tyb
o7
Same Old Microsoft: Software Giant Hit with Antitrust Complaint over Videoconferencing
Alfaview, a German tech company known for its videoconferencing app, has made an antitrust complaint against Microsoft over its decision to bundle its own videoconferencing project with Office.
The complaint adds to an existing one from Salesforce-owned Slack, adding to scrutiny of the tech giant.
Via Reuters:
The U.S. software company has been on the EU competition enforcer’s radar since 2020, when Salesforce-owned (CRM.N) workspace messaging app Slack complained about the tying of Teams with Office.
Alfaview, based in Karlsruhe in south-western Germany and with a 500-strong workforce, said it had filed a similar complaint to the European Commission.
Bundling both products together gives Teams a unique competitive advantage that is not justified by performance and which rivals cannot match, it said.
Once seen as behind the times compared to rivals like Apple, Google, and Facebook, attention towards Microsoft has surged over the past year thanks to its multi-billion dollar backing of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The tech company is now widely perceived to be at the cutting edge of consumer AI, although the market is changing rapidly.
With more attention comes more scrutiny, however, and Microsoft has faced heavy antitrust fines in the past, including the landmark United States vs. Microsoft case in 2001. In the past decade alone, Microsoft has been fined over $2.5 billion by the European commission for breaching EU competition rules.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/07/24/same-old-microsoft-software-giant-hit-with-antitrust-complaint-over-videoconferencing/
Labour Party Pledges to ‘Modernise’ Law to Make it Easier to Change Gender
The Labour Party has vowed to “modernise” legislation to make it easier for people to legally change their gender in the United Kingdom, branding the current process as “intrusive, outdated and humiliating”.
In the latest pitch to the public to return to power after over a decade spent on the opposition benches, the left-wing Labour Party has doubled down on transgenderism, pledging to simplify the process for people to legally ‘transition’ to another gender.
Labour Party chairwoman and Shadow Equalities Secretary Anneliese Dodds wrote in The Guardian: “Changing gender is not a decision anyone makes lightly… The process is intrusive, outdated and humiliating. So we will modernise, simplify and reform the gender recognition law to a new process.”
“We will remove invasive bureaucracy and simplify the process.”
Despite attacking the Conservatives on the issue, claiming that they are fanning the flames of “culture wars”, the proposal from Sir Keir Starmer’s party would seek to overturn the Gender Recognition Act, which was passed by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2004.
“We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does,” Dodds wrote.
Explaining their plan to ‘modernise’ the system, the Labour chairwoman said that new legislation would still mandate that an individual receives a medical diagnosis prior to receiving a gender recognition certificate. However, as opposed to the current model, which is conducted by a panel of anonymous doctors, Dodds said that a “diagnosis provided by one doctor, with a registrar instead of a panel, should be enough.”
The left-wing party does appear willing to make some concessions on the issue of female-only spaces, with the Shadow Equalities Secretary saying that “there will always be places where it is reasonable for biological women only to have access.”
Labour, she said, will “defend those spaces, providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services,” and added that the party will “make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act.”
Dodds added: “Responsible politics is not about doing what is easy, it’s about doing what is right … Everyone deserves to be accepted, without exception and treated with respect and dignity in society.”
The issue of people legally changing their gender came to the forefront of British politics earlier this year when the leftist separatist devolved government of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland attempted to pass legislation to allow people to self-identify with their chosen gender without medical approval.
The law was ultimately blocked by the UK government in Westminster, however, controversy surrounding the initial decision to place a biologically male prisoner in a women’s prison was largely seen as a principal factor in the downfall of Sturgeon’s government.
In her article, Dodds accused the Scottish National Party of merely trying to pick a “fight with Westminster” rather than “bringing about meaningful change.” However, the senior Labour Party MP refused to address the specific issue of transgender convicts being placed in female prisons.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/07/24/labour-party-pledges-to-modernise-law-to-make-it-easier-to-change-gender/