Bonum Certa Men Certa

Cablegate: Government of Ireland Pushes Charlie McCreevy to Help Microsoft Against Antitrust Regulators

Cablegate



Summary: Familiar faces and sympathetic countries offer protection to a monopoly abuser

IRELAND is well known as Microsoft's centre of tax dodge in Europe. The exchange is one of little or no benefit to the Irish economy (which not so long ago stood on its last leg), it's about rich people trying to evade tax using loopholes and tax havens.



In a fascinating Cablegate cable, pro-software patents dunce Charlie McCreevy is being addressed indirectly. This is different from Austria's position:








VZCZCXRO7108 RR RUEHAG DE RUEHDL #0335 0891457 ZNY CCCCC ZZH R 301457Z MAR 06 FM AMEMBASSY DUBLIN TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 6705 INFO RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS C O N F I D E N T I A L DUBLIN 000335

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/31/2015 TAGS: ETRD, KIPR, EUN, EI SUBJECT: IRELAND SHARES USG CONCERNS ON MICROSOFT

REF: A. STATE 46956

B. YOUNG-SOILA E-MAIL OF 3/13/06

Classified By: Political-Economic Counselor Mary E. Daly; Reasons 1.4 ( B) and (D).

(C) Ireland shares USG concerns about the Commission's treatment of Microsoft (which has its European operations center and large-scale R&D programs in Ireland), according to Ronald Long, Assistant Secretary General in the Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment (DETE), with whom Post discussed reftel demarche on March 28 and 29. Long, who has responsibility for competition issues in DETE and claims to have written the 1991 EU Copyright Directive for Computer Programs, noted that DETE Minister Micheal Martin had recently written to EU Internal Market Commissioner (and former Irish Finance Minister) Charlie McCreevy to alert the Commission to the GOI's concerns. Long elaborated that the GOI saw the Commission as less than transparent in its evaluation of the interoperability information supplied by Microsoft in compliance with the Commission's antitrust ruling. The GOI, he added, worried that the Commission's dealings with Microsoft were making the ground rules for competition cases unclear, a trend that should concern any company operating in Europe. He asked to stay in touch with Post as the Microsoft case proceeded. KENNY







Got to love the part about "less than transparent" in relation to the EU Commission. Lack of transparency is actually the Microsoft problem which the EU Commission was trying to address. What is this, projection?

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day