to accommodate that government's requests for regulation. ==================================== TIP 4 MB Webspace für ATS 50.- pro Monat, alles inklusive, abholbar sofort http://www.heimatseite.com - -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- edited by Harkank published on: 1998-04-27 comments to office@quintessenz.at subscribe Newsletter - -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- 
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