Microsoft Sues and Gets Sued

wubo writes, "Microsoft is apparently stepping up its anti-piracy measures by publishing the locations and specifics of their pending lawsuits. Check out the snazzy map — warms me heart and soul." And to even the scales of justice, one of the last remaining class-action antitrust lawsuits filed against Microsoft in a state court is set to go to trial in Iowa later this year. An anonymous reader writes, "Iowa consumers who purchased Microsoft products in the last 12 years are being represented in a class action anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. The jury trial begins on November 13 and is expected to last 6 months." Bill Gates is on the witness list.

Comments

And of course

[Joel from Sydney]

The actual list of people getting sued.

Re:And of course

[remembertomorrow]

There was actually a computer repair/sales place in the town where I live that went out of business after being sued by Microsoft.

Apparently, they were including XP Pro for free with their bundles.

If you're going to offer your customers Microsoft products, at least make them pay for it. Not worth the risk. Either that or offer alternatives.

Re:Is this the best time?

[cskrat]

But if you'll notice, they aren't suing end users (ala RIAA), they are suing businesses or people that have made a business out of selling the pirated copies. I wouldn't be surprised if, in many of these cases, it was the end users that turned to Microsoft to report a bogus copy after having issues with their illegitimate and possibly cracked version that they purchased with good faith that it was a legitimate, albeit possibly discounted, copy.

The actions of Microsoft in these cases show that they are trying to improve their image with the end users by persuing the business that deceived them while simultaneously offering said end user a discounted or complimentary legitimate copy to help resolve the situation. Furthermore these actions are also considered to be defence of copyright so that they do not lose that copyright.

Re:ahahahahah

[Professor_UNIX]

Ummm, that guy is bitching that an 800MHz Powerbook with 1GB of RAM was slow running 10.2.x, which is a bunch of bullshit since I'm running 10.3.9 on an 800MHz G3 iBook with 640MB of RAM and it runs fine. Hell, we had 333MHz G3 B&W Powermacs with 384MB of RAM that ran OS X 10.1.x just fine when we still had those machines. The guy is a wanker, plain and simple.

Re:ahahahahah

[Eivind Eklund]

Newer versions of OSX are faster (also on old hardware) than older versions.

Basically, they improve the engineering rather than just add more features. Good call, in my book.

Eivind.