“Microsoft Corp. put itself on a collision course with European Union authorities on Wednesday in a dispute over the powers of a trustee who is to make sure the software giant stops violating antitrust law,” David Lawsky reports for Reuters. “The EU executive Commission has ruled that Microsoft abused its monopoly on computer software and told it to change its business practices. A trustee was supposed to monitor that the company lived up to this ruling.”
“But the Commission said Microsoft’s proposal for the trustee was unacceptable, a charge the company rejects. ‘We have officially informed Microsoft that their proposal on the monitoring trustee is not acceptable,’ Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said. ‘Essentially they wished to have a veto on what issues the monitoring trustee could examine.’ Microsoft immediately rejected the Commission’s interpretation of its own decision,” Lawsky reports.
“At this point, the two sides do not even agree on whether they are close to an agreement. Microsoft said the two sides are ‘very close,’ while a Commission official said Wednesday’s notice would never be issued if the two positions were close,” Lawsky reports. “That decision also ordered Microsoft to make a copy of Windows available to computer makers without its Windows Media Player, so computers makers could choose alternative audio-visual software such as RealNetworks Real Player or Apple Computer’s Quicktime.”
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