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Story: Microsoft's EU judge removed

Delay will render any remedies moot. Act now, negotiate later before further harm is done to the European market. Microsoft has been benefiting mightily from maintaining the current status quo through delay, which has been a crucial tactic both against the EU and against the US.

If the delay goes on long enough, then MS will have had time to finish using its desktop monopoly to illegally gain entrance and then dominance in the media market. To say it again another way, delay is a way the EU has of rewarding MS for its anti-competitive behavior.

Fortunately, smaller governments and even other parts of the EU government are starting to realize what's at stake and endorse a way out by endorsing open formats and protocols.

Open protocols allowed The Internet to become ubiquitous, while older networks that used closed protocols faded away. Open protocols plus open formats are at the core of the popularity of E-mail and the WWW. The EU needs open formats and protocols for music and video. While the courts are stalling, the rest of the EU should move forward with open formats Vorbis, Dirac, and Theora for audio and video. If those become established, it will be that much harder for MS to continue to cause harm.

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