Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Uses Trolls, Lawyers and Politicians to Harm Google With FRAND and 'Privacy' Tricks

Rules of imperialism

Old England



Summary: Microsoft continues to distort the market by sending trolls, lawyers and politicians to impede Google's business

Patent trolls using standards bodies to assault businesses with real products is what some people fear more than the occasional troll lawsuit. The cost of products depends heavily on innovation coming about in peaceful environments without patent tolls and filing of patents. Some companies feel like it's fair to change the way the industry operates naturally and they fund entities that achieve this. Patent pools are one type of cartel which offers peace to members and extortion for the rest. MPEG cartel members are willing to get aggressive, too and they have just taken a shot at VP8:



In recent years, MPEG LA has been accused of inhibiting the innovation that it was designed to foster. Notably, the company’s practice of charging high licensing fees for patents that are near or past expiration has led critics to assert that the firm has placed profit above its core mission of cheap and accessible licensing of digital video patents. Technology market players have also alleged that MPEG LA has violated the terms of its original agreement with DOJ by failing to invite oversight of its licensing practices by independent experts, and neglecting to adhere to FRAND guidelines. A firm that was once a model (at least in theory) of the potential benefits from collaboration has morphed into one of the industry’s most notorious and most harmful players....


Notice the role of FRAND there. MPEG-LA is a patent troll in disguise (led by the troll Larry Horn) and it extorts WebM. Microsoft booster Peter Bright, who was spreading FUD against WebM for a while, whitewashes an extortion by Horn while Pamela Jones shows how close Horn is to Microsoft:

Cf. Mr. Horn's involvement on behalf of Microsoft and once again against Motorola/Google in Microsoft v. Motorola in Seattle.


The news is not VP8 getting devoured but WebM getting extorted. Here is one report on the matter:

With the clearing of the patent issues that have cast a shadow over VP8's acceptability to open standards organisations as a open, royalty-free video codec, it is likely that its next major stop is becoming an MPEG standard. According to Rob Glidden, video patent analyst, Google proposed VP8 as the codec for MPEG's IVC in January. IVC is the name of one of the tracks that the ISO/IEC MPEG working group was exploring in its search for a royalty-free codec for web video and other uses. It had been looking at technologies where the patents were expiring.


What we see here is a law-bending move designed to derail patents-free standards. It is similar to what happened in the OOXML saga, where ISO too got used as a Trojan horse for patent-encumbered so-called standards. It is a vicious and corrupt battle where clueless politicians are often just used as tools for corporate profits and power. Not too long ago we saw Microsoft Facebook lobbying politicians to incite them against Google. Microsoft has far more lobbyists than everyone else in Europe (in the technology sector) and 17 lobbyists of Microsoft are identified in this article, lumping some of them together:

The biggest makers of Spyware are not Hackers... They are Companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft that make billions selling your personal likes, dislikes and opinions to an enormous glut of advertisers and social programmers. They would rather fight piracy on their collective own than have the Government regulate their blatant invasion of the public's privacy.


Microsoft, the hypocrite, has for a long time been trying to use "privacy" against Google and it is using lawmakers to selfishly render their competition "illegal" again in Massachusetts. See this new report (the "think about the children!" strategy):

Microsoft is after Google again with a school privacy bill that could wipe out Google's cloud-computing services for students.

Microsoft is backing a bill that targets Google's Apps for Education, saying that these cloud-computing services are collecting data from schoolchildren for the purpose of creating better advertising or other commercial means.

"We believe that student data should not be used for commercial purposes; that cloud-service providers should be transparent in how they use student data; and that service providers should obtain clear consent for the way they use data," said Mike Houlihan, a Microsoft spokesman. "We expect that students, parents and educators will judge any proposed legislation on its merits."

The bill was unveiled in January, and is currently being considered by Massachusetts’s lawmakers. Microsoft has been very direct with the fact that it is behind this bill, and that Google is the target.



This is classic Microsoft, using lawmakers to help where Microsoft is losing. It is one form of corruption among several similar ones.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
 
Links 24/09/2025: "NASA Moving Out of Entire Buildings as It's Gutted" and Purge of Online Critics (Opposing Fascism Becomes Unlawful)
Links for the day
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025