The quiet protest from the Bush administration comes as concern is growing on Capitol Hill over the European Commission's penalties, which came after the Justice Department agreed to a consent decree that includes ongoing federal court oversight of Microsoft's business practices.
"The State Department has been involved in an off-the-record attempt to focus their attention" on the harm the decision could bring about, a US government official, who has direct knowledge of the concerns communicated to EU regulators, told CNET News.com on condition of anonymity. A State Department representative declined to comment.
US politicians gave at least six speeches during a three-day period last week on the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives, all of which condemned European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti's ruling that Microsoft violated antitrust laws and would have to unbundle Media Player from Windows.
The strongest denunciation came from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who said, "I now fear that the United States and EU are heading toward a new trade war -- and that the commission's ruling against Microsoft is the first shot.
"In imposing this anticonsumer, anti-innovation penalty, the commission has blatantly undercut the settlement that was so carefully and painstakingly crafted with Microsoft by the US Department of Justice and several state antitrust authorities. The commission's complete indifference to the negative impact of its ruling on American jobs, American consumers and the US economy, and its total disregard of the Department of Justice, are intolerable."
This is not the first time that the United States and the Europeans have clashed over antitrust enforcement. Hostilities erupted after the European Union vetoed the proposed General Electric-Honeywell merger, which US regulators had already approved. President Bush publicly criticised the veto, which was widely viewed as a protectionist move designed to help European competitors such as Airbus and Lufthansa at the expense of US companies.
Another point of contention is that US officials sometimes view Europeans as unabashed fans of big government. In November 2001, William Kolasky, deputy assistant attorney general at the time, complained in a speech that the "European Union comes from a more statist tradition that places greater confidence in the utility of governmental intervention in markets."
Ten members of the House International Relations Committee -- five Democrats and five Republicans -- have written a letter to Monti protesting the sanctions on Microsoft. They claimed the decision violated the spirit of a 1991 "comity agreement" the Clinton administration renewed in 1998, which generally says that the United States should take the lead in overseeing US companies.
Talkback
Funny how the americans want to impose extraterritorial legislation on companies and individuals across the world when it suits them but when the EU Commission do what the US wouldn't or couldn't to rein in Microsoft's bully tactics they bleat like sheep.
In George W. Bush's dictionary, "monopoly" may be defined as a form of "freedom."
This ruling couldn't have happened to a more deserving monopoly.
If the DOJ had done it's job properly, the EU would not have to act in this manner. The fact that the State Department is now batting for Microsoft is a sad reflection of the current administration, which appears to value money over principals.
Look around you - this country is being run into the ground by the interests of big business.
"the "European Union comes from a more statist tradition that places greater confidence in the utility of governmental intervention in markets.""
If the government doesn't act to stop gigantic multi-billion dollar companies destroying consumer's interests and placing their own "tax" on goods, who will? Is Bush not worried that Mr Gates is more powerful than he is?
Isn't it just so American that the DoJ - the US legal authority charged with ensuring *compliance* - is actually *defending* a convicted monopolist (convicted *by* the DoJ and multiple other authorities around the world)?
Conservative politics in the US are beneath contempt to most external observers. And let’s make no mistake about this, politics is what this is, not law. Lest we forget, this is the same DoJ whose politically appointed head resigned recently in disgrace after pressure from both sides of Congress for being partisan and forgetting about the separation of powers.
Some Microsoft-sympathetic US media outlets have been publishing stories about the great divide between the EU and US jurisprudence in relation to market regulation. But they seem to forget two major points:
Firstly the DoJ won their case against Microsoft convincingly, even overwhelmingly. Microsoft had even resorted to contemptuous tricks and tactics that outraged the various judges on more than one occasion, including: offering manifestly fake video evidence; a variety of damning e-mail evidence which contradicted claims made under oath; and computer experts were - with minimal effort - able to prove some of their other claims (e.g.: Internet Explorer was inseparable from the OS) patently false, etc..
Secondly, after having even convinced the judge in the first round that a break-up of Microsoft was the only viable remedy, the DoJ was poised to secure an emphatic alternative penalty against Microsoft in the court of appeals, when there was a change of government in the US. George W. Bush came to power, and there was a sudden - and otherwise inexplicably diametric – change of tack by the DoJ, coinciding with the nomination of a new political appointee by the White House. Consequently, a large number of non-political DoJ staff resigned in protest.
As such, there may not be such a big difference between the substantive jurisprudence of the two camps across the Atlantic; instead there may only be a discrepancy between the politics of the White House and the jurisprudence of the EU. But this is not surprising in the least; given the mounting evidence from WMDs, through voting irregularities - electronic and otherwise - to warrantless wiretapping, it seems that the law / truth and the White House don’t always mix. Moreover, with the current state of affairs, i.e.: with the DoJ having been relegated to mouthpiece of the White House, there may be little jurisprudence left in the US camp at all; that is the only conclusion I can draw when the DoJ is defending a monopolist it convicted.