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scottie on 25 February 2010
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Kasz216 said:
scottie said:
Kasz - that's all well and good, but hardly relevant under EU or American law*. Using the fact that you have a monopoly in one area to bring about a monopoly in another area is legally defined as anti-competitive behaviour. Or are you trying to argue that it is illegal but moral?

* Good luck taking a large company to court in the US of A though

(a)I actually don't think it was illegal under europeon law either, but just done for political reasons agaisnt microsoft.

(b)A internet browser in a computer is no different than a radio in a car.

Also to make actions illegal based soley on the size of their company and buisness and not based on the merits of the actions themselves is asinine.

(a) "[prohibited are]...all agreements between undertakings, decisions by associations of undertakings and concerted practices which may affect trade between Member States and which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the common market..." - Article 81 EC (European Union law)

 

Bundling IE with windows prevented Netscape from competing with IE and restricted the competition provided by FF,Opera,Chrome etc. So it clearly is against EU law.

 

(b) Agreed. So if any particular car company had a monopoly in the European union, it is quite possible that they would be forbidden from manufacturing their own cd players (which few car companies do anyway) and offering them as the only preinstalled option in all their cars. I fail to see the relevance of the comparison though

 

Ahh, perhaps they are asinine, if I were to argue that I would claim that we must judge people not on their actions, but on the effects of their actions. Apple bundling Imacs with Safari doesn't cause an internet browser monopoly, MS bundling IE with windows does, so even though their action is the same, the effect is different, but as I said before, that is really an 'illegal but moral' argument.