Microsoft Laptop Recipient Auctioning Laptop

Salvance writes "While most bloggers who received the controversial Vista powered Acer from Microsoft are keeping them, Laughing Squid has decided to auction off his free laptop from Microsoft and donate all proceeds to the The Electronic Frontier Foundation. (EFF) He saw this as a great opportunity to support a worthy cause, and some other bloggers are following suit. What's funny is that Microsoft is now backpedaling and telling bloggers to send back the laptops. Do they even have a legal right to do so?"

Comments

Re:why should they

[flimflammer]

I once had an Acer Ferrari laptop a while back (I helped someone get an ebay business started and they gave it to me as a gift)

It actually was a very decent machine. It was pretty fast. The price tags are a little enormous though, especially considering the speakers were such crap you'd hear static on even low volume settings.

Yawn

[WalterGR]

Yawn is all I can say.

Okay, not the EFF, but how about

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source))

This article is misleading.

[wng_z3r0]

First: a disclaimer (though I think it's irrelevant) I am a Microsoft MVP Now then, The little news blurb is misleading. The first time I read the post, I thought that Microsoft was unhappy that the blogger was donating his machine to charity and demanded the laptop back. Upon thorough reading of the included links, it is apparent that Microsoft has asked the blogger to give the laptops away (in support of the auction) or send them back to Microsoft. If you are going to include everything that Microsoft has done wrong, you might as well nail when they *actually* screw up. Trust me, there are enough of those to keep /. busy without misrepresenting stories. wng

Re:huh

[Umuri]

Not particularly. Your argument in terms of piracy has one fatal flaw, and it's the same flaw the RIAA uses in its' extortion schemes in the U.S. Justice System. The loss of revenue is variable. For some people, piracy costs the RIAA absolutely NOTHING. Other's it may cost them a couple hundreds of dollars. The question here is whether or not the person would have bought it in the first place. If these reviewers, most of which from the looks of it were either against microsoft vista, or had pretty shaky views of microsoft in general, were never going to buy windows vista, microsoft loses the couple of dollars it costs to press a windows VISTA disk, because the person wouldn't have bought it anyway. It's the same reason why microsoft has abused its' monopoly status to strongarm ALL major computer assemblers to ship their computers with windows. I believe there was even a couple articles about it recently how it actually costs companies like dell and gateway MORE To ship a computer without windows then one with it. It doesn't cost microsoft anything to make a copy of a software program, and for some people, forcing them to have it is the only way they will sell it in the first place. As for the other post that replied, i know this isn't a direct thread but you cannot include management and other overhead costs in this cost evalutation, because these are not commercial sales. These are gifts from a corporation. It's the same reason why companies give employees discounts. There is no overhead, because you don't market to employees, you don't give sales pitches to employees. Most employees pay the Cost of Manufacture for items from their employers, which in this case would be a couple dollars for a dvd press. Microsoft already recoups it's devlopment, marketing, and other overhead costs in their commercial products, it's figured that way in the budget when it sets the price to sell it at.

Re:huh

[nacturation]

If Microsoft wasn't so bent on keeping everything proprietary, there really would only be the cost of the media. That's like saying if it weren't for car thieves necessitating keys and alarm systems, then the price of cars would only be the cost of the materials that go into it.

Re:huh

[julesh]

Those people would have paid $300 or so per copy, which is money out of M$'s pocket

I doubt many of these people will pay $300 for a copy of Vista. Some of them, for instance, seem to be mac users who would never do it. Others will choose not to upgrade until they buy a new machine, so will get an OEM copy, for which MS will likely only see ~$100. Others still will skip vista and not upgrade until the next version is released, which is unlikely to take as long as vista did.

Re:huh

[nacturation]

It's possible to steal a car (and it happens quite often). It's impossible to steal Windows (and has never happened, ever). That point of my comment is that key management for Windows is designed as a unauthorized use mitigation system much in the same way that a vehicle's keys and car alarm is designed as an unauthorized use mitigation system. I'm ignoring the distinction between copyright infringement and theft here because the point I was really trying to make (and obviously failed) is that even without key management the cost of producing software on media is *not* just the cost of the media. In the same way, the cost of a vehicle is not just the price of the parts that go into it. Unless you factor in all overhead and other costs and bundle that into one all-consuming "media cost", then the cost of the media alone doesn't even come close to what it would actually cost to send out copies of any software, be it Windows or Linux.

Re:This article needs to be changed.

[NickFortune]

"I hate MS as much as anyone, but there's no need to make stuff up."

Why not? Ballmer makes shit up all the time, so does gates, so does every other CEO if every other corporation, so does president, vice president and every politician known to mankind.

Why not?

• Because we're better than they are.
• Because we don't need to lie to win this fight
• Because lying devalues our credibility, and the truth is our best weapon.
• Because telling the truth and writing better software seems to be working
• Because Microsoft has better liars than we have, and can pay for more mouths to shout the lies. To fight them on their own terms would be suicidal.

But mainly, because we're better than they are. And that should be reason enough.

Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes.

[Secrity]

In the US and other places that use British Common Law; if the bank accidentally transfers money into your account, it is called unjust enrichment and they can take it back.

In the US, Canada, UK, and many other countries; if somebody sends an INDIVIDUAL an item that was unsolicited, the receiver may considered it to be a gift. The laws differ by country if a BUSINESS receives something that was unsolicited.

On a forum, a guy who sells collectibles on ebay had a big problem because he mixed up two boxes that he sent to buyers; one contained a $300 item and the other a $20 item. The seller talked to a lawyer who essentially told the seller that he was shit out of luck. The seller had the lawyer type up a (useless) letter demanding that the $300 item be returned and sent it to the buyer.

The buyers reported to ebay/paypal that they hadn't received their items. The buyer who received the demand letter then mailed a cheap toy to the seller. A week later the buyer sent the seller a letter containing the same wording as the letter that the seller had sent, demanding that the seller return the cheap toy. Needless to say, the seller's postings became quite livid at this point.

In the end the seller was out the $300 item and shipping costs, and both paypal transfers were canceled. One buyer received a $300 item as an unsolicited gift and the other buyer returned the $20 item to the seller (seller paid the shipping). I don't know what happened to the cheap toy.

Re:huh

[Znork]

"car thieves"

You must mean 'car copiers'. Of course, I have yet to see a car alarm system prevent unauthorized copying of a car.

But you can bet that if the gas station had not only a car washer but also a car copier we'd see the car industry yelling about how car copying was going to kill the industry and how cars would have to be protected from copying, and find a whole host of reasons why cars had to cost $20K+ even tho the car copier could churn out copies the whole day long for a couple of bucks worth of raw matter...

As for the issue of cost of producing the first copy, _deal_ with it. The opensource community (and other highly competetive industries) has already shown how you do it; quit it with the multi-billion dollar sink-or-swim projects, release rapid incremental changes where you recuperate investment from your first mover advantage. The days where you locked yourself in your room for ten years and came out with something great are over and gone. By the time you're finished the small daily steps of the world will have left your solitary development a decade behind in the dust; collaborative interchange is vastly more powerful than the ivory tower.

Well

[mtec]

You can't un-ring a bell
once the sound waves get out.

When I read a review
there always be doubt.

Were the words to critique?
Were the words to describe?

Is that glowing review
the result of a bribe?

They sent Ultimate insults
with Ferrari toupees

When they should have
just let the chips
fall where they may.

Re:This article needs to be changed.

[MECC]

There an old saying "those who don't do politics are done in by it"

The notion that (mis)leading others gets you ahead worked fine when religion ran the land. With the advent of science, however, things have begun to change (bearing in mind that lying to get ahead is all but encoded into the human genome and has been the way to get things done for thousands of years). Now, you can lie all you want, and you might get ahead doing it, but it catches up with you.

For example politicians have been trying to lie about global climate change, and now the conservative christian right and republican party are poised to be irrevocably painted as the people who fought science on climate change the most. From dying polar bears to the 41-square mile 3000 year old polar ice shelf that broke off recently, its getting harder and harder to lie about it. The conservative crusade against science, built mostly on lies, is getting its comeuppance. It worked great for awhile, and may work briefly again.

Its true - lying gets you ahead in the short term, but it catches up with you. Smart people, like most geeks and nerds are, figure this out and avoid it.

Lie and deceit harms yourself

[Steeltoe]

If you chose to lie, you deceieve others. You push a view on them that twists them from the truth, from reality.

You have then already lost. Whatever you think you can win that is not based on truth, will not prevail and will always be there in the back haunting you. Any pleasure you get out of it will come with a hook, back to the shady past.

Truth will set people free. Basically, the only evil, or rather the ignorance, in this world is when people believe the means justifies the ends. Nobody kills or steals just out of spite, or if they do, they have some serious hurt they are not able to cope with. Such self-destructive behaviour should be pitied and helped, not condemned or judged. Jesus allegedly said: For you shall yourself be judged - or put another way: When you judge others, you will judge yourself just as harsh - it's just that time makes the illusion of it not already happening.

Just happily playing God`s advocate. =)

...but isn't a blogger a journalist?

[Half-pint HAL]

Microsoft's main blurb gave three options: return, give away or "hold onto for as long as you like". Sell was not an option.

This is really interesting in a legal, pedantic way.

Consumer law should may support the claim that "hold onto for as long as you like" = "you own it". Certainly, no court case that I'm aware of has ever supported the "not for resale" clause attached to practically every video and piece of software on the shop shelf.

But does consumer law apply here? Bloggers have been touting themselves as "citizen journalists" for some time now and here Microsoft have taken the very bold step of taking that claim seriously. With the odd exception (when the marketers foolishly described the laptop as a "gift for you"), the review kit was sent out in accordance with standard journalistic practice. I'm not in the press, but it's pretty common practice to send review kit with the option to give away. In the press, give away generally means a competition prize. What Microsoft wanted was more than just a bunch of reviews -- they wanted a few dozen free computers that everyone on the internet wanted to win. Off the back of this, they wanted Vista to become a prestige item.

Of course, being "citizen" journalists, the bloggers just weren't used to this sort of thing and didn't know what the letter meant, but the professional journalists would have understood it perfectly well.

If these bloggers are the journalists that they claim to be, then they should be able to take the bold step of adhering to journalistic conventions, rather than hiding behind consumer protection laws.

Bloggers can't have it both ways: either they're journalists, free to protect their sources (cf the leaks from Apple), or they're consumers.

Oh, and if they don't adhere to journalistic conventions, neither Microsoft nor any other major company will ever offer them competition prizes again.

Citizen journalists score own goal.

HAL.