Italian Judge Tells HP To Refund Pre-Installed XP

Paolo DF writes "An Italian user asked for a refund after buying a Compaq computer that came with Windows XP and Works 8 pre-installed. HP tried to avoid the EULA agreement which states, approximately: '[I]f the end user is not willing to abide by this EULA... he shall immediately contact the producer to get info for giving back the product and obtaining refunds.' The court ruled in favor of the user (Google translation from the Italian), who received back €90 for XP and €50 for Works. Here is the ruling (PDF, Italian)."

Progress.

[nozzo]

This is progress, the more this happens the better the choice for the consumer. It shows the vendors that users prefer OS choices a la Dell.
True, this is but 1 user but every little helps as we say in the UK.

Re:WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy bought a computer with XP installed and he's griping about it? Perhaps he would have preferred a computer with no OS?

We buy machines with no OS all the time (actually Dell ships FreeDOS but it's not installed). Perhaps the user in question was wanting to install a free OS on it?

Re:Soon have to sign an agreement to get the

[citizenr]

>I wouldn't be surprised if this issue ending up being so that nobody would sell you a computer before you have signed an agreement
>stating that you agree w/having Windows etc. in there.

illegal in EU

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Progress.

[eiapoce]

Nevertheless reading the full article you can see that the guy who sued works for a Consumer Association and on his side there were not legal expenses. This is a win/win situation. If he wins he gets the money and attorneys get paid + pubblicity for the association - If he loses noone gets hurt.

Enrico

Re:He got costs, too

[mr_matticus]

No, it wouldn't. The whole case is a tort. The legal term would be damages, punitive damages in particular, and they're not awarded here because it's a contract issue.

You wouldn't get a windfall from this case in the US, either. I assume the reference in this thread is to the filesharing fine, but that is a case involving statutory damages--the law itself specifies a minimum and a maximum award simply for breaking the condition precedent. Thus copyright holders are entitled to large sums of money simply for the act of violating it. These damages are a result of a time when most copyright infringement cases were large-scale, direct operations. In modern times, those big-scale cases still exist, but we also have smaller scale infringement and large scale (but indirect) infringement. Those two different modes should be codified with different and lesser statutory damages.

This wouldn't be too hard to accomplish, except for the adversarial nature of copyright infringers. Just perusing Slashdot will show people determined to cause intentional harm and to refuse to abide by the law no matter what. In such a condition, the other side has a clear legal superiority to have their interests protected against a hostile public, and so the astronomical damages will stay without modification. The law will not and cannot distinguish the hostility as a result of the big labels being bastards. Slashdot does absolutely nothing to help the situation and provides the industry with most of the fodder it needs to prevent reform.