Canon printer and TurboPrint

[Jonathan McKeown]

On Thursday 28 May 2009 22:52:47 Jerry wrote:
>
> Did you ever bother to consider that if the printer manufacturers
> actually formed a consensus on a printer language, some third world
> county or the EU would probably sue them. Nothing I have seen in 20
> years equals the audacity of the EU. As long as no 'standard' no matter
> how arbitrary, stupid or counter-productive exists, they are in theory
> safe from the EU. Besides, nothing stifles development as tightly as
> being bound to an arbitrary 'standard'.

What a breathtakingly stupid remark.

The EU has acted against two companies (Microsoft and Intel) who have used 
illegal business methods to protect and extend their monopolies and suppress 
competition.

Or are you suggesting that a format or protocol which is implemented by 
several different companies, allowing vendors to compete fairly on other 
grounds (price, features, quality, ... ) while protecting consumers by making 
it possible for them to move from one vendor to another, is somehow a worse 
idea than a proprietary format or protocol which is forced into a 
market-dominating position by illegal tactics such as paying manufacturers 
extra to incorporate it, or penalising them financially for providing 
competing products?

If that's the case, why is no-one trying to use the courts to prevent the use 
of ODF, a published standard which is now used by several companies and Free 
Software projects to provide a common format for documents?

Once a company dominates a particular market it's held to a different standard 
than other companies in that market - because the power of the monopoly can 
be used not only to prevent competition in the original market, but to extend 
the market domination into new markets, by techniques like product tying, 
distributing at below cost (effectively drawing subsidy from the original 
monopoly product) until competitors are driven out of business, and so on.

Microsoft has been convicted of doing all these things, in US courts, in 
courts in Asia, and in courts in Europe. These are matters of fact, not 
opinion.

Intel has been convicted of many of these things in courts in Asia and in 
Europe.

The fact that the US system is too supine to take action against these 
companies doesn't make the EU ``arrogant''. Let's not forget why Unix took 
off and expanded the way it did: once upon a time the US courts did take 
antitrust seriously, and prevented AT&T using its telco monopoly to expand 
into market domination of the computer business.

Jonathan