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Ending Harassment from Microsoft and the BSA?
Big_Joe asks: "Lately Microsoft has put a satellite office in the Grand Rapids, MI area. Because of this I, an end user working for a large contractual company, have been getting harassment mail from Microsoft and the BSA. The information they are using to contact me is information from Chicago's Comdex 3 years ago. Since then I have switch my career direction from Windows to Linux. I would like to get my name removed from any association with Microsoft products. The only systems I use with any Microsoft software installed are owned and maintained by my employer. An earlier story here said not to reply because it is more of a headache. So how do I get them to quit bugging me? Is there any legal action I can take for harassment? How do I tell them that I am no longer a customer and that they have no further right to pester me?" Hmmm... smells like more spam. How should one handle any corporation that does crap like this, especially one that makes backhanded threats toward your workplace?
I don't know if you have this in the US, but in the UK we have a thing called the Citizens Advice Buro.
In this wonderfull place are Lawers who are prepared to write leagale letters for free.
If this was happening to me I'd be round to mine like a shot with all the stuf MS had sent me and asking the Lawer to write a Cease and Disist letter.
The next time I got a letter from MS I'd be down to the local Small Claimes court, or whatever your equavilent is, where I'd start procedings against them.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Actually, this whole "I changed my line of business" stuff sounds pretty shady to me. What exactly were you doing at Comdex that got them interested in you, anyway? Peddling warez, perchance?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
send a certified letter, make copies for your records. make it clear that you consider this harassment as you are no longer a customer,and that if they continue to send you stuff that you will seek damages. Marketing companies are required by law to maintain a 'blacklist' of customers who asked not to be contacted.
Don't hide from the evil giant, they prey on fear.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
You DON'T want them to stop hassling you if you have an MS free office. Think of it as sucking valuble resources out of them!! I think you should request more information from them!! Think of the amusement you can have if they try to audit you!! The money you can make of suing them for harrasment.
;)
Plus it will distact them from me.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Simple, tell them you're too busy to reply 'cos you're working out what's involved in migrating every department of your new company to Linux
Who mentioned threats? o_O
Part of the problem with some *nix developers I know is that they honestly don't have a clue what the various Windows platforms are capable of. For all you know, you might come across an MS technology that is perfect for a project you are working on. Granted, this might be a rarity, but simply refusing to use a technology for "ethical" reasons is absurd... it should always be the best tool for the job... even if it is from MS.
One thing is good to keep in mind about Microsoft. By its anti-customer actions, Microsoft is buying itself an unprecedented amount of bad feeling. At present feelings against Microsoft are so negative that the company has business only because it has a virtual monopoly. If there ever becomes a real alternative to MS software (like the Open Office suite, for example), Microsoft will rapidly collapse.
(I have written this comment so that it includes information that most readers here already know, but that the average computer user needs. That way, if you like the comment, you can pass it on to your less knowledgeable friends.)
The first paragraph may sound like an exaggerated opinion, but collapse of a computer company's business has happened before. IBM had, at one time, almost 100% of the personal computer business. But it was surprising at the time how much people didn't like IBM. People who supplied cement to the building industry and people who ran dry cleaners and students who played with Basic all knew that IBM was in court for anti-trust violations. It was often shocking how much negative feeling toward IBM there was among people who had little understanding of the technical issues behind the violations.
As soon as an alternative to buying PCs from IBM was available, IBMs business dropped rapidly. The magazine articles at the time exaggerated IBM's percentage of the market because they failed to count the computers that were made by very small businesses. The alternatives to IBM PCs were called clones, and thousands of companies built them. IBMs business quickly dropped to 8% of the market, and then below that.
Now history is poised to repeat itself, this time with software. Linux is still not easy enough to configure. Open Office has, for the needs of many people, arrived. The Mozilla browser will soon be released, but it doesn't have a calendar or a spell-checker yet, and these are important to many people who use Microsoft Outlook. Events are moving fast, and it won't be long before the selfless love of the open source programmers overthrows the world's most abusive software dictator.
Often people with little technical knowledge don't understand that underlying the negative feeling toward Microsoft are strong technical failings. For example, Windows XP, Microsoft's newest operating system, has a file called the Registry. This file contains settings for the operating system and almost every other program that is installed. The registry file is a single point of failure. If something goes wrong in the registry, as it sometimes does, the only method of recovery is to re-install Windows XP, all the programs, all the drivers, and all the patches again. This can take days, during which the user is not able to work normally.
Why does Microsoft have such a flawed design? Why put information for many programs in one file? Why not put each program's settings in separate files, so that one cannot destroy the others? Apparently because having all the settings in one file accomplishes a kind of copy protection. Someone who copies a program's folder will not be able to operate that program on another computer because the settings are hidden in Windows XP's registry file. So, all the honest customers suffer because of Microsoft's desire to extract the most money from the world. That kind of offensive defensiveness actually lowers long-term profit, something the company executives have not learned.
This tactic has been done with limited success by some anarchist groups and big food corps franchise offices. You can keep them tied up for weeks coming out and giving you free coupons, samples, and the like trying to get to start a subway. Get M$ to come out and give marketing presentations at your next LUG, just call it an assemblage of IT workers striving for innovation in the industry, so IWSII (they'll like it).
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Grand Rapids, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, and Milwaukee are being singled out for a May 1 - 31 "grace period".
If you hurry up and register with the grace period program, they come and audit you this summer, and the promise not to prosecute you for 'pirating' that occured before May 1.
BSA 'grace'. Two of my offices are already getting warnings, and there are obnoxious advertisements in the paper, and on the radio.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
You want them to stop contacting you. You don't want to contact them. The answer is simple. Set up a filter rule on your mailbox. Divert their messages to the trashcan. End of story.
I believe the actual term is the 'chocolate starfish.'
http://eri.ca.sandia.gov/eri/howto.html
I tend to agree with the above post. The best would be if you can get in a protracted legal battle with them over nothing, then sue them back for defimation, lost wages, and pain and suffering. You could retire off that kinda lawsuit.
You said 'mail', and it's not clear whether you mean paper or bits. You're writing /. to ask for advice on how to deal with junk mail??
/.!
Seems you've either got a chip on your shoulder about M$ -fine, or you're clueless -okay. So here's my advice (fwiw+ianal): Just ignore their mail. If you start sending certified "you better stop harrasing me"-type letters, you'll really get their lawyers' attention.
Of course, if your office is truly free of any pilfered software products (not just Microsoft), and you want to feel what it's like having a chip knocked off your shoulder by a bully, then go for it. Send them some letters. Otherwise, chill, and stop sending ridiculous questions to
About a month ago, I got a really nice looking form letter from the BSA (bad software authorities?) telling me I'd better make sure my company was using all licensed software. I checked. My Linux desktop and server were both happily running Debian 2.2. My Sun Ultra 30 was running a free-to-use copy of Solaris 8. My SHN fileserver was running FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE. I laughed and spent a while figuring out interesting ways of igniting the letter.
Two weeks later, I get another mail addressed to me (misspelled last name and all) from Microsoft themselves. The same basic form letter, warning me of the dire, scary consequences if I don't license all my illegal pirated Linux warez. I don't even bother burning this one; I just toss it.
I'm now waiting for the Software Police to show up with a battering ram and a bullhorn, waking me up at 4:15 AM on a Saturday morning and demanding to see every little piece of documentation in my house proving that I didn't steal that copy of Microsoft Bob back in 1994 or give my aunt a computer with a burned copy of Win98 installed on it.
They won't get too far up the stairs, because I have a particularly vicious dog, but it'll be fun to watch, anyway.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
t.
Back in the day of INI files, they were all over the place. They were inconsistent. That was because Microsoft had inadequate standards.
The registry is a trade-off, but a different trade-off, in my opinion. The registry (which is in all versions of Microsoft Windows from 95 to XP) works perfectly as copy protection. It also causes all versions of Windows to be unstable.
...please don't forget to videotape the action. :-)
I have been getting the letters approx every 2 weeks for the last 5 months...1 from MS, and 1 from BSAA.
I actually rang Microsoft to ask them to take me off their list and they said they'd have to take all my details etc and then they'd find out why!
I told 'em where to go! Last thing I need is more threating letters!
---- Put Sig here:
"Return to sendah,
Address Unknown"
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Semi-offtopic, but I've got a bunch of carcasses laying around (computer, not human). If the BSA thugs come and blow the door off its hinges, are they going to drag me in for all the unlicensed software sitting on the hard drives of these old machines? Not that I will ever USE the machines, they're here for parts and parts only. I'm just too lazy to deformat the hard drives.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
File a US Postal Prohibitory order against them. It is a crime to send mail to an address for which you have received a Prohibitory order. This was orignally intended to stop pornographic junkmail, but it was ruled by the Supreme Court that the filer is the sole arbitor of what constitutes pornographic. If you think BSA mailings are porno - the US postal office can't argue with you.
http://www.junkbusters.com/dmlaws.html#form
If you care about your dog, don't use it as a deterent. The BSA brings law enforcement officers with them, and they quite possibly would simply shoot it. Of course you could then attempt to sue, but that wouldn't help your dog.
Were you talking spam or postal mail? If its spam, a simple filter should work. If its postal mail, try the postal service. I'm sure they'll have a way for you to stop getting it. Perhaps have each one returned to sender? I now in my company if they are returned from the postal service they get taken off the mailing list as an invalid address.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.