Micosoft in legal case - shock

[kingandy]

Guh.

Microsoft is accused of "abusing its dominant market position" by bundling Windows Media Player with the OS.  Their defence?

Linda Averett of Microsoft told the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg on Friday that many websites and software products would not work without the Windows Media Player.

She said that without the player, customers who buy computers with Windows "are very likely to feel deceived when they find that websites don't work".

Yeah.  No shit.  Well maybe you shouldn't be encouraging people to build websites that are wholly reliant on your software then, eh?  That's abuse of your market position, right there.

Comments

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

Indeed. They invent these things called standards for a reason. You should read about the BBC and the problems they came across when deciding which streaming video format to use. It was one of the reasons they started the Dirac project.

Luckily now I can play Windows Media, Quicktime and the rest with one open-source plugin under firefox. There are still sites around that won't even try and give up if you haven't got IE!

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

philoko used to work for BBC new media. He knows all about the RealPlayer streaming bollocks that the BBC has had to put up with from RM.