Italian Judge Tells HP To Refund Pre-Installed XP

Paolo DF writes "An Italian user asked for a refund after buying a Compaq computer that came with Windows XP and Works 8 pre-installed. HP tried to avoid the EULA agreement which states, approximately: '[I]f the end user is not willing to abide by this EULA... he shall immediately contact the producer to get info for giving back the product and obtaining refunds.' The court ruled in favor of the user (Google translation from the Italian), who received back €90 for XP and €50 for Works. Here is the ruling (PDF, Italian)."

Comments

Progress.

[nozzo]

This is progress, the more this happens the better the choice for the consumer. It shows the vendors that users prefer OS choices a la Dell.
True, this is but 1 user but every little helps as we say in the UK.

Re:Progress.

[houghi]

And do not forget people and companies who still have already bought XP legaly previously.

This is good news for the consumer. The ad news is that this will not harm Microsoft in the least, even if EVERYBODY would do this. It will be the computercompanies who will need to caugh this one up.

They will not be able to get their money back from Microsoft. So either they will start loosing money (because they do not make that much on a PC) in Italy, or stop selling PC's altogether.

Most likely the latter will be happening with other companies, like Dell. The result will be that larger companies will not be selling computers in Italy. Tghis will result in lower quality and people who want Windows paying more. So if the consumer wants the same product, he will end up paying more then he does now.

The solution? Have this implemented in the rest of Europe. The European market is big enough to force a change and balsy enough to force Microsoft to pay back the companies in full.

After that South America will follow and then Asia. Africa, Austriala, Canada and Mexico will follow after that. The USofA? They will follow the moment the consumers have some rights, except the right to shut up and spend money. Sorry.

Re:Progress.

[eiapoce]

Nevertheless reading the full article you can see that the guy who sued works for a Consumer Association and on his side there were not legal expenses. This is a win/win situation. If he wins he gets the money and attorneys get paid + pubblicity for the association - If he loses noone gets hurt.

Enrico

Re:WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy bought a computer with XP installed and he's griping about it? Perhaps he would have preferred a computer with no OS?

We buy machines with no OS all the time (actually Dell ships FreeDOS but it's not installed). Perhaps the user in question was wanting to install a free OS on it?

Re:Soon have to sign an agreement to get the

[citizenr]

>I wouldn't be surprised if this issue ending up being so that nobody would sell you a computer before you have signed an agreement
>stating that you agree w/having Windows etc. in there.

illegal in EU

Re:He got costs, too

[mr_matticus]

No, it wouldn't. The whole case is a tort. The legal term would be damages, punitive damages in particular, and they're not awarded here because it's a contract issue.

You wouldn't get a windfall from this case in the US, either. I assume the reference in this thread is to the filesharing fine, but that is a case involving statutory damages--the law itself specifies a minimum and a maximum award simply for breaking the condition precedent. Thus copyright holders are entitled to large sums of money simply for the act of violating it. These damages are a result of a time when most copyright infringement cases were large-scale, direct operations. In modern times, those big-scale cases still exist, but we also have smaller scale infringement and large scale (but indirect) infringement. Those two different modes should be codified with different and lesser statutory damages.

This wouldn't be too hard to accomplish, except for the adversarial nature of copyright infringers. Just perusing Slashdot will show people determined to cause intentional harm and to refuse to abide by the law no matter what. In such a condition, the other side has a clear legal superiority to have their interests protected against a hostile public, and so the astronomical damages will stay without modification. The law will not and cannot distinguish the hostility as a result of the big labels being bastards. Slashdot does absolutely nothing to help the situation and provides the industry with most of the fodder it needs to prevent reform.