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Microsoft Government The Courts Your Rights Online News

California Microsoft Settlement 193

Posted by timothy from the settling-for dept.
Lord Prox writes "From news.com.com: A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows. More Townsend and Townsend and Crew is info from the law firm here. Also note... you get vouchers in settlement good for buying computer related items, not just Microsoft products and/or can be traded and converted to cash!"
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California Microsoft Settlement More

California Microsoft Settlement

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  • In exchange for the $1.1 Billion (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:16PM (#6481143)
    California agrees to a ten year, $10 billion Microsoft contract.

  • Overpaid ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:16PM (#6481144)
    A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows

    I pirated a copy and feel ripped off !!
    • well yeah, that blank cd-r probably cost ya 50 shiny new pennies! :/
      • But only after rebates. Ok, ok, I am sure there is some tax and postage in there somewhere, but of the hundreds of CD-R's I've gone thru, I am sure my cost has been FAR less than $0.50 each.

        Does anyone else not have the same experience? Most recently was 200 discs from Office Max for, um I forget, but it was CHEAP, (after rebates).

        And (reading between the lines) much to the chagrin of many /.ers, they have been used %100 for non-infringing use.

        Most get used for system backups then get tossed after a w

    • Re:Overpaid ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by NotQuiteReal ( 608241 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @07:34PM (#6481457) Journal
      I am sure I purchased Microsoft products during the covered period. I don't recall feeling ripped off, nor do I remember anyone making me buy the products.

      Somehow, I suspect lawyers, or someone other than the alleged abused, are getting real money out of this deal and not silly coupons.

      • nor do I remember anyone making me buy the products

        When you're a monopolist (and by you I mean they), the rules change. The justice system isn't fair to you anymore. The going refrain changes from "innocent until proven guilty" to "it's better to screw one company than risk letting them screw the entire marketplace". And it's most likely a correct approach.

        Monopoly is a boon and a curse.

      • Re:Overpaid ? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by LilMikey ( 615759 )
        I don't recall feeling ripped off

        Yes, Microsoft Public Relations is very good at their job. Besides, everyone else is doing it and paying that much, it must be the right price. At work, we're holding out as long as possible before Licensing V6 exactly because we feel it's a rip-off.

        nor do I remember anyone making me buy the products

        Well, my laptop only came with Windows ME preinstalled. The last desktops my gf and her grandfather bought from BB came only with ME or 2000 preinstalled.

        However, th
      • I don't recall feeling ripped off, nor do I remember anyone making me buy the products.

        Great! Glad you're happy. Please stay out of the settlement and let others who do care get a piece of the pie.

      • I am sure I purchased Microsoft products during the covered period. I don't recall feeling ripped off, nor do I remember anyone making me buy the products.

        I was required to purchase two computers to do development of software for a company. One of the computers was to run Linux exclusively. When I went to the dealer I had to pay for Windows on both computers, even when I told the sales droid what I was going to do.

        Even worse, when I purchased a hard disk upgrade from the dealer, it had a copy of Windo

      • Then you're alone. Personally, when I bought my laptop, I had no choice -- I had to pay for their copy of winME as well. Now, taking into account all the PCs I've bought pre-built, that's a good 4 or 5 MS licences I didn't want or need(the aforementioned laptop has Mandrake on it right now.), and that's quite a chunk of cash going towards an entity I'd rather not be sending cash to.

  • MS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Klimaxor ( 264151 )
    That's good and all, i'm glad to see they are trying to do something about it...but..why couldn't the price been just a little more? $5 to $29 is not going to make up for the companies who have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on microsoft products through the last 10 years or so. It's ridiculous.
    fp?

    • Re:MS (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The case itself alleges that MS overcharged by no more than $40 per copy of Windows. Note that the case is specifically about a monopoly overcharge on Win95 and 98. Other Microsoft products are not covered, nor is an entire decade of Windows in question.

    • ..why couldn't the price been just a little more? $5 to $29 is not going to make up

      The article does not say how much the lawyers got from this. Perhaps their cut explains the difference between the $5-$29 and the $40 overcharge?
    • Hey, I for one am amazed this happened at all, for any amount, given the current political climate..
    • "The voucher amount will be determined by multiplying the number of licenses to use each software product by the per unit amount. Thus, a family which purchased one copy of Windows 95, two copies of Windows 98 and one copy of Office would be entitled to receive a voucher in the amount of $77.00 (3 x $16 plus 1 x $29). A business which purchased 100 copies of Windows 98 and 100 copies of Office would receive a voucher in the amount of $4,500 (100 x $16 plus 100 x $29)."

      If you lived or had a business in CA d

  • what about compound interest on that for the period during the case and incured costs?

  • Dammit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:18PM (#6481156) Homepage
    I wish i didn't live in a sucky country which wimped out of nailing Microsoft to a target and announcing open season. Is it too late to organise a class action do you think? They must have commited another antitrust violation today or something, or do they take the weekends off?

    Here's hoping that exactly none of this money is used to buy upgrades to Windows XP.

  • Convenient (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sirmikester ( 634831 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:18PM (#6481157) Homepage Journal
    Cnet says : Two-thirds of the unclaimed money will go to California public schools in a mix of donated Microsoft software and cash grants."

    Microsoft should make it a habit of getting sued by states so that it can spread its software into the schools more effectively. I'm sure that the cash is also tax deductible. You go Bill!

    • Microsoft should make it a habit of getting sued by states so that it can spread its software into the schools more effectively.

      Continuing sarcasm...

      Gosh, we certainly don't want our kids to learn to use software that is actually out there in the real world! That would be disastrous! Then kids might actually be able to DO something with computers coming out of U.S. high schools, and the curricula of community colleges everywhere would have to be completely restructured... What is the world coming t

      • Re:more than 90% of desktops... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) * <charleshixsn.earthlink@net> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:22PM (#6481656)
        Do you really think that ANY of the software currently in existence will resemble the software running when today's elementary students graduate from highschool?

        There were HUGE changes in the last four years, but the current evidence is that the rate of change is still increasing.

        • I don't know about that. Windows has had the same basic user interface since 1995 (windows 95). While the core technologies have changed (9x codebase to NT), the look and feel haven't changed that much. As far as the end-user is concerned, I don't think the GUI will change that much in the near future. Maybe when Longhorn is finally finished it'll have a new codebase and some different methods of searching for files on the PC, but I bet someone who has only used Windows 95 will have little trouble learn

        • Re:more than 90% of desktops... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda.etoyoc@com> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:51PM (#6481760) Homepage Journal
          Hey, when I started elementary school in 1981, computers in school were unheard of. You MAYBE saw a CPM machine. Then the Apple II came out. I remember playing with Apples clear into the 8th grade. I had a PC at home, and most of my friends had Commodore 64's. I programmed in BASIC, porting programs from Apple BASIC and Commodore BASIC to my IBM BASIC box.

          When I started high school the district bought a roomful of PC's networked with Novel Netware. Anyone else remember the big leap (around 11th grade) from DOS based Word Processors to Windows based? Hell I still remember the vulcan-neckpinch commands needed to operate WordPerfect. At this point I was writing device drivers in C for DOS. (Gasp, I still have the reference manual for all of the interrupt handlers for DOS 5 and 6.)

          In college I had to buy a Macintosh. Claris Works was my friend. My junior year they suddenly switched to PC's. I was on Coop an had to navigate MS Office. And just when people started to get good with NT, Linux came out. I moved on to scripting languages and SQL.

          What have I learned from all this? Basically how to learn. Everything else is just details.

    • Re:Convenient (Score:3, Informative)

      by tiny69 ( 34486 )

      Cnet says : Two-thirds of the unclaimed money will go to California public schools in a mix of donated Microsoft software and cash grants."

      I feel sorry for the students of the public schools in California. I was a student there myself over ten years ago. Everytime something like this comes down, the state pulls that much from what they give to the schools. When Loto first came around, all of the politicians stood behind it because of all the money that would be pumped into the school system. The next

      • Oh, I know it costs quit a bit to heat/cool a school, and teachers need to get paid, not to mention lunch and a few staffers. However that doesn't explain what they are doing with the money. The school I graduated from needed a new high school (growing area, the current one didn't have room), so they built an expensive new one of the same size, but room to grow. The extention will cost 30 million for 400 more students, and that is just more classrooms. (They already have gyms, library, lunch room, and

  • The real reason MS settled (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They didn't want to risk having to deal with a Governor who's also a Terminator.

  • Although the maximum value of the settlement is $1.1 billion, Microsoft could end up paying as little as $367 in cash, which is what it would owe to California public schools if no vouchers are claimed.

    2/3 of $1.1 billion is $733 million, not $367. Yay for math skills.

  • Cash is king (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:27PM (#6481192)
    A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows.

    Isn't it great when you're so rich you can break the law, then simply reimburse the people you scammed when, sometimes, they notice and react ? How many people got ripped off and never got their money back because they didn't have the time or energy to fight back big bad Microsoft ?

    Did the hordes of people who wanted to buy bare computers but couldn't find any, and had a Windows license forced down their throats, get their money back yet ?
    • Did the hordes of people who wanted to buy bare computers but couldn't find any, and had a Windows license forced down their throats, get their money back yet ?

      You and your friend there should start up a case, then. News flash -- ordinary people don't want a computer that starts up with the informative message, "PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK."

      Sarcasm aside, most geeks (like me, and perhaps you) that don't want to buy Windows know enough about computers to put one together from parts. Or at least know a fello
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • most geeks (like me, and perhaps you) that don't want to buy Windows know enough about computers to put one together from parts.

        Can you put together a laptop ? I can't ...

        And if some laptops on the market today come without OS, or with *nix/Linux preloaded, it's rather new and it wasn't the case for a long time.
      • Well, it used to be when you bought your spiffy 386 computer with windows 3.1 preloaded, they actually gave you the installation diskettes, along with the license. You could reinstall the system to your liking, or if you didn't like windows, you could sell your copy of Windows 3.1, or at least *Give* it to someone who could use it. Try any of the above today where some image CD comes with your new p4/XP box/laptop that automagically fdisks and formats your HDD to factory.
      • most geeks (like me, and perhaps you) that don't want to buy Windows know enough about computers to put one together from parts. Or at least know a fellow geek who will do so for free or cheap.

        Microsoft made it so expensive to buy comodity hardware that was preconfigured that they have trained up their doom. How many enemies have they made? Too many and all knowledgable. They have trained me and many other to know just how shitty their stuff is and how not to need it. I will gladly help others to avoid

    • It's kind of like those rebate deals, except instead of taking the time to fill out a form and mail it in, you have to hire a lawyer instead. Reduces the number of people who actually apply to get their money back by a _lot_!

    • Re:Cash is king (Score:2, Funny)

      by sfjoe ( 470510 )
      Isn't it great when you're so rich you can break the law, then simply reimburse the people you scammed when, sometimes, they notice and react ?

      That's what makes this country great. When the poor and downtrodden realize that the rich can break the law with impunity, then they too can reach the American Dream. All you have to do is give up the penny-ante crimes like liquor store holdups and start importing your own boatloads of drugs instead. Your children will grow up to be Senators and Presidents.
  • This shows yet another advantage Linux has over Windows, no one has to pay any overcharging lawsuits. Then again, you wouldn't get free money with Linux...
    • More advantages:

      You can get sued by SCO!
      None of your friends will know how to use your computer - security by fucking obnoxious UI!
      You'll miss out on all the latest games!

      etc. etc. etc. :-p

      </sarcasm>
      • You can get sued by SCO! None of your friends will know how to use your computer - security by fucking obnoxious UI! You'll miss out on all the latest games!

        As far as games go, the REALLY good ones are ported to the consoles.

        And while I may be missing out on all the latest games, I'm also missing out on all the viruses too.

        Besides, Linux is fun to play with on its own.

        • As far as games go, the REALLY good ones are ported to the consoles.

          I'm a big fan of RTS games, which almost never get ported (and when they do - Starcraft, for example - they suck).

          The SimCity series, Half-Life, Battlefield 1942, Homeworld, and others I enjoy mostly haven't been ported... do I'll stick to my Windows PC. :-p

          And while I may be missing out on all the latest games, I'm also missing out on all the viruses too.

          If you've got a little common sense, you don't get viruses on Windows, either.

  • This is very progressive and forward thinking. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Soon all corporate payouts will be in the form of court settlements. Payroll and stock options and dividends will go the way of Jury trials. This is more efficient anyway, because courts can set standards for how much each person should get, instead of having different salaries set abitrarily.

    I think this forward thinking of MS. Other corporations are going arrive in the slave-holding court mandated christmas ham model only to find MS already there.

  • Price of Windows (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr@42.osu@edu> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:32PM (#6481220)
    So Microsoft admits that they overcharged for the price of Windows--does this mean that the price of Windows will now go down?
  • "The lawsuit, filed in February 1999, claimed that Microsoft violated California antitrust laws by overcharging by as much as $40 for every copy of the Windows 95 and 98 operating systems."

    "...consumers and corporations in the state will be notified that they may qualify for vouchers ranging in value from $5 to $29."

    So was that the part where we settle for less and they still profit from crime?

  • California's in the hole, people... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:36PM (#6481241)
    Don't forget, California has a $30-40 billion dollar shortfall this year. They're stuggling to find any source of cash they can... I'm sure they settled because they need an infusion of cash NOW...

    Remember... when you can't walk away from the deal, there's no negotiation.
    • California's in the hole and Microsoft is evil. I say we kill two birds with one stone. California's budget shortfall is 30-40 billion dollars; Microsoft has about that much in cash. We'll never get it just by settling lawsuits $1 billion at a time, especially when 2/3 of it isn't real money anyway.

      Everyone meet tomorrow afternoon in Sacramento, in front of the State Capitol. We'll then caravan up I-5 to Redmond. There's more of us than there are of them. We can take them. Once we get the money, we'
      • scary as it may be, that's actually a better idea than anyone in the state government has come up with...

        *sigh*

        Forget Iraq - us Californian's need to be liberated from our retarded government...

        Come on, Nevada - you know you want some more territory and tax revenue. Please? Imagine the casino city LA could become. What about you, Oregon?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's a class-action suit--citizens of California get the money, not the state of California.

  • Odd (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 0spf ( 574535 )
    MS Dos is included but not Windows 3.x.

  • Judge declares M$ dividend! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mnmlst ( 599134 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:37PM (#6481245) Homepage Journal

    Is this some kind of attempt to get M$ moving on the rumoured increases in its' dividend rate? Were the California shareholders just excessively impatient?

    Of course, after living in California a few years now, I can assure you that you had better be a Microsoft-sized company if you expect to survive here. The place is insanely litigous, the State Senate and State Assembly routinely pass absurd legislation that inflicts high costs on companies gullible enough to do business here, and the cost of living is driving this place into a two-tiered society; the wealthy and those who serve them.

    Consider this just one more warning to other businesses tempted by this fabled "market of 34 million consumers". Chalk up this settlement next to hundreds of others, the recent tripling of workman's compensation insurance premiums (which is driving out hundreds of small companies and manufacturers), and the recent brilliance of our state government regarding taxes. The state's income tax system is very "progressive" meaning that high earners are heavily taxed and lesser earners are not taxed at all. Our brilliant legislature recently opted only to increase the income tax rates on the high earners. This is the very approach that got us in such a budget mess in the first place. The low earners vote for dozens of unaccountable spending programs that are paid for by the high earners. When the high earners get clobbered (read NASDAQ collapses onto Silicon Valley), the state government goes begging to support all those programs. Eventually, the state will be entirely populated by a wealthy few, some inland farmers, and those who serve the wealthy and depend on government programs to cope with the uniformly high cost of living. At least the ailing public schools will have a few copies of Windows 98 "donated" by Microsith. Be sure to check out microsith.com!

    Hey Californians, last one out, turn off the lights!

    • Re:Judge declares M$ dividend! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @07:04PM (#6481351) Homepage
      Just do what everyone else does, make it abroad import it sending all the money back out of the US and fold if anyone sues you.

      Its not just that foreign jobs are cheaper than US or EU jobs, is that there is a patent, liability and general law driven economic incentive to move everything offshore except lawyers
      • Just do what everyone else does, make it abroad import it sending all the money back out of the US and fold if anyone sues you.

        Look, I used my dividend to buy three or four nice boxed coppies of XP and put them on Ebay. They came from abroad, cost me nothing, yet still I do not prosper! Everyone just laughed at me and now I'm stuck with this sucky software. What't to do?


    • From the article:

      Microsoft isn't the first technology company ordered to pay large sums after finding itself a class-action defendant. In 1999, Toshiba settled a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit that arose from claims that the company had sold notebooks with defective floppy drives. Immediately after the settlement, the same lawyers that pursued Toshiba sued Compaq Computer, Emachines, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Packard Bell NEC.

      Anyone notice a pattern here? Some time ago I received a notice in the mail

  • Microsoft Corp announced it agrees with the ruling and will reimburse the plaintiffs with multiple licenses of whatever lovely Microsoft product they choose....
  • Microsoft sued for copyright infringement [ibiblio.org] over Windows XP shutdown music.

    And On-Topic:
    Software Giveaways should be assigned no value in a legal settlement!

    • four notes? Man imagine lawyers back in the bach/mozart/etc days.

      Um all these songs are Sonata's. I claim TM infringement!

      Christsake... I mean whole genres of music sound similar and we can still distinguish them apart. Four fucking notes is a joke.

      And personally I think that message is just a hoax. Though nowadays... :-(
    • Software Giveaways should be assigned no value in a legal settlement!

      This should be emphasized. They're putting large dollar signs on what is effectively a CD duplication process, if even that (you only need one CD per school, right?).

      I'm shocked to see this kind of stuff. They do something wrong, and we punish them by forcing our kids to use their products.

  • Settlement Administrator Using IIS 5.0 (Irony) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hillct ( 230132 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:49PM (#6481299) Homepage Journal
    I love it. Part of the settlement administration website, managed by Rust consulting Inc. [rustconsulting.com], "... a class act in claims administration", located at http://microsoftcalsettlement.com/ [microsoftc...lement.com] is run on Microsoft IIS 5.0. I havn't seen the exact language of the settlement yet (does it cover Microsoft OSs more recent than Win05/98?) so it's hard to tell whether Rust Consulting Inc. will be filling out their own forms on their own website to claim their settlement coupons for their overpayment fot the OS running their website (or notifying their histing provider to do so).

    -- CTH
  • How is it that the US government can buy $90 million worth of software, when they know they are being overcharged and could be getting more a secure product for free?

    • Re:Yup (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ceejayoz ( 567949 )
      They don't want to go and spend $500 million restructuring everything, replacing all their Windows software with Linux software that may not be written yet, and training their endusers, probably.

  • What Idiots Negotiated this Deal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:57PM (#6481325)
    1. Overcharge by $40/copy.
    2. Agree to refund $5 to $29/copy.
    3. Profit!
  • $100 discount on each copy of the Linux kernel that they use in the future. And we will sell it to them at $101 a copy.

  • There goes linux... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @07:14PM (#6481390) Journal
    Two-thirds of the unclaimed money will go to California public schools in a mix of donated Microsoft software and cash grants. Although the maximum value of the settlement is $1.1 billion, Microsoft could end up paying as little as $367 in cash, which is what it would owe to California public schools if no vouchers are claimed. If all vouchers are claimed, Microsoft would be required to pay the maximum, but schools would then get nothing.

    Long paste, but I have 2 concerns.

    1. Are the software calculated at RETAIL. Very bad if they get to use these prices. Here in Redmond, if you have a buddy who works for m$ you can get stuff for dirt cheap, 15 bux for keyboard cheap.

    2. This would just give all the schools Microsoft windows to run on all its desktops, with a copy of office and maybe even .net developers tools. Wheres linux or bsd in the mix?
  • Should the $1.1B per state be multiplied by the number of states or do you think it will scale by population. For cash strapped states it should look like a good way to get some funding for the high-tech equipment in schools. Also all the government agencies in the state should be able to claim cash back on purchases.
    To bad they settled and there was no judgment. It will be harder for other states to get the same deal.
  • Although the maximum value of the settlement is $1.1 billion, Microsoft could end up paying as little as $367 in cash



    That's quite a spread! What has to happen to drop the payment to three hundred sixty seven dollars?

  • Subtract result from Microsoft assets.

  • The sad thing is... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LilMikey ( 615759 )
    Windows 95 has fallen out of support and besides that, most people have gotten a new PC since then with ME or XP handcuffed to it. 98 is falling (has fallen?) out of support and even that has been largely replaced by newer versions (like it or not). How many people still hang on to their old licenses after the software is trash? There's gonna be like 10 claims from geeks swiping the license from granny's computer. Everyone else has trashed 'em or just don't give a crap about 16 bucks.
    • The claims admin will take the word of anyone claiming 5 licenses or below to a maximum of $100. Just as well, because I don't know if I've got my old 486 box or any of the paperwork.

      MS owes me for ... DOS, W3.1, W95, W98SE, and Office 97... I'm still using Office 97 and W98 just like a shitload of people and businesses. Surprise, just because one uses Windoze doesn't mean one jumps through the hoop just because MS says to.

      Though the processor and the hard drive in the box 98 is running on have been upgr

  • Typical "burn the consumer" settlement (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rossz ( 67331 ) <ogre@@@geekbiker...net> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:33PM (#6481691) Journal
    Many years ago Bank of America lost a class action lawsuit for some dubious practices. For example, make a deposit and write a check the same day. Odds are, the check will bounce and incur a hefty overdraft fee. After BoA settled I received a letter stating I could claim my portion by filling out the enclosed form, etc. etc., and I would receive vouchers good for banking services at BoA. Excuse me? What makes you think I would ever again trust them with my money?

    I'll bet some lawyers made some serious money in the case, though.

  • ...converted to...? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    .

    "...can be traded and converted to cash"

    Better hope the settlement money can't be converted into campaing funds!

    (Inside joke. You have to be a Californian to understand what Gray Davis is going to do with that money.)

  • See The Bigger Picture (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wp8gFSiO ( 687987 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:49PM (#6481754)
    Townsend and Townsend and Crew, the law firm that filed the suit, described Friday's ruling as "the largest recovery of a monopoly overcharge ever achieved in the United States and the largest recovery ever achieved under the antitrust laws of California."

    Uh, yeah, and like most of these types of lawsuits, the trial lawyers get the bulk of the spoils and the consumer gets peanuts. The firm partners all get to build new wings on their homes and the consumer get their $5 to $29. Big consumer victory, what a joke. Sorry, but my contempt for what the legal profession has become overshadows anything wrong Microsoft might have done. And of course, the geeks applaud this outcome, because they can't get over their hang-ups on Microsoft without seeing the bigger picture, which is how out of control lawsuits have become in American society and how the legal system has become a tool of legalized terror against businesses and individuals. You need not look any further than what the RIAA is engaged in. Think about that before you yell "yeah, fsck Microsoft!"
  • Wouldn't it be better to have put in safeguards that prevented MS from overpricing? I'm glad that the "little guy" won, but wee, vouchers... I'm surprised they didn't try to pay them off with XP licenses. /didn't RTFA
  • I recieved a notice in the mail several days ago regarding a settlement in Florida.

    Here are some links to relevent documents Applications.pdf [microsoftp...lement.com] is a list of covered products and a web site with more information for the curious Microsoft Product Settlement [microsoftp...lement.com]

    I dont have the paperwork handy right now but if I remember the claims form correctly up to 5 products could be claimed wihtout documentation and if over 5 porducts were claimed additional documentation would be required. They even supplied a list of pr

  • I have an idea! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @10:40PM (#6482222) Homepage Journal
    Cool, man. When the tobacco companies were getting sued left and right a decade ago, they should have negotiated a settlement where they donated cigarettes to schools.
  • I'm going to turn in claims for all of the actual Windows CDs I found lying around on the street and go buy a nice 6 pack of beer with the money.

    Yup, I can finally move up from Coors and get me a 6 pack of Mickey's!

    Yeah, life is good... :D
  • Watch it be spread sooo thin, you can't even get a happy meal with it.
  • MicroSoft overcharging consumers for Windows strikes me as an odd notion. If you can get an operating system for free, isn't anything they charge for Windows overcharging? And if that's not the case, doesn't MicroSoft have the right to charge whatever they please for their product? If you don't like the price, don't buy the product.

    Arguably, Windows is a really valuable operating system. Because it dwarfs other desktop OSes, software gets developed exclusively for Windows. Thus, if you want to run this sof
  • What? Microsoft overcharged for their products? You're kidding me!?! I thought that all the microsoft products were worth [squidly.org] the 100 fucking dollars I spent on it!
  • Perhaps I'm being suspicious, but doesn't this claim process give the state of California the option of finding out those computer users who bought computers (eg. Dell, Gateway, PDA's) out of state, but didn't pay their local state tax? Claimants have to provide: proof of purchase, home address, and the software licenses purchased ....

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