[tomp]

I think more companies should be fined like this, as a percentage of their anual revenue. Except that I would further increase the percentage - up to 50% or even 100%.

It's very simple: citizens go to jail, companies can't; so we have to make them pay, a lot. When fines are a fixed amount, the corporations have to simply earn more by committing the crime than they would have to pay if caught; banks are very adept at playing this game.

[flexie]

Listen, 50 percent or 100 percent of revenues - that easily leaves you with a bankrupt company. That's not in the interest of consumers.

Microsoft was fined around 1 percent of their global sales for a violation of the terms of a kind of a settlement in an old competition case (antitrust case). Microsoft already knew that if they violated the terms they would be fined up to 10 percent of their global revenues: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-1941_en.htm?local...

Microsoft mostly complied with the terms of the settlement, but not entirely as the OP describes. In that light the 1 percent fine is probably not way off.

[learc83]

>committing the crime

If a someone in a corporation is actually committing a crime , then, yes they can go to jail.

If they have committed some kind of civil offense or if it's a criminal offense with no jail term attached then they don't go to jail. There's nothing special about corporations that prevent the people in charge from serving jail time.

[tomp]

In many cases, it's much easier to prove that a corporation did something illegal than it is to research who exactly in the corporation was responsible (except for the CEO, of course, but to hold the CEO criminally liable for everything a company does would be too open to abuses).

[pasbesoin]

A primary (if often unstated) function of corporations is to diffuse individual responsibility and accountability.

Decisions -- where they are rational -- become a cost/benefit analysis. If you really want to deter the behavior, the costs have to outweigh the benefits. (Perhaps significantly enough to outweigh various arguments about what the true costs and benefits might be.)

And... this still says nothing about the damage that may have been caused to victims, and compensation for same. (For example, take someone's health away in certain fashions, and no amount of money can replace it.)

[lifeisstillgood]

Serving time for a purely corporate offence is very very rare. Health and safety negligence is most common, but even the horse war scandal in Europe (where unfit horses were sold as beef and then into ready meals) it's unlikely and people there committed fraud as part of course of business

[learc83]

That's a matter of prosecutorial discretion. The point is they can serve jail time. What's the point of changing the law so that they can be fined 100% of revenue. The same discretion will still apply.

[brg1007]

This fine is plain stupid. Why EU doesn't fine Google for the same thing on Android. Android is in a monopoly position in EU and I do not saw any broswer choice screen when I first start my Android phone.

[masklinn]

> Android is in a monopoly position in EU

Not even close. It's in a majority position but nowhere near a monopoly.

Although it can probably be considered to be a "dominant position", but then come the next part:

1. Has somebody complained

2. Is "Android" using its dominant position to distort the market

[tomp]

Well, the original ruling may have been stupid and might have become irrelevant by now. But the fine is very reasonable: MS didn't do what the courts ordered it to do. Plain and simple.

[arethuza]

Android's 61% market share in Europe is hardly a monopoly:

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-raises-market-share-to-5...

[lifeisstillgood]

The browser choice option was merely one agreed solution to the problem that as owner of the ecosystem (windows) MA was not letting any other browsers in.

The highly competitive marketplace for mobile devices gives you as a consumer a wide variety of choices of operating system, and each operating system (apart iOS) is adjusted by the operator to best fit their idea of market

You can choose devices, you can choose different versions and setups of android. There is a competive market

The fact that its not free as in speech is not the problem (it should be but)

[martinced]

You're seriously confused as to what a monopoly is and what a monopoly implies.

There's nothing wrong with having a monopoly. What is, however, illegal is to abuse your monopoly to keep and extend your monopoly to other domains.

Btw Google / Android isn't near anywhere a monopoly in the smartphone / tablet market.

What would be illegal would be, for example, Google using its search engine to eliminate any mention of the word "Apple" and of the "apple.com" domain or, worse, only allowing access to negative criticism of Apple products. But they aren't doing that (at least not that we know of).

On the contrary MS has been officially judged has being a monopolist abusing its power to try to keep and extend its monopoly. Both in an US judgement and in an European judgement.

Heck, even selling the Xbox at a loss for years and years while living on monopoly money is a dubious way to enter a market (but personally I wouldn't mind if MS faded into irrelevancy and had only its Xbox division doing fine ; )

[gjulianm]

Google / Android + Chrome is not a monopoly in the same sense that Windows + Internet Explorer isn't neither. Maybe in other ways MS has abused its position, but not in IE. At least in my opinion.

Why? Because IE was a default browser, all the OS have a default browser. Microsoft didn't prohibited anybody from installing another browser.

If we consider that a monopoly and something punishable, then Android + Chrome is another monopoly. In EU, Android has over 61% market share [1]. And every Android comes with its default browser. And as your parent said, I don't see any ballot screen telling me to choose an alternative browser, but Google doesn't keep you from installing other browsers. Is the exact same situation.

[1] http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-raises-market-share-to-5...

[jsnell]

Actually, Microsoft did contractually prohibit OEMs from pre-installing other browsers and making them the default instead.

[gjulianm]

Never heard of that. Source?

[stordoff]

Mainly the US anti-trust case <http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm>. Example:

> At the same time, Compaq removed the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop of its Presarios and replaced it with a single icon [for Navigator]

>When Microsoft learned of Compaq's plans for the Presario, it informed Compaq that it considered the removal of the MSN and Internet Explorer icons to be a violation of the OPK process by which Compaq had previously agreed to abide. [...] Finally, after months of unsuccessful importunity, Microsoft sent Compaq a letter on May 31, 1996, stating its intention to terminate Compaq's license for Windows 95 if Compaq did not restore the MSN and Internet Explorer icons to their original positions. Compaq's executives opined that their firm could not continue in business for long without a license for Windows, so in June Compaq restored the MSN and IE icons to the Presario desktop.

[toyg]

The whole antitrust case in the States was about that: MS abusing his status to force OEMs not to install another browser.

[brg1007]

As gjulianm stated, Android is a monopoly in EU. So I do not see any valid argument that Android should be punished the same way as Microsoft is/was.

[masklinn]

> As gjulianm stated, Android is a monopoly in EU.

Android is — at best — in a dominant position, but Android also isn't a monolithic entity.

Then comes the second problem: ignoring the non-monolithic nature of Android where e.g. Samsung and HTC — while all using the same base system — compete with one another) being a natural monopoly (or even in a dominant position) is not illegal, abusing such a position to distort other markets is.

If you are an EU citizen and can make such a case, you should feel free to bring it up to EU competition courts. But you have to make the case first.

[Tichy]

So you would send people to jail for not giving dumb users a browser choice that is only going to confuse them anyway?

[tomp]

Laws should be followed. If laws are bad, you should change the laws, not disregard them.

[kabdib]

Some laws you have an obligation to not follow.

[slevin063]

that is upto the court to deicde, tomp got a point that since companies cannot be jailed, they should be fined a percentage of their revenue!

[Tichy]

This case was a percentage of their revenue? But Tom called for 50% or 100% which seems excessive for such a nonsensical law.

[tomp]

I was pointing out a general principle, not this specific case. What I had in mind is stricter punishment for more black-and-white crimes: not paying employee taxes/social contributions, not issuing receipts and thus avoiding sales tax, etc. I'm pretty sure that if fines were this high, compliance would become very high as well.