Microsoft Dodges Class Action In WGA Lawsuit 256
An anonymous reader writes "A lawsuit that accused Microsoft of misleading consumers to download and install an update for Windows Genuine Advantage under the guise that it was critical security update will go forward, but not as a class action. A federal judge has refused to certify the lawsuit as a class action, which would have meant that anyone who owned a Windows XP PC in mid-2006 could join the case without having to hire an attorney. As Windows XP was easily the most popular operating system at the time, the ruling means Redmond has managed to avoid hundreds of millions in potential damages."
Frivolous lawsuit (Score:0, Interesting)
Managed to "dodge"? This is the classic definition of a frivolous lawsuit. this is not a compliance lawsuit. There is no injuctive relief. This is a perceived slight by litigous individuals. Why didn't the entire case get thrown out altogether?
Re:Who cares whether it's class action? (Score:3, Interesting)
The plaintiffs will probably get a LOT more payout since its not class action.
Re:good (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:good (Score:2, Interesting)
If Microsoft wants to claim and enforce a draconian EULA, they're effectively saying that by buying their software there's a contract between you and them, and as part of that contract they agree to provide any updates through the supported life of that product. In most businesses, the contracts are much more explicit.
By making a change like this which requires action on your part to continue receiving updates, they've made a substantial change to the contract, without renegotiating. Such unilateral changes to contracts are normally frowned upon by the courts.
Re:Mod parent way the hell up, plz. (Score:2, Interesting)
Does it though?
Even if a company gets fined 5 or 10 times what they made doing the bad deed will that really change anything?
Thats only if there is enough evidence, only if the judge has a clue and only if the company cant bury it with
all the usual tactics at the disposal of a company with hundreds of millions to spend on lawyers. Even if they
lose they appeal for years, ask the government to help protect their industry/monopoly or they'll have to fire
thousands of poor innocent employees.
Compare that to the recent copyright infringement cases where amounts are 10,000 times the value lost
against people who usually cant afford to mount a proper defence.
I dont see a class action lawsuit as any real kind of threat to a huge company.
Re:Hundreds of millions (Score:1, Interesting)
Do you sue for the purpose of getting rich
Seems like that happens a lot in America. Seriously, what's wrong with you people? Why do you have to sue so much?
Re:good (Score:4, Interesting)
Because a insecure, compromised OS affects more people than just the owneruser of that OS. Unpatched pirated copies of Windows can be pwned and exploited to send spam, perform DDOS attacks, do distributed cracking of encryption keys, or whatever else the operator of a botnet chooses to do with it; actions that hurt all the users of the internet, including all the legitimate ones.
Patching pirated copies of Windows is in the public interest [networkworld.com]
WGA was the final straw for me (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thats fine by me... (Score:1, Interesting)
Why should she/he be honest about it?
Microsoft has a history of screwing their customers but you dont see Steve Balmer shouting "We abuse our monopoly position, vast resources and wealth to spread FUD and to lock-in and screw our customers".
I'm not saying it isn't theft but if a multi-billion dollar monopolist can lie about it, why cant everyone else?
You might like to feel superior because you're not pirating any software but I dont care and I also feel superior for not buying into
the copyright/IP bullshit.
Re:Hundreds of millions (Score:3, Interesting)
Modded insightful? It's completely and utterly false, though. Ahh, slashdot.
Re:Thats fine by me... (Score:4, Interesting)
As a person who lived through dos and 3.1, it felt like microsoft cared very little about piracy back then.
However, when I did some googling, it looks like microsoft has put a lot of money and effort into stopping piracy all the way back to at least 1990. Microsoft anti-piracy articles dominate the search results and I wasn't able to easily find any good examples of them tolerating piracy (tho I remember talk of them tolerating it in china and i remember talk of them tolerating it with windows 3.1/3.11).
Perhaps we were rationalizing, or perhaps microsoft had variable enforcement depending on market penetration.
While typing this, I realized my piracy toleration attitude came from windows 3.1 so I did some searches on tolerating windows 3.1 piracy and got some hits.
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:Cs-TDEi65mkJ:blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/index.php%3Fp%3D709+microsoft+tolerated+windows+3.1+piracy&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us [74.125.93.132]
for example.
"than failing to put anti-copy protection on MS-DOS in 1983 or encouraging easy copying of its "enterprise" virtualization software today. Similarly making it easy for users to "illegally" copy and install Office 4.0 for Windows 3.1X while straight facedly working with both WordPerfect Corporation and Lotus Development to help these companies prevent illegal copying, was a simple tactical extension of a long term strategy based on using piracy as a way of gaining market share. "
This matches the Microsoft I grew up with and know well. Strongly saying one thing, and selectively doing other things. Saying you had to follow the legitimate API's to be Windows 95 certified, but using backdoor API's for Word95 and then still certifying it. Saying you want a partnership with a smaller company, learning their technology, dropping the patnership, and then bringing out a similar product (and being sued for it and losing a few times).
I'm sure that Microsoft is strongly against piracy wherever it has high market penetration. I'm sure it says that it is strongly against piracy everywhere but some areas are very low on the enforcement list.
Re:WGA was the final straw for me (Score:3, Interesting)
WGA was the beginning of the end with my relationship with Microsoft, and I've been using it pretty much exclusively since DOS 3.0.
After the dust settled, I started looking into cross platform software that could do what I wanted to in Windows, with a goal of eventually replacing everything with an open source alternative. It really opened my eyes about open source software and what it can (and cannot) do.
I can now say that, as of two weeks ago, my household became Redmond-free. All three computers in the household are now running Linux Mint, and loving it.
Re:Hundreds of millions (Score:3, Interesting)