EU Ponders New Microsoft Fight
Wired News Report 09:30 AM May, 09, 2006
Microsoft’s new Vista operating system has put the European Commission in a quandary on whether to open a new front against the software giant before a court clarifies the EU antitrust watchdog’s authority.
Rivals such as Google and Adobe are wary of the new version of Windows, set for release early next year.
They could formally ask the Commission to act and it could order changes in Vista, following on its landmark 2004 antitrust decision that found Microsoft muscled out other companies.
But if the Court of First Instance (CFI) were to annul that decision, as Microsoft has asked, that would pull the legal rug out from under the Commission.
The problem is that the ruling by the European Union’s second-highest court may not arrive until after Vista is on the market next year.
The Commission fined Microsoft nearly half a billion euros in its 2004 decision and ordered sanctions, including the sale of a modified version of Windows. Microsoft appealed to the CFI, which heard arguments last month.
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ITunes gets foxy: Apple’s iTunes has started to sell episodes of shows from the Fox television network, the latest major U.S. TV network to reach a deal with Apple’s internet download service.
Shows including 24 and Prison Break, as well as FX Network shows such as The Shield, were available on the download service on Tuesday morning, at $2 per episode.
ITunes has also started to sell episodes of older series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost in Space.
ABC, NBC and CBS, the three other major networks, already sell shows on iTunes. They also redistribute some programming by other means over the internet, including their own websites.
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Computer hijacker gets five years: A 20-year old who prosecutors say highjacked computers to damage computer networks and send waves of spam across the internet was sentenced on Monday to nearly five years in prison.
Jeanson James Ancheta, a well-known member of the Botmaster Underground who pleaded guilty in January to federal charges of conspiracy, fraud and damaging U.S. government computers, was given the longest sentence for spreading computer viruses, federal prosecutors said.
He was sentenced to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner, who also ordered him to pay $15,000 in restitution to the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California, and forfeit to the government some $60,000 in illicit gains.
“Your worst enemy is your own intellectual arrogance that somehow the world cannot touch you on this,” Klausner said in sentencing Ancheta…
