Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
"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"
'nuff said
me karma am bad
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?"
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.