The Seattle Times reports that, last week, “there were several interesting developments and comments in the world of antitrust regulation. Consider this a very early pre-race analysis of an upcoming event in the Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition Olympics: The 400-meter regulatory hurdles. On Friday, a trio of top antitrust-enforcement officials from both sides of the Atlantic addressed the American Bar Association and basically pledged a role reversal. The European Union’s top antitrust watchdog, Neelie Kroes, took a more conciliatory tone in her remarks, belying the tough stance her agency has taken against Microsoft and Intel. Meanwhile, departing Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras and Thomas Barnett, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division, both said their agencies are willing to fight mergers in court — apparently contrary to popular opinion.”
According to the Register, “Virgin Media could soon become the second major ISP to attempt to implement a "three strikes" system against illegal filesharers in partnership with the record industry. The cable company is in talks with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to trial a system of warnings, followed by disconnection, for the most persistent copyright infringers. It’s the same scheme that Tiscali briefly put in place last summer. That led to 4 customers being disconnected after allegedly ignoring the warnings, but relations between Tiscali and the BPI collapsed in a row over how the costs should be shared.”
In a different article, the Register reveals that “
The Financial Times writes that “Ministers’ failure to engage early in the European Union decision-making process and influence new laws has added £45bn ($90bn) to the burden on British business over the past decade, a study has found. The study, by the British Chambers of Commerce in collaboration with the London and Manchester business schools, finds a disconnect between UK efforts to assess the impact of EU legislation and the actual process of adopting and implementing those laws. ‘The government makes the right noises but is still not engaging in effective regulatory and non-regulatory means to achieve real improvements in UK commercial performance,’ said Tim Ambler of the London Business School.”
ZDNet.com’s Larry Dignan today has an interesting post entitled “Microsoft Meets Open Source: Glasnost 2.0”, in which he tells of a recent visit to the Redmond campus which convinced him that the mission of the Microsoft Open Source lab is not only “limited to what is being enforced in the international courts – there are a slew of projects Microsoft is undertaking just because they feel the technology would greatly improve visibility and usage of their platforms on Open Source systems.”