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Microsoft Drags Feet with Settlement Claims
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is holding up compensation claims from a quarter of million Californians in order to punish Lindows.com, and to coerce the class action plaintiffs 'into siding with Microsoft against its Lindows competitor,' according to a court filing seen by The Register. The document, filed on 21st November by Townsend and Townsend and Crew, lead counsel for the Californian class action consumers, points out that none of the claims being held up was actually filed via Lindows.com, yet Microsoft has held them 'hostage' for over two months."
Does this mean that all of us who filed via the Lindows method are going to be stiffed? I did receive a claim form direct from the court...I wonder If I should file it. It says I have until March 15, 2004.
I know someone from IRC who openly brags about making up information to get a free download of Staroffice 7, because he says his claim will end up being thrown out. The fact is, it does encourage people to make up phony claims, and unfortunately, people like the one I mention above will probably never be caught. This is exactly one of Microsoft's objections, and they couldn't be more right in what they've said. By requiring people to file claims through the court, as would normally happen, people are much less able to make phony claims. As much as I don't like Microsoft, and even though they're guilty, it doesn't make it right to steal from them, or from Lindows.
It's a nice idea to encourage people to claim their piece of the settlement, and as much as I like seeing it happen to Microsoft, it really can't be done in a fair and legal way.
From what I read, they don't require the proof that the settlement requires, so how are they going to get the money? And what's stopping you from filing claims with both MS and Lindows? I doubt MS is going to share it's data with Lindows.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Only to have it as a charge on next quarter's earnings report? What would they gain from that? I know modern execs have an extreme short-term outlook, but that would really be extreme. Unless some guy is getting ready to retire and his retirement bonus is based on this year's stock performance.
I'm not sure what intentions Lindows had beyond marketing their software using a court decision, and I'm equally unsure of how they can say that any of the claims filed by Lindows on behalf of the claimant have any merit whatsoever.
/., I rushed to MSFreePC and completed all but the last couple steps to file a claim. Of course, I've never even been to any states that BORDER California, let alone purchased a PC there. What's to stop anybody from doing that, and how could they ever verify the legitmacy of the claims?
When I first read about this program on
As bad as it may be, I think Microsoft is well within its' right to not accept MSFreePC claims, or at least to challenge their validity in a court of law. That shouldn't stop them from processing claims submitted under THEIR terms, however.
"grow up"? big words coming from an ac.
The law only applies *in theory* to microsoft, but yet they have never had to deal with any signifigant penalties (sorry, to M$, 1.1 billion dollars is not signifigant), which means that they are *in practice* exempt from the law.
But how many small businesses are going to be that efficient? Especially when the guy who runs the systems is probably someone doing it part time along with his other duties, who may have been handed the job by the last guy who left, without a significant training period (after all, Windows is so easy to run, right?). A lot of small research labs (e.g., under one professor at a university) are run like this, usually by student volunteers.
And the point is, Microsoft accuses you of theft without any proof whatsoever. They have no way of tracking where that version came from, to know, for instance, if it was copied from some other disk). They have no witnesses to testify that they saw you make the copy illegally (unless they can find the guy you laid off last week and he has a grudge). But "innocent until proven guilty" means nothing. It's more like, "we have more lawyers than you and can grind you into the dust whenever we choose, so wouldn't you rather have a site license and end all these worries?"
Tax breaks?
It's a nice idea to encourage people to claim their piece of the settlement, and as much as I like seeing it happen to Microsoft, it really can't be done in a fair and legal way.
The settlement is whatever the parties agree on. They could have agreed to give the money to chain smokers, or to donate to endangered ducks, or to burn a billion dollars to heat orphanages. It doesn't matter matter whether you consider the distribution fair, what matters is what they agreed to.
And what they agreed to is that they owe a billion dollars, a light penalty anyway compared to the harm they have caused. But now they are trying to delay and wriggle out of that, too. That is definitely not fair.
The agreement says they pay out a maximal of 1.1 billion. That means they've done at least 1.1 billion damage. So, any phony claim is only depriving real claims of their share of the settlement. MS has no reason to complain because they owe 1.1 billion. People who aren't getting their share of the claim should be out trying to get their fair share.
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I've seen a few posts speculating that MS may be trying to put off paying out untill next quarter in order to make profits look better, but is it possible that they are just keeping that cash in a high interest account or some other high growth thing for as long as possible to recoup some of the lost mony by collecting interest?
I'm in now way an accountant, but it seems to me that this might be a way to gain back some of those losses.
Interesting theory, but I'm not sure that businesses can work the accounts that way. I think the money would be part of their normal cash holdings until it's actually paid out. The interest would be included in normal earnings estimates in that case, and they'd have to account for the loss of interest from the payout in the next year's reports. So while to you and me it would look like it was helping recoup some of the losses, it wouldn't because the interest was "expected" income, not "unexpected" (i.e. sales better than expected, etc.).-
On a side note, there have been a few posts about how $1billion is not much to MS, but really I think that although it might be a much smaller percent of their overal value than any other company, that $1billion is still a fair loss in the sence that it could have been used to generate some ammount >$1billion which is not chump change even to MS
Actually MS is different than other business in that respect. They have absolutely huge cash holdings compared to pretty much any other company around. It's like MS is scared to spend it, or give part of it to stockholders in dividends and such. Strange how a company as big and powerful as MS can act like a terrified little company scared something may come along requiring huge sums of money.Then again, MS tends to act like a child a lot, so perhaps it's all related to Bill Gates. With MS being so successfuly so quickly, he's probably a bit sheltered from reality, business and otherwise. So he (and in response to that, his company) act like frightened children. It could also be that ole Billy's a bit scared that the success can't continue, since I suspect he doesn't have nearly as much of a clue as to how MS was as successful as it is as he'd like to pretend. :)
No, because it hasn't landed them in bigger trouble. They continue to ignore the legal system and it continues to be very profitable for them. And they'll keep thwarting the legal system as for them it's been a working strategy.
Microsoft has learned that they can win most of their court cases and get slap-on-the-hand settlements for the rest and then see to it that the slap doesn't even actually happen.
If you rob a bank, and give half your ill-gotten gains to charity, and on your deathbed give away what's left
... you're still a bank robber.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
- MS is refusing to pay ANY claims in an attempt to extort the attorneys for the class members to object to MSfreePC
- MSfreePC requires the IDENTICAL information that the manual process does. In fact, it's the same form. They are just doing it electronically. To the extent that someone could defraud MSfreePC, the IDENTICAL opportunity exists with the paper process.
- Microsoft objecting to ONLINE settlement claims is dripping with irony given their "innovation" advertising campaigns.
- While 1.1B is the announced number, if you read The Register article you will see that currently they are ONLY going to be paying $50MM!! That's less than 5% of the trumpeted settlement amount. Yes, I know they give a bunch of other money in the form of free software - CDs are cheap. That costs them nothing.
This whole process seems like a scam, not MSfreePC, but the whole settlement process. I bet the attorneys will get more than MS ends up paying out.