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Racketeering Trial of MS and Best Buy Can Proceed
mcgrew (sm62704) writes with news that the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Microsoft and a unit of Best Buy to dismiss a lawsuit alleging violation of racketeering laws. This means the class-action complaint can go to trial. The case was filed in civil court and the companies, with the US Chamber of Commerce behind them, wanted the Supreme Court to put the brakes on the expanding use of RICO laws in civil filings. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was designed to fight organized crime, but in recent years more than 100 times as many civil as federal RICO cases have been filed.
So how, exactly, is this *not* organized crime?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Just because the summary was so scarce on details: this has nothing to do with computers, OEMS, Windows, or OS bundling. It's not that same old story again.
This is about signing people up for MSN without their permission.
Sounds like stupid college students working at Best Buy getting a monthly prize for signing people up for MSN. Doesn't sound like a giant corporate scam. It also doesn't sound like this involves Microsoft at all. I've read the same story online, but replace Microsoft with Comcast (Cable or HSI) or DirecTV
From the AP article...
The companies systematically and intentionally look for any advantage, and push the grey area as far as it can go, even into the dark side. Some of this may be "rogue" employees, but their are so many tiers of approval in major companies I find those theories suspect.
I tend to think that if the law fits...
On another note, I'm sure the RIAA was watching this one closely, as they are not looking forward to the RICO suit that was filed against them. Let's hope this is just another decision closer to the destruction of their methods.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was designed to fight organized crime, but in recent years more than 100 times as many civil as federal RICO cases have been filed.
Well, if the feds can't be bothered to prosecute most things that they should... that's how the numbers end up, right?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Isn't creating a law with the purpose of using it for one thing (going after commercial pirates) and then using it for something else (going after people who pirate for no money and instead personal uses) something we hate here at slashdot? And yet we have another clear example of it and hail it as if it were the best thing to ever happen, simply by misappropriating the term "organized crime." Isn't that something else we complain about as well (after pirates don't steal, they simply infringe).
/.
I guess the end truly does justify the means. At least here at
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Correction: Banks hold money, which is printed and distributed by the Federal Reserve. Paypal is a financial institution, not a bank, because they do not handle money in the same sense.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Excuse me, but Bullshit. I worked for Best Buy's "Geek Squad" several years ago, they have corporate people directly create the incentive programs so that stupid college students will sign up customers no matter what it takes, for the sole purpose of driving sales. It's a disheartening trend I've seen in several companies I've worked for, including AOL. They know it goes on, they constantly hound their employees to "sell every customer or its your job," and it's finally coming around to bite them in the ass. Huzzah's are in order!
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
As a previous employee at Circuit City, I can attest that this sort of thing is generally encouraged by store managers. Most of the time employees of these sorts of stores (Best Buy and CC) no longer make commision on sales of extended warranties and the ilk (they did in the past) but they are still strongly pushed to get people to sign up for these crappy deals. Now, you may never be directly told "get X people to sign up each month or you will be fired", but you will definitely notice when your hours get cut or your manager starts breathing down your neck each time you're talking to a customer.
I disagree with your comment about this not being a "giant corporate scam". The top execs at companies like CC and BestBuy are the ones that design, implement and sign the contracts that enable these worthless "offers." They do so strictly because of money and they in turn push their demands down onto regional managers which then breath down the store manager's throats. Its one big chain reaction of pressure to sell what isn't needed and in the end the customer suffers. The employees that push this crap don't give a shit if the person actually needs it or not.
I remember some of my buddies laughing about how they tricked old grandmas into buying all sorts of useless, overpriced peripherals for digital cameras. Their managers loved it cuz it helped them reach their sales target (and in turn get bigger bonuses).
Its a huge scam. The companies involved know it, the employees of the companies know it...and finally, now, the customers are starting to know it as well.
ps. i simply installed stereos in peoples cars so i never had to deal with managers' bullshit, thank god..but it was quite sad watching it go down.
"Microsoft does not comment about pending litigation?"
This means Balmer's linux patent threats contain no litigation that is pending?
I live in a giant bucket.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was designed to fight organized crime, but in recent years more than 100 times as many civil as federal RICO cases have been filed.
This is why the Patriot Act and other 9/11-influenced laws make me nervous. Unchecked, the government has historically ended up abusing such powers.
Table-ized A.I.
I made the mistake of working for a Best Buy right after college. I can't comment specifically on the MSN thing, as I didn't see THAT particular scam, but from what I DID see, it would not surprise me in the slightest if employees were trained to at best, be extremely misleading, and at worst, outright lie and cheat the customer out of money.
One common package deal we were supposed to try to push was the 'advanced security setup' or something like that, I can't remember the exact name. The service in theory sounded fine - you sold the customer an AV program and a spyware blocker, explained the point of each, set it up, ran the install, updated definitions, ran windows update for all current security patches, etc - all the standard security precautions. The customer of course would be billed the price of the 2 programs, plus a fee for the service of I think 20 or 30 bucks. Ignoring the fact that Avast (free) is just as effective as Norton, it didn't sound like a terribly unreasonable deal. The user bought software he was probably going to need anyway, and paid a small fee to make sure that the basic security precautions were taken.
There was one slight problem. Best buy is not exactly a place where you build your own custom box. Anything you get from there is going to be a pre-built machine, almost always including some pre-installed software. In nearly every case, that included a copy of an AV program, usually with a 30 or 90 day trial, with a $10-15 subscription fee needed after that - not the 50 bucks you'd pay for a new copy (which of course, also had the fee, just after a year.)
Here's where the scam comes in. The job of the salesman is to inform the user that while yes, your machine will come with AV protection, it'll only last 1 or 3 months, and after that, you won't be covered any more, so you really ought to buy our full protection plan, where you'll have everything done for you.
In case you didn't fill in the blank on that, the job was to convince the customer to pay you to uninstall their already active AV program and replace it with another, charging them for both comparable software (in some cases, THE EXACT SAME PROGRAM) that they already had, and a service that had already been done!
As for the 'there's no commission' argument, that's BS as well. The employee doesn't get commission, but his SUPERVISOR does. So they have you use the fact that YOU aren't on commission (which IS true) as part of your sales pitch.
Also, BB has a very interesting way of making sure all staff participate in these scams. You're on quota. They'll never call it a quota of course - it's a sales goal, a revenue objective, a team target - whatever, they'll call it anything but a quota. When you don't meet the quota, you aren't fired. In fact, there's no penalty at all, other than the expression of disappointment, and strong encouragement to do better as a team. Unfortunately, it seems there's just not enough in the budget this week to cover your department, and everyone's hours need to be cut back. Oh, and if your hours are cut to oh, say... 4 or 8 per week and you can't possibly pay rent, well, if it's a such a problem, you're an at will employee, and hey, nothing is stopping you from quitting. Oh, and if you're thinking of getting a second job, well, you you signed a thing when you were hired that said your available hours would not change in your first X months (3 or 6, I forget), so if you choose to violate that, while, you'll have to fired for that of course.
Funny thing, I don't think they've ever fired someone for not selling enough, they can proudly announce that - and happily do as they sell you stuff, and it's even true!... sort of. As for that absurdly high turnover rate, well, hey, it's retail, and not everyone can stay with it.
I didn't last long there before I quit in disgust at the total disregard for ethics they have.
Is convincing someone to buy software they already own racketeering? Maybe.
Is it outright FRAUD? Yes.
I called MSN and asked what was going on. They said that I'd signed up at Best Buy. I said "oh no I didn't". After a couple of iterations of this the guy on the phone agreed to cancel the subscription and refund my money.
Assuming the lawyers take $30M of the $100M judgement, and assuming that there were 100,000 customers (complete random guess ... the article only says "thousands of customers"), then my share ought to be $700. That would actually be quite cool. But I bet that I'll just end up with a $10 coupon good for discounts on Microsoft Vista :-(
You went in bought a computer and came out with an MSN subscription you didn't ask for and weren't told about, until you noticed the charges on your card in later months.
I am afraid you are very very wrong, and you should think a slashdot reader would know better. Copyright infringement is frequently called organized crime, people who make fake products are said to be organized crime, despite the fact that these "criminals" rarely if ever deal with violence.
The only qualifier for organized crime is in the words itself. Organized and crime. Yes the Rico act is meant to deal with more then just a handfull of bruglers and a fence who decide to operate together but make no mistake if you set up a group of people to commit a crime, you are organized and will be called as such by everyone in the legal proffesions except your lawyer.
Think about it like this. Blackmail, what really is the difference between forcing you to give me money through threathening your life or ruining your life to the point that you may commit suicide?
The idea that organized crime is just thugs who go around beating up people for money is just ridiculous. It really just is nothing more then criminals who organize.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This is a case of the current administation NOT wanting the law to be applied to their cronies.
When a law is introduced it should be applied equally to everyone. If you introduce a speeding law then police cars too can be ticketed for speeding (although the police do have the right to speed without lights or sirens but only when necesarry for their work) and if the state then refuses to prosecute police officers who speed, they are wrong.
The RICO act is meant to be used against the organisation of crime (most crime is a one person affair) and that includes crimes that the powers that be might not consider to be crimes.
In a way what is happening here is that what happened in america when crimes against blacks were not prosecuted.
If this case holds up in court, and so far it has, then you should really ask why this case was not brought by the public prosecutor.
But this is not an unjust application of the law. This is exactly what the law was created for, just that some people don't want it to be used this way because they are guilty of it, or bought by the people guilty of it.
Ask yourselve what the term organized crime means, it ain't hard. Now do you think that the companies involved may have committed a crime? Did they organize it? Bingo. Organized crime. Stop watching mafia movies and join the real world. The biggest criminals don't need guns.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank
It's just the way it is...
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
One of the fundamental problems with the American justice system is the extreme weighting in favor of the econmomicly advantaged party. This allows parties such as Microsoft, Best Buy and innumerable others to intentionally break the law, knowing that the price to pursue a legal remedy not to mention the time required will bankrupt any ordinary citizen. The system really needs to be revised to compensate such litigants for not only damages and court costs but also lost wages, travel expenses, attorney's fees, costs for expert witnesses, ie.. any and every expense related to pursuing such cases where they prevail. This should be the absolute minimum judgement with triple and punative damages in addition where willful wrongdoing can be shown. In conjunction with this the penalties for mailicious prosecution (ie. filing baseless lawsuits) needs to be equally severe. Litigants such as the RIAA, MPAA, etc... as well as anyone who engages in such behavior should be unable to just "drop the complaint" without paying any and all such costs and once again being exposed to severe damage awards. Frankly I am intrigued by the Swedish system that imposes penalties based on the affluence of the convicted party. If the penalty to a corporation for engaging in such behavior was the loss of say 10% of gross revinue they would pay alot more attention to complying with the law and engaging in such scams would become indcredibly risky to them.