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Microsoft Court Cases

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by windmill

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I've been living in Europe for a while now. It seems that since the European Union has been bugging Microsoft about Windows Media Player, more and more companies are ganging up on Microsoft. Recently the ECIS (European Commitee for Interoperable Systems) has stared a court case against Micorosoft about the whole Media player thing. ECIS consists of IBM, Nokia, Red Hat, Oracle and Real Networks.
It just so happens that Real received a $ 761 million settlement last year from Microsoft about the whole Media Player thing.
To me it seems that companies are putting too much effort in court cases instead of putting effort in their products. Maybe if Real Player was a better product, I would use it instead of Media Player.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that why don't companies try working harder at making better products instead of taking other companies to court.
Any opinions?

5 replies

by briwlls

I totally agree with your point, Real Player is a nasty program, one in which I never install on my systems.

But more broadly this point is similar to the record industry fighting illegal downloads back in the Napster days, at that time there was not a viable option so stealing for many was the only way to instantly download music you wanted.

iTunes finally provided a good alternative, had the music industry just provided this in the beginning they could have saved millions in attorney fees.

So Apple finally did what you suggest make a good product instead of findng someone to blame for their failures, I hope others follow suit.

by deadly ernest

The problem is that none of them want to use any of the industry standards and they each want to set up their own system as a new industry standard. The biggest complaint I have against MS Media player is why can I have something play in MP7 or MP8 but it will not play in MP10 yet it is a MP format file? Oh and Why is it so hard to back grade from MP10 once it is on the machine?

Also why must a get a different MP upgrade for different operating systems?

I also find it inteesting that MP and Real Player have big troubles playing each other's stuff in Windows, yet you can get Linux media software that will play both without problems.

by windmill

I agree with you 100%. I'm not a Linux fan at all however Microsoft could be a little easier to work with. An industry standard for something like this is a great idea. The world would be a much better place with one format for music such as mp3 and one formnat for video. Be it mov or mpeg or whatever. It's so frustrating when you click on a link in one site and it turns out you need quicktime and on the other site you need Real Player and on the third site you need MP but can't download the correct codec. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Thanks for your reply by the way.

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