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Microsoft's gift for turning its punishments into business opportunities continues to rankle with the States who brought antitrust suits against the software giant. A filing with the US Department of Justice reveals that Microsoft has already been asked to reduce the licensing fees for its communications protocols it is obliged to publish. Under the joint Se[a]ttlement between the Department of Justice and the States, Microsoftmust provide the information under a RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) license.

Just four vendors have taken up the opportunity, according to the filing: EMC, VeriSign, NetApp and StarBak Communications. Microsoft has already been asked to lower the royalties for licensing these protocols: "Microsoft has worked diligently to substantially rewrite its license agreement for the Communications Protocols and to restructure the royalties in order to accommodate Plaintiffs' concerns," according to the document.

However two States, New York and California, may seek a court order to lower the licensing fees even further. The filing says that sixteen out of eighteen "substantive complaints" against Microsoft have required investigation. An earlier version of the antitrust settlement required Microsoft to help establish an independent compliance center. The toothless version agreed by Judge Kollar Kottelly envisaged a world where the lion would like down with the lamb:

News source: The Register | UK

An MPL spokesperson said: "Downloading is actually a 'try before you buy' tool for a significant amount of people.

"It allows people to sample new music and decide whether or not to buy it - it is not necessarily a replacement for purchase."

However, downloading tracks did lead to a significant drop in the number of singles being bought, with just 13% of the 500 people surveyed saying they went on to buy singles in shops after getting them on the internet.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) told BBC News Online there was "an element of truth" in the survey's findings, but that it was "disingenuous" to suggest downloading could boost album sales.

Educating users

"We did a survey in April that asked people the reasons why they downloaded, and 65% said because it was free," a BPI spokeswoman said.

"That's just human nature."

The BPI wanted to "educate" people to use legitimate downloading sites that paid royalties to artists, she said, adding it was "unlikely" to push for prosecution of heavy "uploaders" of music.

This strategy is currently being pursued by the US music industry.

The survey also said 41% of its respondents declared themselves "heavy downloaders" - accessing more than 100 tracks - but that 34% of them still felt they bought more albums than they did a year ago.

Asked why they download music, the respondents were most likely to say it was "to check out music I've heard about but not listened to yet" (75%) and "to help me decide whether to buy the CD" (66%).

MPL said its survey suggested people used the internet as a way of finding out about new music, and that the industry should use it as a way of promoting new artists.