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

I don't think this is a good idea.

[wisemat]

I don't think this is a good idea. The point should be to change certain behavior in the future, and perhaps to punish them for what they did in the past. It is not to give out mass refunds to computer users, who really did have a choice in the end.

Contractual obligations forced some companys to use microsofts software or pay for it even if they didn't use it. Netscape was not asked if it wanted to be driven out of business by having some one else give away versions of its core software just to drive them out of business. If anyone should be compensated monitarily by microsoft it should be them.

Why can't a company be punished

[Pinball Wizard]

without inflicting damage to the economy? Really, that $40 will take you and a date to the movies, but added up will hurt Microsoft in a way that indirectly hurts the rest of the economy. Because love them or hate them, they are the GM of the software world - whats good for them is good for the rest of the software/IT industry. Nasdaq and the fortunes of other large companies rise and fall on the news of Microsofts stock going up and down.

A much better punishment would be to force them to open their APIs and interfaces so the rest of us can write compatible software. A $40 rebate isn't doing anyone good individually, its just eating away at an already shaky tech economy.