[long] What makes Microsoft's "bizniz®" unethical?
Homer
With the further recent action taken against Microsoft by the EU
antitrust investigators - who Microsoft "supporters" denounce as
"scum", for having the audacity to enforce the law against these
gangsters, it seems the nature of Microsoft's unethical business
practises needs to be spelled out in the simplest terms, so that
these "supporters" might finally understand the "problem".
I'll omit any arguments relating to proprietary licensing, since
I think I've already covered that quite adequately elsewhere, so
instead I'll just concentrate on how Microsoft runs its business
in general, regardless of the nature of the "product".
So here's a simple breakdown:
. Microsoft is a business, and the purpose of any business is to
make money. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, indeed
it is absolutely necessary in a developed society.
. Microsoft competes with other companies for business, in order
to ensure their continued operations. Again, this is perfectly
reasonable and expected. Competition is good and necessary, as
it drives innovation, stems inflation, and facilitates choice.
. Microsoft advertises its products, so that potential customers
will be aware of them, and subsequently buy them. This is also
perfectly reasonable, ostensibly. However, advertising is open
to abusive practises, such as false or misleading claims, or a
more recent development variously called "guerilla" or "viral"
advertising, where supposedly impartial recommendations aren't
impartial at all, but are in fact paid sponsorship. This isn't
ethical business, but it is a sadly common practise. Microsoft
are more guilty of this behaviour than most, in fact they have
refined it into an art form.
. As part of its business strategy, Microsoft combines different
products into "bundles", so that (for example) customers don't
need to obtain a Web browser or a media player before they can
start using their new systems. On the face of it, this seems a
perfectly reasonable thing to do, if the motive were purely an
honourable one. But the fact is that Microsoft do not sell any
of these "bundled" products separately, so this isn't designed
to promote any of those products. But even more substantively,
exactly those same features are available (also for free) from
/other/ places (e.g. Firefox), so the assertion that the whole
purpose of the "bundles" has anything at all to do with either
providing missing functionality /or/ "helping" customers is an
obvious lie. In fact the /only/ reason Microsoft bundles these
products is to /exclude/ others. They make /no/ profit from it
at all, and they need not provide something for free if it can
be obtained elsewhere. Bear in mind, that it /costs/ Microsoft
a huge amount of money to develop these bundled products, that
they then give away for free, even though this is /completely/
unnecessary. So the question is, why?
. In addition to unnecessarily providing free bundles, Microsoft
also unnecessarily develops its own competing /standards/, for
such things as networking and documents, even when those other
standards are Free, work perfectly well, have been established
for years, and precede Microsoft's questionable reinvention of
those standards. Since Microsoft cannot immediately capitalise
on something as intangible as a "standard", again one must ask
the question, why?
. Microsoft maintains a network of so-called "partners". This is
not a typical business to business relationship where one firm
simply touts another for business, but instead it's a means of
/guaranteeing/ loyalty from those firms by means of contracts,
and coercing continued loyalty with the threat that firms will
lose competitiveness with other "partners" if they back out of
this "arrangement". This is a common but nonetheless unethical
business practice, made all the more unacceptable by the sheer
size of Microsoft's "network", that essentially forms a global
monopoly. Western laws dictate that the mere existence of such
monopolies is not a crime, but there must be some demonstrable
/abuse/ of that monopoly to warrant any remedial action. It is
my contention that the means by which Microsoft maintains this
monopoly is inherently unethical, since it has no basis on the
/quality/ of their products, but is instead /enforced/ by this
threat of failure, a threat that only exists because Microsoft
created it in the first place. The result is a business that's
operated like a global racketeering operation, with "partners"
too scared to back out, and customers who are left with little
or no real choices, as no /real/ competition has any chance of
even being established, much less thriving.
. The foundation of Microsoft's monopoly is its operating system
called "Windows" and office productivity suit called "Office".
If it were simply the case that these two products were always
the best examples of their kind, and that customers chose this
software in preference to competing products, for that reason,
then I would see nothing especially unethical about the way in
which Microsoft operates its business, although it would still
be true that they have a monopoly, because this monopoly would
exist for a legitimate reason. But that simply isn't the case.
And this is where we come back to the issues of "bundling" and
"standards". The reason that Microsoft spends a vast amount of
resources unnecessarily creating competing (and even inferior)
standards, is to establish dependence on those standards. This
dependence is then propagated by the distribution of /equally/
unnecessary bundles of free software, which is not designed to
benefit the customer, but is just a delivery vehicle for these
standards, which Microsoft can ensure exclusive rights to with
the use of patents and copyrights. On the other side, there is
Microsoft's network of partners (nearly the whole distribution
channel), ensuring that /Windows/ is bundled with nearly every
computer ever built, and suddenly the big picture becomes very
clear: Microsoft are in fact engaged in racketeering, with all
the angles sewn up so tightly that no competition can possibly
be established against them. This, of course, is no accident.
. But as if Microsoft's despicable behaviour were not bad enough
to warrant action against them, there's also their enforcement
of this monopoly (against those few brave souls who attempt to
breach it) by using more palpably criminal tactics, like smear
campaigns and bribery. In fact they would even go so far as to
sabotage charities, just to inhibit the spread of alternatives
to Windows and Office, lest those who gain experience of these
alternatives should learn the truth ... that such alternatives
/are/ viable, and therefore Microsoft's software is completely
unnecessary. It is essential to Microsoft's strategy that most
people remain ignorant of the viability of alternatives, which
is why they also spend vast resources on propaganda - and yes,
it certainly /is/ propaganda. /Legitimate/ advertising usually
does not employ such devices as shills, corrupt analysts, fake
"recommendations", and sabotage. As I wrote earlier, Microsoft
has refined this into an art form, even to the extent of using
political and pseudo-scientific methodologies, to secure their
vile agenda of domination. They spread lies that Free Software
alternatives to their software is "unamerican" and "communist"
in nature, they abuse their power to influence government with
so-called lobbying (legalised bribery), they plant supporters,
whom they euphemistically refer to as "Technology Evangelists"
into every walk of society, to infiltrate and suppress any and
all dissent against Microsoft, whilst teams of researchers, in
a dark basement, study "Perception Management", to improve the
manipulative effectiveness of the "evangelists" agents working
in the field. No, this is not a plot from a John le Carré Cold
War story - this is the reality of the Microsoft War Machine -
their war on our Freedom, their quest for domination, and this
sick right-wing extremist agenda of Corporatism - the doctrine
of greedy, selfish, cold-hearted megalomaniacs. It may well be
that Microsoft are merely a small part of a greater whole, and
that the source of this sickness is actually the fundamentally
flawed tenets of American society in general. If so, then that
is a rather damning indictment of American society, and it may
explain its institutionalised narcissism that causes such fear
and loathing of anything perceived to be "unamerican", such as
the hysterically McCarthyistic backlash against the "EU scum",
for their "diabolical deeds" of enforcing law and morality.
For those who may be having difficulty conceiving of alternative
business methods to the above (i.e. the morally deficient thugs)
let me give you a clue. Businesses should provide products, then
advertise those products honestly, and allow consumers to choose
whether or not they like them. Products should sell on their own
merit, and not rely on devices such as deception and sabotage to
guarantee sales. The former is a Free Market Economy, the latter
is a bunch of animals ripping each other to pieces out of greed.
Let's be humans, not animals. Microsoft needs to be caged or put
down, and it's the European Commission's job to do it, since the
DOJ seems to have relinquished the task out of a misguided sense
of loyalty ("unamerican"). If aspiring to gangsterism is what it
means to be "American", then I'll proudly count myself as one of
the "EU scum", a Free Thinker, and a Free Software advocate.
######
Executive summary for the attention-deficient:
Channel and Partner racketeering (market saturation of Windows).
Lock-in dependencies on proprietary software and standards.
Corporate guerilla terrorism using false advertising and shills.
Thuggish "enforcement" using bribery, blackmail and sabotage.
The four walls of Microsoft's monopoly.
######
Footnote: I wonder if Miguel de Icaza will /ever/ be bold enough
to actually state his position on these antitrust investigations
and rulings against his friends in Redmond. Well that might be a
bit tricky, because he'd either have to condemn or condone their
criminal behaviour, and thus take one of those dreaded "black or
white" positions that he's so terrified of. Quite a dilemma, but
I think the dilemma is not so much in the choice, as in exposing
his true nature - officially that is.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which
| the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
| denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty.
| Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of
| the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today
| among human creatures." ~ Abraham Lincoln
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