and this is what bill has to say to the microsoft employees:
As you’ve probably seen, the European Court of First
Instance has issued its ruling on the European
Commission’s 2004 decision against Microsoft. The
Court ruled in favor of the Commission on the two
major issues in the case:
1. Integration – Was it acceptable under European law
for us to include media playback functionality in
Windows without also offering Windows without media
playback? The Court upheld the Commission’s position
that we should have offered Windows with and without
media playback.
2. Compulsory licensing – Were we obligated under
European law to license certain Windows protocols to
competitors for implementation in their competing
products? The Court upheld the Commission’s position
that Microsoft is required to license these protocols.
While this is a disappointing outcome, we have already
been living under the Commission’s decision for more
than three years, and we have taken steps to try to
fully comply. We created versions of Windows XP and
Windows Vista without media player capabilities, we
established a licensing program for our protocols, and
we paid the fine in 2004. In addition, we’ve already
adopted voluntary standards for how we integrate new
features into our products in order to preserve
competitive opportunities, and we continue to actively
pursue interoperability because it’s what our
customers need.
There may be additional steps necessary to ensure that
we are in full compliance with European law. We are in
close contact with the European competition
authorities and we will be discussing this with them
in the days to come.
While we had hoped for a different outcome, it is
important to recognize that the Court’s judgment
should not adversely affect our customers in the
short-run. Today’s ruling was very clear that we can
still offer our full-featured products to our
customers. While we do have concerns about how the
legal precedents in the Commission’s decision and
today’s ruling will affect innovation and intellectual
property, we can still provide our customers with the
same products, services and support that we were
providing prior to today’s decision.
I want to thank our legal team for its hard work, and
all of the developers, testers, technical
documentation specialists and other people throughout
the company who have done so much to support the legal
and communications efforts around this case. I
especially want to thank all of Microsoft’s employees
in Europe for your understanding and support through
this lengthy case.
The bottom line is that we will continue to work to
resolve these issues. In the meantime, let’s go
forward and rededicate ourselves to our mission of
helping people and businesses realize their potential,
in Europe and around the world.
Bill
the Wii is an epidemic.
