European Sanctions on Microsoft...
...Harm Innovation and Consumers
The European Commission may be trying to punish Microsoft, but its proposals reserve their harshest effects for consumers and small technology companies. The European Commission plans to regulate the future of software development and it will ultimately lead to less innovation and higher software costs for everyone.
While the U.S. settlement found the right balance of promoting competition and innovation, the European Commission is creating an unprecedented regulatory regime that assumes platform innovation is a bad thing. Despite consumer and developer demands, this regulatory regime will make it nearly impossible for Microsoft to add new security features to Windows. Even worse, the precedent will make it difficult for any market-leading company to add new features to dominant products. Under this regime, Nokia could be found liable for integrating instant messaging or imaging software to its market-leading phones.
The European Commission is focusing on Media Player as an application, but forcing Microsoft to take the entire Media Player technology out of Windows removes the safety net for programmers. For example, software developers writing distance learning applications can no longer rely on the fact that Media Player functionality will be in Windows. The cutting of the safety net will result in higher costs for software development and higher costs for consumer software.
While consumers and small software developers lose, the only winners are multi-billion dollar Microsoft competitors, Real Networks and Sun Microsystems, who engineered this case from the beginning. Instead of protecting consumers this ruling serves only to protect competitors from competition. The message from today's decision is forget innovating, start litigating and if you fail in America, try Europe.
For more information or to schedule an interview with Jonathan Zuck, please contact Mark Blafkin at (202) 331-2130 x104 or mblafkin@actonline.org
The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) is a national education and advocacy group for the technology industry. Focusing on the interests of small and mid-size entrepreneurial technology companies, ACT advocates for a “Healthy Tech Environment” that promotes innovation, competition and investment. ACT has been active on issues such as intellectual property, international trade, e-commerce, privacy, tax policy and antitrust. ACT represents nearly 3000 software developers, systems integrators, IT consulting and training firms, and e-businesses from across the country.
