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Microsoft, Best Buy Face Racketeering Suit
15 judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals have unanimously reversed dismissal of a RICO class action suit against Microsoft and Best Buy, which claims the companies engaged in fraud in promoting Microsoft's MSN online service. (RICO is a statute originally intended to help prosecutors go after organized crime.) Quoting: "The case started after James Odom bought a PC-based laptop at a Contra Costa County Best Buy store. Data about the purchase was sent to Microsoft as part of a joint marketing agreement between the companies. Microsoft then signed Mr. Odom up for its MSN Internet service and, after a free trial period, began billing him for it." Howard Bashman's How Appealing blog has more details on the reversal, including a paraphrase from one of the appellate judges that "all blame rests with the U.S. Supreme Court for allowing the 'outlandish' result that a claim such as this can be pursued under RICO."
If the accusations of signing people up without their consent is true, both companies should be judicially raped for it.
Why wouldn't you expect it from microsoft? Seems right in line with fucking over anyone and everyone necessary to push their products, regardless of how few people want it.
The Farewell Tour II
lol in American society, you are somebody's whore somewhere. And who do you think drives these corporate whore's? The stock market... IF you aren't growing, increasing profitability, you aren't doing what they expect you to do.
America is all about taking advantage of others. I really don't like this country sometimes, because it's not just corporate America and their flexible morals. It's the entire damn country. Everybody wants to get paid, and they do it by screwing over their fellow American. It's how life seems to work.
RICO actually stands for:
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
according to Wikipedia Racketeering is:
(no, I'm not making that up)
Sound like any large software company we might all be familiar with?
I never thought of Bill Gates as just a non-violent, really smart version of Tony Soprano.. but damned if it doesn't fit.
AccountKiller
"You don't expect it from Best Buy and the largest software company on the planet."
I guess you've never heard of the "Microsoft Tax". You know, the one where the manufacturer must charge you for a copy of Windows whether you want it or not. Otherwise M$FT will cut off the manufacturer from being able to sell Windows at all.
Once a few of these huge mega-corps get a good fucking-over, maybe they'll start to behave a bit. As it is now, the government lets them do whatever they want. I'd love to see them seize all the assets of Microsoft.
The thing about your scenario is that the laws defining the so-called "obscenities" contained in FHM would have to be so well defined to single out just FHM alone would go far enough to have the law thrown out. However, if the law were to stand, all magazine distributors would have to do in order to not be sued would be to ask the "community" what they think the recommended age to view FHM should be and simply have the magazine behind the counter like other small, easy to steal, age-restricted merchandise.
Back to the article. RICO may be a bad law and overly broad in its wording, but in this context, it works. Microsoft and Best Buy are working in collusion to obfuscate the terms of a service. It wouldn't be as bad if it were just one of the company's legalese that had to be hacked through; instead, you have to navigate both in order to ascertain exactly what is going on when you purchase the computer. Furthermore, the guy in the article allegedly didn't even agree to their terms and he was charged anyway! That's just ridiculous.
RICO may be overly broad and need refining, but something more than a "slap on the wrist" should be done to stop Microsoft and Best Buy from signing people up for an unwanted service and obfuscating the terms of said service in order to generate fraudulent revenue.
From reading so far, and especially from a prior post from a Best Buy employee, it doesn't appear that Microsoft knew that these customers were being signed up without concent.
It sounds more like Best Buy had an overly agressive internal campaign to refer as many sales as possible to MSN, and did whatever they could to make it happen.
Is Microsoft guilty if it had no knowledge of this? Further, did Microsoft make it easy for people to cancel the service?
If Microsoft played fair when someone asked to cancel, and if they honestly didn't know how aggressive Best Buy was, then I can't fault them for this.
-David