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Industry Moves
EC Shuffle: Bane Of Microsoft To Lead ‘Digital Agenda’

Europe’s information society and media commissioner Viviane Reding is moving on from the portfolio after five years, instead shifting to run justice, fundamental rights and freedoms.

—The Luxembourger has steered initiatives like mobile TV standards, continent-wide digital heritage archives, A/V regulatory reform, cross-border online content licensing and capping of mobile rates.

—But Reding will be replaced by a commissioner with whom she has worked closely. Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes becomes the newly-titled “digital agenda” commissioner.

In her time, Kroes has fined Microsoft over €1 billion for tying Windows Media Player to the OS, kicked off another inquiry in to tying Internet Explorer, forced Apple to end cross-border iTunes price differential and helped Reding’s EU licensing effort by ruling country-by-country royalty collectors anti-competitive.

Here is EC president Jose Manuel Barrroso’s full proposed 2009-2014 commission...

Nov 30, 2009 6:48 AM ET

Viviane Reding Photo: AP Images

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Posted In: Industry Moves, Legal, Regulatory, EC

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