Another twist in EU saga

A new rift has apparently emerged between Microsoft and the European Commission in the company's antitrust case. A commission spokesman told reporters in Brussels that Microsoft essentially wants veto power to control which issues would be eligible for examination by a "monitoring trustee" required by the commission's ruling against the company.

Bloomberg News quotes European Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd: "The commission considers this veto to be unacceptable as it would compromise the trustees' ability to provide the commission with effective assistance in the monitoring of Microsoft's compliance with the March 2004 decision."

The company's initial response, as reported by Reuters: "We are fully committed to complying with the Commission's decision," Microsoft spokesman Dirk Delmartino said. "All the proposals we are sending to the Commission we believe are in line with the decision."

For background, click here to download the portion of the European Commission ruling that requires a monitoring trustee to ensure the company's compliance. Among other things, the passage outlines the broad issues to be overseen by the trustee:

As regards interoperability, the Monitoring Trustee's responsibility should, in particular, involve assessing whether the information made available by Microsoft is complete and accurate, whether the terms under which Microsoft makes the specifications available and allows the use thereof are reasonable and non-discriminatory and whether the ongoing disclosures are made in a timely manner.

As regards tying, the Monitoring Trustee's responsibility should, in particular, be to advise the Commission whether substantiated complaints by third parties about Microsoft's compliance with this Decision are well-founded from a technical point of view. In particular, but not exclusively,

(i) the Monitoring Trustee should advise whether Microsoft has unbundled WMP from Windows as ordered by this Decision;

(ii) the Monitoring Trustee should advise whether the unbundled version of Windows is less performing than any bundled version of Windows that Microsoft would continue to offer, regard being had to the fact that media functionality included in WMP would, by definition, not be part of the unbundled Windows;

(iii) the Monitoring Trustee should advise whether Microsoft hinders the performance of rival media players through selective, inadequate, or untimely disclosures of Windows APIs.