[A2k] IP-Watch: Complaint Lodged Over EU Parliament ’s Exclusive Use Of Microsoft Systems

Tue Mar 11 03:05:10 2008

http://ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-trackback.php?p=948

6 March 2008
Complaint Lodged Over EU Parliament’s Exclusive Use Of Microsoft Systems

Posted by William New @ 5:56 pm
   Link This Article   Leave a Comment   Print

By David Cronin for Intellectual Property Watch
BRUSSELS - A formal complaint has been lodged with the European
Parliament over how its information technology systems rely almost
exclusively on software manufactured by Microsoft.

Advocates of open standard software, which is developed on a not-for-
profit basis, allege that the Seattle-based giant enjoys an effective
monopoly or ‘lock-in’ within the European Union institutions. Members
of the European Parliament (MEPs) and EU officials are unable to read
attachments sent with emails if these are in an open document format
that is incompatible with Microsoft’s Windows, the operating system
found in most of the world’s personal computers.

Three organisations have jointly filed a complaint, claiming that the
current situation limits the possibilities that EU citizens have to
communicate with their elected representatives.

OpenForum Europe, the European Software Market Association (ESOMA) and
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) say that the open document
format has been approved as an international standard since early
2007. Yet the systems found in the EU institutions, it says, only
support products that are based on proprietary protocols – codes
subject to a patent and which are not made public.

Graham Taylor, chief executive with OpenForum Europe, said his aim is
to ensure that individuals can freely communicate with MEPs. “You can
only achieve that if you maintain openness and interoperability,” he
said, speaking in the European Parliament on 6 March. “You haven’t got
that. You are actually forcing citizens to purchase specific software.”

The complaint will be considered by the Parliament’s petitions
committee, which monitors the implementation of EU law.

David Hammerstein, a Spanish member of that committee, pledged his
support for the complaint. He said that he regularly is unable to read
documents emailed to him, simply because of their format. “There are
millions of people, who use interoperable, free and open software who
cannot communicate with MEPs,” he added.

According to Hammerstein, the situation in the EU institutions
contradicts the strident position that the Union has taken against
Microsoft for anti-competitive practises. In 2004, the European
Commission - the EU’s executive arm - imposed a €497 million euro fine
against Microsoft for allegedly ‘bundling’ Windows with MediaPlayer,
an application used to view sound and video files on the Internet. The
fine was upheld by the European Court of First Instance in September
last year.

Hammerstein added that the principles of interoperability and of fair
competition are contained in EU law. “It is high time that they become
European practice,” he said.

Authorities within the Parliament in charge of public procurement have
expressed concerns that allowing attachments from open document
formats could have security implications. But these concerns have been
rejected by the open standard lobby.

A number of national and regional administrations have already taken
steps to ensure their computer systems can accept open standard
documents, they say. Action plans have been devised, for example, by
the Dutch government and by the administration in Extremadura, Spain,
to ensure that open source software can be widely used by public and,
in some cases, semi-private bodies.

Ciaran O’Riordan, a spokesman for FSFE, said: “If our elected
representatives don’t like a software package or its terms of use,
they should be able to choose another software package. This issue and
the promotion of open standards must be tackled together. Not being
able to choose your software often means you’re stuck with one
vendor’s proprietary format and using that proprietary format means
you, and everyone you communicate with, is shoe-horned into using the
same vendor’s software.”

ESOMA representative Benjamin Henrion stated that the service whereby
sittings of the Parliament can be watched online relies heavily on
Windows. As a result the EU’s only directly-elected institution is not
accessible to those who use open standard software, he said.

A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment.

Details of the complaint can be found on www.openparliament.eu.

David Cronin may be reached at info@ip-watch.ch.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All of the
news articles and features on Intellectual Property Watch are also
subject to a Creative Commons License which makes them available for
widescale, free, non-commercial reproduction and translation.

You can sign up for automatic notifications of these stories, via the
RSS feed or via the e-mail alerts. Recipients can choose the frequency
of notifications as well as particular topics of greatest interest to
them.

The URI to TrackBack this entry is:

http://ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-trackback.php?p=948

------------------------------------------------------------

Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org

Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997