Iowa Court May Order Microsoft Refunds

dowobeha writes: "The Des Moines Register is reporting that thousands of Windows 98 users in Iowa could get $40 refunds from Microsoft. The Iowa Supreme Court has found the big boys from Redmond guilty of price fixing in violation of a 1976 Iowa law. According to the report, this is the first antitrust ruling in any state that favors 'indirect purchasers' (regular consumers who got Windows preinstalled on their newly purchased computer) rather than "direct purchasers" (manufacturers who license Windows to distribute on new machines)."

Comments

Big deal...

[talks_to_birds]

Price fixing is pretty much universal these days.

I defy you to take the ads out of the Sunday paper, and find different prices for the exact same items in ads from Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, or any of the big, mass-market, national consumerist chains.

They've even stopped bothering with the fiction of charging $xx.95 at one chain, versus $xx.99 at another chain - prices are for the most part identical.

Where's the competition?

Where's the "free marketplace" that some apologists like to trumpet?

There is no such thing.

t_t_b