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1. Comment - EU: Remove Media Player from Windows

   (Dec 23, 2004 - 9:29 AM)

   I think we'll all agree, that a completely free market could prove dangerous -- if North Korea or Iraq could easily and freely buy nuclear weapons, or if anyone could buy anthrax off a street vendor for example. We place restrictions on the free market (which I think should be as few and as narrow as possible) to accomodate for certain dangers.
   
   One of the dangers of free market lays in monopolies. I think it's reasonable to assume, that if OPEC countries decided to raise the prices for crude oil threefold, many strong economies could easily collapse, including those of the US and EU.
   
   Microsoft isn't just any OS software vendor -- it's the leading one, and one leading by an enormous margin, exceeding 90% of the desktop market. For most practical application this equates with a monopoly.
   
   A monopoly (as in "all power in one hands") is inherently dangerous. There are of course reasonable alternatives to using Windows (MacOS and Linux, et al.) but again, if Microsoft decided to make it very difficult for all it's users to continue using it -- as easy as not releasing patches for the next bugs found in Windows OS -- millions of people around the world could face an imminent threat to their way of life. That is why we regulate the markets.
   
   Of course, this regulation is not perfect. I for one would rather opt for Microsoft to include competing products with its OS and offering the user a choice at installation -- "Would you like the IE browser, or Firefox? Do you prefere WMP or iTunes?" -- but that would also present us with dozens of problems, one of which would be choosing the products to bundle, and the ones to leave out.
   
   While I agree that users can download and use alternative browsers and media players, Microsoft should be controlled. If not, they could gradually make it virtually impossible for other companies to create alternative applications. Not releasing the full API to Windows allowed them to grant Office and Outlook functionalities that other vendors were unable to use. Was that fair?
   
   Yeah, yeah, I know, the world isn't fair and we have to live with it. But we've created whole civilisations trying to change that. Remember, there's nothing inherent in a murder that results in me being locked up in prison. It's an idea we've made up to make the world a bit more fair. It's idealistic, but it works.
   
   So while I think we'll all agree that the EU-Microsoft decision was far from perfect, it's the best we've got for now.