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Microsoft Sued by a Beijing Student Over 'Privacy Violation'
freakxx writes "Xinhua report that a Beijing University student has sued Microsoft for allegedly gathering personal information via Windows Genuine Advantage. He has demanded a compensation of 1,350 RMB (around US$ 180) and an open apology printed in a national newspaper. The student has accused Microsoft of using WGA to gather information about his computer and himself, rather than solely checking whether or not the installed Windows XP system was genuine. A Microsoft spokesman has declined to speak on this issue and said that the matter is under investigation."
Copy of Windows in China: $10
Settlement of legal dispute: $150
Suing Microsoft for collecting your personal info when you live in the People's Republic of China: Priceless.
There are some things you can blame on the government. For everything else, there's Microsoft.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
"What we can say is that Microsoft is fully committed to letting customers control their personal information."
Spread by the Chinese. I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but this is just the Chinese government trying to make Microsoft look bad as a bargaining tactic.
$180? Where's the self-esteem, guy? They violated you!
...He could do the same to his own government.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
I'd rather Microsoft have my personal info than the government. Any government.
M$ should be able to force you to sing extra contract like Eula's on top of the ones at time you payed for XP for things like updates at are part of first contract / terms of sale.
Mr. Burns: "Yes. But I have ten high-priced lawyers."
"Customers." They keep using that word. I do not think that word means what most of us think it means.
OEMs are the customer. The end user who purchases a PC from an OEM and finds himself dependent on Microsoft is not the customer, he is the product.
Hear me out. If he truly didn't want to be spied on, have his details collected, he should be getting the hell out of china, not using it's legal system to sue a company for doing what the government does to everybody everyday.
Only if they can also force people who can barely construct sentences to go back to school before posting on public forums as well........
I completely agree with whatever you just said
to those living in United States. before you start making fun of China, think of the situation with privacy in your homeland. Love, PPJ.
I'd imagine MS has a tough decision to make... just pay up as going to court would be a lot more expensive (but perhaps set a precedent allowing others to sue them or threaten suit), or go to court and spend a lot more to hopefully prevent a precedent (assuming the guy wins).
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
It's like Catholicism! Why have your computer controlled by some remote, powerful entity rather than by yourself?
I applaud this person for taking a principled stand against spyware that has been forced upon him.
The fact it's made by Microsoft should be irrelevant, just analyze the behavior of the application and judge it on that.
WGA communicates unique information at any time to an American based advertising company (msn anybody?) with you the user having no idea of what data and what the implications are of giving this company that data.
Can your business really risk an application like this on your systems? Are you prepared for the consequences of letting this program run unchallenged inside your companies infrastructure?
On the 0th day, God created C
Same could be said about us USians.
WGA works the same here as it does in China. The notion that they collect "no personal information" is very clever, but untrue.
Microsoft can easily associate your pc with a record in their backend because each pc generates a unique signature. They don't have your name at the moment, but that doesn't mean they don't know who's using their OS when and where. Given the number of times a windows box phones home when it goes online, I'd say there's plenty they know about you.
This is exactly like the story some months ago where AOL gave out search data that was supposedly private. Same situation, bigger fish.
BTW, if you are still married to a microsoft OS, your software firewall should be good enough to alert you when it attempts these connections. My Kerio firewall at work does it. And marriage is the right word for it because sometimes you wonder what the hell you got yourself into.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I don't know...forcing people to sing contracts when they agree, might severely cut back on their [EULA]length. I know my voice would.
... great firewall of China.
I don't know...forcing people to sing contracts when they agree, might severely cut back on their [EULA]length. I know my voice would.
You know, having only read the first half of this post, I was sure that you had transposed the "ng" in "sing."
bad
getting worse
still a couple of orders of magnitude better than it is in china
this stunt is more of a nationalistic chest thumping exercise. were microsoft a chinese company and this guy had done what he did, he would be ignored, reprimanded, harasssed, or arrested. but being an american company, the authorities probably approve of it
and who said i found the situaiton in china, or the usa, funny?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...and, now I see that the OP is where the "sing" came from.
Me == idiot.
Perhaps he was using the Internet Explorer kelsey grammer and spull chigger ...
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
On a more funny note : the spell checker (of course) thinks i should write microsoft with a capital; wasn't really expecting that :)
Drop a couple thousand to avoid the bad PR of the newspaper apology and we never hear from him again.
Or just ask the government for a favor and _nobody_ hears from him again.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
They are gaining in space, have cheaper manufacturing, out-hacked us (pentagon penetration last week), and finally they are taking our last remaining comparative advantage away: law-suits.
Table-ized A.I.
I truly hope he wins. And I am glad that he is not asking for much. I'm pretty sure Microsoft will try to settle out of court but I am also pretty sure this guy is not really doing this for the money. The Chinese government has been trying to reinforce the people's trust in their legal system so I don't think they will just push the case aside, especially after it being covered on Slashdot. I really hope this case gets the attention it needs because this case could be the answer to protecting the privacy of all of us. Setting the precedent in China will make way for more precedents elsewhere. Lu Feng ... we are with you!!!
K
PS: I'm pretty sure somebody in Microsoft is going nuts right now ... hehe
"The User is a dangerous animal so handle it with extreme caution." Krassi (me)
Dude, it's Microsoft. You need to move that decimal place at least six more places to the right.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I'd rather Microsoft have my personal info than the government. Any government.
You are assuming they are mutually exclusive...
Table-ized A.I.
Look at some of the parent's other posts here. English sucks as a second language.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
PATRIOT Act ..... It will probably be extended again. 'nuff said
"The User is a dangerous animal so handle it with extreme caution." Krassi (me)
I think Microsoft is getting really close to the threshold both at personal and corporate level where consumers will simply refuse their products, because of the continuous, repeated bad taste Windows leaves behind.
The notion that they collect "no personal information" is very clever, but untrue. Microsoft can easily associate your pc with a record in their backend because each pc generates a unique signature.
I have some experience in this area. According to our attorneys, but being informally paraphrased by myself, it was important to never mix personally identifiable information (PII) and non-personal information. Any mixing or linking would cause the non-personal to become PII and therefore under the jurisdiction of US and international legislation, with more legislation on the way given the new found importance of this topic. So to make life simple, I may collect the operating system version for demographic reasons but I can not record an account name, IP number, or other PII with that information, nor could I have some common key to associate records in PII and non-personal databases.
Wait a minute.
I may collect the operating system version for demographic reasons but I can not record an account name, IP number, or other PII with that information
I still don't see how that should make Windows users feel secure.
History has repeatedly shown it's quite easy for Microsoft to argue in court they don't "collect" PII despite the fact they most likely do. Anecdotes abound of Judges and cases where technical fiction often passes as fact.
Judging by the number of times my windows box phoned home on a daily basis, I'd say they have an excellent idea who I am and what I'm doing. The rest is arbitrary legal fiction.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Having used Apple computers for the past 5 years, I thought it might be interesting to try a new MS-based laptop to run MS Flight Simulator. What a MISTAKE! I cannot believe the people put up with such idosyncracies & illogical operating environments such as Vista Home Premium. This is the WORST computer system I have used since the first 386sx hit the market over 10 years ago. I will return this computer to Dell this week. Nothing particularly wrong with the hardware, it's just that Microsoft has this machine choked with ridiculous interactions that are beyond my tolerance. When people first use an Apple computer, they are pleasantly surprised. It just works! And Apple computer's software makes sense. On the other hand, as "pretty" as the shell is for Vista, I cannot honestly believe that a team decided to field this poor software to the public. Microsoft Vista is like a machine with adjustable knobs hanging off its sides, but get in the way all the time, and interfere with the use and function of the actual software. It's sad that Microsoft apparently only focused on the external appearance of Vista, rather than getting "inside" the software and actually making it user-friendly. But with Microsoft, that will (apparently) never happen. Viva Apple Computer.
Yup, once the Chinese legal system settles in this guys favor, the Chinese government will no doubt use a ruse such as this to ban WGA checks within their borders. For Privacy... Yeah. Not to get free access to all those patches on Windows Update without the check... Oh no, they would never do that... :)
Shh.
There are some things you can blame on the government. For everything else, there's Microsoft.
How do you tell the difference? The severity of punishment for thought-crime in China makes privacy a very serious matter.
I'd like to make a joke about in how Communist China, you sue the BSA, but it's just not funny. People who look at the wrong web page are put in jail and executed for their organs. Technicians have testified before the US congress that prisoners were skinned alive to better preserve the skin. It should be a crime to do business with China.
I'm sure this is just PR and an attempt to shift blame to M$, but that's the kind of thing you expose yourself when you do business in a country like that.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Unlike the US, Canada has strong privacy rights, as Google is finding out, and which belong to all their citizens ... hmmm.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
$180? Dude, YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT. Until other countries get some lawyers who know how to properly sue multinational corporations, America's supremacy in the world will never be challenged.
1,350 RMB?
Seriously will buy you six hundred and seventy five 22oz beers here!
I think you guys are selling him short - he has this totally figured out......
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
I would be careful about relying on the testimony of technicians. The United States was lulled into the first Gulf War partially on the testimony of a woman saying Iraqi troops were breaking into Kuwaiti hospitals and stomping infants in incubators to death. It later turned out the woman was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, and made the whole thing up as part of a systematic Kuwaiti campaign to get America to attack their invaders.
That's not to say the charges against China are without basis. I'm just advocating some skepticism about people who may have a grudge against China, or have a good reason to lie about torture back home (so they can get asylum and citizenship here in the United States).
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The US greatly surpass both Communist Soviet and WW2 Germany when it comes to propaganda. If you blindly believe things said by US authorities i have a bridge to sell you cheaply. Havent you asked yourself lately where all the WMD from Iraq is? China is does terrible things to its people but damn, how many people havent died in Gaza, Afganistan, Iran and Iraq because of direct involvment from the US? Atleast China maims and kills inside its own borders.
HTTP/1.1 400
M$, organ harvesting, chinese technicians and the US Congress. What might have sounded like paranoia before, starts to look like common sense.
Yeah, we should all be grateful for that. Most especially the people of Tibet.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Nowhere in TFA does it mention what information he claims it collects, or how it collects it. Until I see some details, I'm calling BS on this.
He obviously forgot to wear his tinfoil hat.
BWAHAHAHAHAH!!! You've been reading too much xenophobic propaganda my man.
Please point to a single case of people looking at the wrong web site, and then being killed, with their organs harvested. China has its major political problems but just the idea of what you're saying is totally ridiculous.
I'm just advocating some skepticism about people who may have a grudge against China, or have a good reason to lie about torture back home (so they can get asylum and citizenship here in the United States).
You must realize that the desperation people feel, which you think makes them less than honest, is also an indictment of China. Technicians are comparatively privileged people without economic reasons to immigrate. What grudge can they have that's great enough to make them leave their friends and family forever? What do they fear about going home? Imprisonment, torture and worse? I'll believe news to the contrary when people in China are free to report it without fear or reprisals.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The "lulling" of the US into the first Gulf War was done an administration who knew that that the was a bogus performance. That is a fraud, by elected officials for which they should be in jail. The Bush administration spent months on with great expense to sell this to America.
What he just did? He sued them because they did what he previously told them was okay. He accepted the EULA, now they own his PC and his data...
Huh, really?
One of my roommates in college was a Palestinian guy who grew up in Kuwait. His family was in vacation (thank heavens) in America when Saddam invaded. They broke into his house, pissed on the carpet, stole his TV and anything else valuable, and lived in it for the duration of the occuptation. His family's bank accounts got frozen, which he never got back. Fortunately, his father was a big believer in cash when going on vacation and had two hundred thousand dollars *on hand* in LA, with which they bought a 7-11, a car, and a down payment on a house. Unfortunately the 7-11 was in Northridge, but everything eventually worked out all right for him. No thanks to Saddam.
The piracy charges against China are true. When I was in Shanghai I could have picked up copies of any Microsoft product for $10 or so. They have kids hustling CDs on the streets, containing everything from movies to software to porn. Of course, whenever the 8 year old kids saw a big white dude, they always offered the porn first. We must have a great reputation for being lechers over there.
I'm from Beijing. I understand the situation Mr. Lu Feng is faced with: a monopoly power M$, a considerably corrupted legal system, and the suspected alliance of the two. In Chinese gov't (and persumably court) offices they run the M$ Windiz + Office. M$ is an 'official' choice. If Lu wins, an implication would be that M$ not only voilates out privacy & property rights, but also severely threatens the public security of the country. However the gov't are not fools, neither are M$ men. Gov't clearly knows what M$ is always doing to its costumers. Ergo, PRC Gov't --- M$ is not the same as you --- your software producer. That's why I suspect the two are in alliance with each other --- alliance based on the crime of betrayal and spying. The county is doomed. The PRC collapses and you Amiricans are happy... However that's only some hot air. In reality the lawsuit probably would end in a reconcilation with M$ paying a sum of $ to Lu for his silence. That would be the easiest way for both the court and M$. Even if Lu wins, only a few could benefit from the case --- Lu himself and those private users of authenticated Windiz. The Mass use pirate copies, remember! In my university (Beijing Normal Univ.) there are about 2000 university-owned boxes running pirate Windiz and PowerPoint things, from the library to every classroom ( why do they think every classroom needs a computer??) --- mass violation of the law!! Perhaps the media coverage of this case would encourage more Chinese switching to Linux / (GNU/Linux). Just a wish. Personally, I don't care about it. I'm using Fedora GNU/Linux, remaining quiet over the matter, and I'll be relatively safe. One thing interesting: you guys at /. are much more active on the topic than native Chinese men. You know M$ is just M$. But for many Chinese, M$ means either a large, shadowing power who can sue you against using pirate copies of its products at any time it wishes, or the only OS/office/othersillystuff solution. They don't even know Linux or /. exists.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Porn... the universal language of international diplomacy!
- chrish
- RG> No. But they'd stea^W I mean infringe on the copyright by downloading it.
Jenny's got a new number! 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Pretty broad, that is.
Undermine - I'm ok with using definition 3, but definition 4...?
"Little is much when little you need."
which English ? US, UK, NZ, Australian ? Serbians/Croatians and Rumanians/Moldavians are in the same situation, having their own native language as a second language ...
Who, under the fuck up of a theocratic government Tibet had before, were routinely subjected to amputations, rape, and physical assault...
Yeah, the first Gulf War, which was sold to the American people by the Bush administration (the first one, remember? Junior's Daddy?). It was a much better sell job (though arguably a much easier sell job). It was, I personally think, a much more justified war than the current one, but still had some significant spin involved in selling it.
How fucking stupid are you?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Would a delegate to the People's Congress have a reason to have a grudge against China? Because one stated last year that they executed a hair under 10,000 people, a rate which is over sixty times that of the US's on a population-weighted basis. (We're #2 on absolute and population-weighted counts among major nations.) Amnesty International, noted human rights organization, was skeptical -- based on Chinese newspaper reports, they think China merely killed at a multiplier of twenty, with an unknown additional number succumbing to torture and prison camps.
It must be said that China has improved over the years, with either 3,400 or 10,000 being substantially less than the democides they used to perpetuate. The lowest possible bounds are in the millions.
This is one of those times where the oh-so-sophisticated-evenhandedness-and-cynical-skepticism reminds me of... ahh, dang it, it reminds me of a Godwin's Law violation.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
And stupid too, apparently -- what idiot pays for porn?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Do the later two consider true desperation? maybe.
The guy is only suing for $180 but think of the potential if he turned it into a class action lawsuit.
------------------
Steve Stites
Um, what?
And what the fuck is a "USian"? I keep seeing people post this and then invariably say something idiotic immediately afterward.
Is it what stupid people call Americans? And why do the stupid not realize that it's wrong? And why do the stupid people not realize they're stupid?
We both have conservatives seeking to oppress the masses, we both have conservatives doing everything they can think of to take away access to information, and we both have conservatives suppressing free speech!
And now, we both can appreciate the fact that we both have rabid, irrational anti-MS zealots, willing to complain how everything in the world is Microsoft's fault!
Celebrate our similarities!
The story about the incubators was a total fabrication and while I've no doubt the Iraqi troops didn't say "please" and "thank you" suddenly all the other claims of what they supposedly did are thrown into a much more rigorous bullshit filter.
As for taking things from people's houses... well that's part of the whole war thing isn't it? I wonder how much of the stuff in Saddam's palaces is still where he left it.
This isn't a friend of a friend. This was my roommate's house that was thrashed by Saddam's army. If you knew anything, you'd know that such behavior was basically by the book for their army.