Slashdot Mirror
Tricked Into Buying OpenOffice.org?
mldkfa writes "Recently I told a friend about OpenOffice and how it was a great alternative to the big name pay office suites. She went home and searched on Google for it and thought she found the website, filled typical registration information, and downloaded OpenOffice.org 3.0. The next time she opened her e-mail she found a request for 98 [Euro] for her 1-year subscription to OpenOffice.org 3.0 from the company that she downloaded it from. Apparently the EULA stated this cost and here in Germany she is required to pay up. So I thought I would ask Slashdot, should she pay? On the OpenOffice.org German website there is a warning of these schemes being legal. Shouldn't Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else? It has really made me think about recommending it to any more friends." Below, read Google's translation of the warning; it wouldn't be the first time that open source software has been lightly repackaged and sold in ways that should raise eyebrows among anyone familiar with the wide, free availability of the same apps.
Google translates the warning message thus: "WARNING before downloading from any third party: The download of OpenOffice.org is free from this page possible. These are not personal data. In recent times, however, we can reach more complaints about companies that the program for a fee for downloading. Among other leading search engines to search for OpenOffice.org to pay "download subscriptions. We want to emphasize that we have these offers are not affiliated and is not responsible. Due to the open-source philosophy allowed our license, but also the sale. When you download OpenOffice.org under no circumstances disclose your personal information!"
Personally (assuming the scammers didn't have any information that could result in them pursuing payment beyond e-mails, i.e. dinging my credit rating), I would remove that particular OpenOffice.org installation from my system and delete the install files. I would then disregard that and all subsequent communication from those scammers, and would go seek out the official, free installation.
Assuming she didn't give them any bank account, credit card or PayPal info (or any other type of payment info along those lines), what could they possibly do if she didn't pay? Keep sending her e-mails? Configuring e-mail filters to send them straight to the trash would quickly take care of that problem.
The fact that they allowed her to download & install the software before attempting to collect payment sounds like one could conceivably consider it to be "trialware", which would mean that deleting it in lieu of paying would be a totally legit response to being billed.
IMO, IANAL, etc.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
Shouldn't Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else?
First of all, it's the general public that doesn't understand open source that need protection--highly unlikely a 'fan' would buy OpenOffice.org or even download it from a third party.
Second, your friend is boned.
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
Unless she downloaded it without being notified upfront of the cost, she ain't going to win this one. If they even host a binary distribution from their site they can claim the bandwidth you used was worth whatever you have to pay. If they aren't also offering you the source code or haven't given it to you of that distribution, you could maybe send the EFF after them and try to escape via that route ... although I've seen lawyers work their magic & you could still end up paying.
... because maybe it's an integral part of our product?
Third, they aren't going to limit or restrict selling their software because this could turn into a scary thing for companies. I write proprietary software for my job. I use code licensed as open source. I make available the source to my customer and they pay my company quite well so that we can adopt and add to that code to specifically suite their needs. It's fairly close to 'software as a service.' Now, assuming I used some library (I can't think of anything off of OO.o that I would use) but my company's law-talkin' guys would be scared as hell if it said I couldn't charge money for it
Do your friend a favor: sit down with her and talk with her. Explain to her that not every piece of software requires you pay out your ass to use it. In the United States, I would call the Better Business Bureau and let them know about this company you speak of. I don't know a lot about your rights or organizations that will help you in Germany but I wish you the best of luck.
Bottom line: For the sake of and proliferation of open source, please don't argue for a fork of the GPL or even for stipulations on charging to be worked into it.
My work here is dung.
Just don't do it. They are scamming you, obviously.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Submitter: your friend should just stick it to the man and pirate it from Bittorrent. That'll teach those money-grubbing bastards!
I just tried downloading it from the link in TFA and there's no form that you need to enter anything in, just a drop down for the site you want to get it from..?
Do they take flooz?
Well, if as you say it's legal in your jurisdiction, then it sounds like yes, she should pay, unless she wants to risk damage to her credit.
Maybe for this reason everybody should get into the habit of calling it OpenOffice.org. That's the name of the software. Not OpenOffice. OpenOffice.org. So where do you get it? OpenOffice.org. What's the cost? Find out at OpenOffice.org. What's the latest version? OpenOffice.org will tell you. Et cetera.
Breakfast served all day!
It was someone else; she was drunk; she clicked no and her computer malfuctioned; she can't afford it; she can simply refuse to pay and to respond to requests to pay ... I'm sure there are other things she can attempt to get out of it, or to make it not worth the companies time to try and collect the money.
Just return it. Let them cancel her license. They did NOTHING for the money.
Man.. if only there was an easy way to remember what the website is to download OpenOffice.org...
Selling (L)GPLed software is authorized by the license (and even encouraged apparently). See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
However in your case the price was probably not apparent at the time of sale (or else you would'nt complain now I assume), and thus the sale is illegal under European law. So don't pay.
Is it a typical EULA that was scene during the install of the product? Can't your friend state that she read the EULA, disagreed with the terms and is, in effect, returning the software (deleting it). Delete it, get a fresh copy (just in case the company in question modified some of it before passing it along), and use that instead.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I mean, if I order a copy of Ubuntu on Amazon.com, won't the OS contain OpenOffice.org?
Most likely there's some way to cancel the order on the basis of faulty or incompatible produce -- "Y'all's version of Open Office don't work on my computer! I want my money back!" type deal.
Look into that, remove their version of it, and get the official one or even different software.
It is totally legal to sell GPL software. This is morally wrong but it is legal. Sounds like the laws in Germany need to be changed and not OO.org.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
But you are telling her to break the law. I know that the piracy atmosphere around here is pretty common and what the company she downloaded it from does might (isn't necessary if the company's version had something extra in it or something) be morally questionable BUT...
If it was legal, it was legal and she would break the law if not paying. If pirating stuff isn't common for her and something she approves of, I would rather recommend paying the fee. She downloaded something, from the wrong source, didn't read the license and if the license forces her to pay, it's her own fault.
PEOPLE: I KNOW you don't read EULAs. Practically nobody does. But as you scroll it down, at least quickly scan it for any numeric data...
I'm sure it's legal to provide a service and request money for it after the fact, and the licence that Openoffice is distributed under no doubt allows them to do this.
This doesn't automatically mean that one is obligated to pay. It depends on the local legal system.
I think there are laws in Germany (and all of the EU) that state that when you buy something over the Internet, you can return the product within a few weeks (at least 2) if you are not satisfied. Google for Widerrufrecht.
If they did not tell her of this possibility, they are hosed. Not sure what are the penalties for not telling the customers about it, but they must be pretty stiff since every time I order something (yes I live in Germany) I get lots of information about it.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Out of idle curiosity, is this the site she purchased it off of? www.OpenOffice-Software.com
1) Go see a good lawyer.
/. already suggested that without having an address/card ID from her, they don't have any means to prove that it was actually her who downloaded and installed the copy. And without proof, they can pretty much kiss your/her ass...
:-)
2) After having consulted with the lawyer, "return" the software. Delete it or similar...
The point is that german law requires everybody who sells anything on-line to take back the merchandise on the request of the customer within 2 weeks. It's a kind of a safety net against exactly this kind of scams.
Now I don't exactly know how "returning" would translate for software, but that's exactly she needs to talk to a lawyer about, and she needs to do that *fast*, in order to be able to answer before the two-weeks-deadline passes.
However, I wouldn't respond to the e-mail of the scamers directly. Someone here on
If they try to scare her off, in Germany she even has the possibility to file a negative clearifying charge (it's called "negative Feststellungsklage", I don't know the exact english legal construct for this). The charge is aimed at clearifying in front of the law whether she is or is not guilty of whatever they will try to accuse her. The nice thing about this charge is that it's her call, not theirs. So they *need* to prove that they have a valid case, or else they loose. If they loose, they pay (up to several thounsands of euros). It's another protection gimmick of the german law system against scamers
I don't think there's any way any court is going to take such a demand for payment seriously unless the downloader was clearly notified in advance of the download that they would be charged for it. Anything else is insane.
This is a scam that you should ignore or better, contact your local "verbraucherzentrale". Here are some info http://www.verbraucherzentrale-bayern.de/UNIQ123205386511451/link462241A.html ;)
For my case I just ignored them and they gave up. If they did not, my next step would have been to send them a scary (aka lawyer talk) letter written by the verbraucherzentrale
P.S.: the consultation with the verbraucherzentrale costed me 10 euro.
I've heard of a company in the U.S. that is selling CD-ROMs containing OpenOffice for ~$10.
Just don't pay them, don't answer the e-mails, and hopefully she didn't provide a phone number. If she did, perhaps the phone company can put a block on that number.
They'll go away. If they don't they'll have to take her to a small claims type court, and that will cost them money. She won't lose this case. She can say that she never downloaded it and it was someone else that did (I sort of doubt this company would get a subpoena for the ISP to get her IP address information..) or she could say the software was listed as free.
I doubt it would go to court.. these people are just slimeballs looking for easy dollars, not hard dollars.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
When my son got a laptop for college, he went to download OpenOffice instead of paying for Office and called me asking for a credit card to pay for it with. Reading the fine print I saw that the site was charging for the download of the software from their servers, but for any problems you were supposed to contact OpenOffice.org.
There are a number of legally gray sites doing similar things. I know of one that has a page that previously came up high in Google rankings because of adwords for you to order particular documents. The site charged you to "explain how to order" then when you went to get the documents, you were routed to a legitimate site that sold the documents and then you were charged for the docs. Many people called the legit site asking why they were being charged twice.
This is apparently legal, so long as there is a disclaimer on the page. Turns out in this case the disclaimer was very small print, but still there. The legit site started monitoring the referral header so they could let the visitor know they had not yet actually purchased anything, but it still caused calls to the legit company's help desk and complaint lines.
Does she have a Dell running Ubuntu perchance?
this whole thing could have been avoided had you told her WHERE to get the software and that it was free.
I know most /.ers are tired of helping their friends/family/whatever installing software, uninstalling spyware, etc, but when you're trying to promote what you consider to be a better product, sometimes more information and bit of elbow grease is better than simply, "Go get X".
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, so in Germany it is legal to sell OO for any amount of money I feel like charging for it.
So what if this company wrote up EULA saying by downloading OO from them I am agreeing to buy it for 10 million dollars. Would you still recommend to pay?
But is it ANY different than asking for 100 dollars?
What would German law say if company was asking for 1 billion dollar per sale? After all, that number is just as arbitrary as any other number they are charging.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
You've definitely come to the right place for an answer! Everyone on slashdot is a lawyer and knows all about the German legal system in particular.
> required to pay up. So I thought I would ask Slashdot, should she
> pay?
Yes, if she agreed to the EULA then she should pay. This will be considered controversial (or just plain stupid) to most Slashdot readers, so let me phrase the question in a different light:
"My friend agreed to pay someone for something. Should she pay?"
Your friend needs to learn to actually read the EULA and to not agree if she is unwilling to meet the terms of the agreement.
Yeah, well tough shit.
It's happenig with VLC, Emule, VNC, ...
The first Google promoted links are bad webs.
Sometimes the webs ask for money, but other times just offers malware.
"Don't be stupid. Other people will try to rip you off. Don't be stupid." I'm not sure about that last bit, it could also be translated as "Don't be a dumbass", depending on inflection. Damn, I'm in a mood today.
People sell CDs of Linux, people sell CDs of SHAREWARE (trial versions!). People can, according to someone who quoted the GPL, sell GPL software.
If the site said it was free and then charged for it, that's one thing. If it did not say it was free, it probably said something about buying it or something like that.
What I find interesting is that the summary says she "googled" it. What in the WORLD did she google? have yo uever tried putting "openoffice" or "open office" or any other variant of it in google? What's the first site that comes up, and obviously the official one? openoffice.org. After that comes a number of openoffice.org subdomains, a wikipedia page for it, etc.
IMO, the summary almost sounds more like a scam than selling a subscription to openoffice.org downloads.
I care more about "free as in speech" by magnitudes more than "free as in beer". I even see it as a good thing that free-as-in-speech software are being sold because it can send a hint to the suits that there is a market for closed-source alternatives. As long as they abide by the open source licenses of the software, there's no reason to complain.
Surely there must be a "send it back within X days for a full refund".
Not sure how you send back a download, but whatever the consumer rights group is will know...
Hi,
happens quite often, but usually you can refuse payment and would win any lawsuite. I've done a lot of consulting to victims of such traps. None of them payed anything and none was ever forced to pay. There was a lot of "shock and awe" legal letters but it turned out all to be smoke&mirrors and never any court was involved. If any one wants to know what to do in such a case (in germany) or needs any letter examples to respond to invoices, contact me.
Regards, Martin
OpenOffice.org is only available for money by buying a support agreement. ( http://www.ecomstation.com/openoffice.phtml ) There is nothing wrong with this as money was required to pay the programmers who ported it. As long as anyone who buys it also gets the source code it is still meeting the GPL.
It is also stated that you are free to distribute OpenOffice but I believe they ask nicely that you don't as porting costs money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
There is a legal right of cancellation of any purchase of goods or services and in fact any contract entered into over a distance (i.e. not in person) in Germany. This is according to what is called the "Widerrufsrecht bei FernabsatzvertrÃgen" in German. This is according to the BGB, the German civil code, in particular  312c Abs. 2 BGB,  1 Abs. 1, 2 und 4 BGB InfoV and  3 BGB-InfoV.
This is actually a well known right in Germany and any on-line shop will explain this to you (and is legaly required to). So she could simply exercise that right by sending them an email, which they must respect.
Then again, everything about these offers seems shady, so I expect they have little respect for the law. And she should probably ignore them after sending that email.
Also the explanation on the openoffice site merely states that the license used (i.e. the GLP, though they do not name it) does not prohibit resale of the software so they can't do anything about it. This would be true for any country, as far as I know.
I always get modded flamebait for what I am about to say, but I'll say it again.....
You can't "sell" GPL software, because it it not yours to sell. You *can* *only* sell the service of providing it. For instance:
I own a store, in the back room, I burn copies of open office on to a disk, I print a small "quick start" doc, and put it in a CD case and sell it for what ever I choose, and I choose $99 bucks.
In the above scenario, the physical CD. CD case, and "quick start" doc are physical merchandise which would be a criminal act to steal from my store. We all agree on that.
If you "buy" my open office product:
The physical copy of the "quick start" doc belongs to you and you may do with it as you will, but the "content" printed on the paper belongs to me and may not be copied without my permission without violating my copyright.
The physical CD that contains open office belongs to you. Since I did not create open office, it does not belong to me and I am only allowed to put it on the CD because of the GPL. Also, because of the GPL you are allowed to make copies of the contents of the CD.
In that transaction, I did not actually sell you "openoffice" I charged you for the service of providing you open office. I know it is splitting hairs, but it is a very important set of distinctions.
Delete and ignore and deal with fallout if/when it happens. When someone slaps together a sleazy website with some free software and a wonky EULA you can either play their game or leave the onus on them to step up and prove the validity of their claim (using an impartial court system).
Quack, quack.
This is the exact same thing as buying a copy of Red Hat linux (or any other commercial distribution). You pay for free software. In exchange for your money, the vendor usually provides some additional services. Certainly you can argue about the worth of those services relative to their cost - but this practice is hardly unique to Open Office.
In fact, this is the entire business model of Red Hat, Inc.
One of the games I remember playing was wasteland (fallout is based on this game). In the game you came across various vendors all over the place and a lot of them sold snake oil. I bought it all up thinking it may be needed in the game, never having heard the term before (yes I have since gotten out from under the rock). Boy was I a dumb ass.
The key test under (American) trademark law is whether the site was "confusingly similar" to the legitimate download site. If she thought she was getting the free product directly from the proper source and was actually buying something different (e.g. "download services") then I think there's a case to be had here. But *she* wouldn't be able to bring it... the OpenOffice folks would have to do so.
On her end, when she asks for her money back she should note that the site was confusingly similar. And that she's thinking of notifying the OpenOffice folks about that. That might make her request for her refund a little more persuasive.
IANAL but I had about two or three cases where friends got into that trap as well. Well, although this is legally binding in Germany there is something called the "Widerrufsrecht". Your friend should send them a formal letter (by e-mail, fax or postal mail) in which she says that she is using here right of the "Widerrufsrecht". The nice things about these scam sites is that while they make use of the EULA and legal agreement they posted on their page they also have to respect these laws as well. This worked for all my friends that had this issue. Should work for your friend as well!
I'd ask the FTC to investigate as wire fraud.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I tried google.com and google.de and I couldn't find a site that charged for OOo. 3 of the top 4 sites returned by google.de were from the OOo domain, the one that wasn't offered it for free. There was a warning on de.openoffice.org about people charing money for OOo. I'm not finding these mythical pay sites, and I'm looking for them. How do people find them accidentally? Can some one point one out to me? Do these sites even look remotely legit?
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
I'll need the EuroDotters among us to confirm if it's more common over there to ask for a full name. Most quasi-savvy Americans are used to Bogusizing such things and only registering for real if it's a kickin' program.
Like we see with the patent trolls, these kinds of operators also have access to lawyers to provide nuisance suits along the theme that they "provided additional packaging services". So if they stuck their own splash screen on it, it *is* work performed, and so makes the case too murky to simply throw out.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Jack Thompson?
"I am disbarred but too sneaky to go away."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You also own a copy of the software. This can be sold. The data and the rights to the data, while related are different things.
If you can't invoke the right to return goods that Germany provides all consumers, I wouldn't worry about it - just ignore them. German company, at least without US subsidiary, will not be able to sue in the states and force a judgement nor affect credit rating. They can do so in Germany and if you don't plan on visiting the country for say 3 years, it will have no affect because the statute of limitations will pass on the judgement and no further effects will be noticed.
So what I'd do would be to call the legal service of my consumer association now
Are you saying that OpenOffice isn't kickin'?
First of all what's the bloody site? I'm unable to find ANY sponsored link or adsense if I look for openoffice and such (even with a German IP and with different browsers). It could certainly help if we could read the conditions on the page.
Then what information was provided? Did she pay already?
Most of the advice given here is without any pertinence to German law. Normally you would contact a lawyer but of course it's not worth it (Rechschutzversicherung would've helped if available). Not all letters can be ignored and software can be returned just in special cases. But most contracts established "at a distance" can be can be canceled without charges for the first 2 (or 4?) weeks.
And after all it should be clear that no real information should be provided when you don't want to pay. There are tons of scams like this. If you don't open your eyes you open your wallet.
You should visit GNU and read up a bit.
Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.
Reference
Section 36 of the danish law "aftaleloven" (law about agreements/contracts) states that a contract can be invalidated if it is obvious unfair.
So that kind of fraud is not legal in Denmark. Check if german law has a similar clause.
..because there are no cons in the first page of results when searching for 'open office' or 'openoffice'.
Searching on google.de, of course.
Or is this the result of some SEO targeting stupid people?
If she downloaded OOO and is now getting billed for a 1 year subscription, then the solution is simple - cancel the subscription and delete the software. They can't force you to buy something if you return it, can they?
In my experience, companies will not bother to collect debt from people when the cost to do so is greater then the debt owed.
All you have to do is: make it clear to them that it will cost them more then 98 Euro to recover these costs.
Several replies already provide some good ideas for this. Just put a few of them together and present your plan to the collector.
Another good idea is to continually call them... just call to "discuss your bill" over and over. Delay by asking them to explain various phrases on your EULA. Repeatedly ask for a manager and waste their time. Leave messages for them to call-back. And complain when they don't.
I am doubtful that this will effect your credit rating in any way. To effect your credit, the company would need to be associated with a credit agency. This is a membership cost that I doubt this company would be interested in paying. Companies that work with credit reporting agencies do so because they are assuming upfront risk in dealing with you. Like a line of credit. This company is not concerned about risk because there is essentially no upfront cost.
In fact, in essence this company IS the collection agency. Because they are trying to collect on payments that the customer is generally not willing to pay (because the customer was tricked into the payment). There is no value in selling your debt to a collection agency because they have already tried themselves... and no collection agency would pay a dime for your "fake debt".
Please do not pay this tax.
First of all, are they charging for the software or for something else? If they are charging for the software, you can remove it and redownload it from OpenOffice directly. If they are charging for the service, tell them you don't want the service and you're canceling. They can huff and puff, but if your friend isn't in Germany, there isn't too much they can do.
I would not worry about dinging her credit rating. You have to be a member of the credit bureau in order to report someone.
My take is that this is one of those companies that send out invoices and hope the person will pay it.
The problem is that the 'product' purchased is 'ability to download from our site'.
Openoffice being GPL, they aren't selling the *software*, they're selling the *download*. Uninstalling the software doesn't negate the download service 'purchased'. ... in the same way that you can't return a package to the sender for a refund of the UPS fees.
You should read this: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html
Dont pay a cent. if they didnt provide a check sum for you to validate the download then they can not state that is was properly downloaded.
AND they have a 7 day money back guarantee.
Of course it is legal to sell OpenOffice - why shouldn't it be? You can bundle it with Templates, you can add a better manual, you can compile an version for a new OS... But it is illegal to trick users to "buy". It's not an license issue, it's one of consumer protection or criminal prosecution.
There is no information about the site and what she actually agreed to, but it is very possible that she entered a contract with the scammers. However, she should have the right to withdraw from this 14 days from the date of the purchase ("Widerrufsrecht").
Go to the Verbraucherzentrale ("consumer advice centre") ASAP.
They will tell you how to get out of this mess for a small fee or maybe even for free.
And for future reference - never give (real) personal data if something is supposedly free and READ BEFORE YOU CLICK.
And IANAL either.
ceci n'est pas une sig
It's legal anywhere the GPL is recognized, including the US. The GPL explicitly allows you to charge a fee for distributing copies to users:
You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.
Distribution is never completely free and in some rare cases can be quite expensive, so the GPL allows you to recoup your costs without attempting to dictate a fixed price. The idea is that since anyone can be a distributor, commodity pricing will be the norm even when distribution is expensive.
The problem comes when individuals have incomplete information about the going rate for distribution, but that's a general problem of market systems. This woman could have just as easily overpaid for a car or home repairs or any number of other things.
In germany, the scams from "free" download sites that charge you money through AGBs or similar stuff have all been ruled illegal by german courts. It is however important to act properly.
There are enough postings online about handling theses kind of scams. Have a look at the pages of the consumer centrals (http://www.verbraucherzentrale.de) or in the german law forums (e.g. http://www.recht.de).
It's important to refuse and deny to pay in written form, and as fast as possible. If the sale happened in the last 14 days, your friend might also "give back" the software, since she bought it online and the e-commerce laws step in.
But the bottom line is that you may end up having to pay anyhow. It's like the old trick of selling a decent car for $400. The customer soon comes back in the store and says:
Customer: "This car was at great bargain at $400. But there's one small problem: the steering wheel is missing."
Salesman: "Oh, I forgot to tell you; the steering wheel is an extra 4 grand."
Table-ized A.I.
Obviously your friend should adopt a page from the Nigerian Scam book:
"I would love to pay for my subscription, but I currently do not have access to checks or credit cards because of a pending legal battle over [stolen nazi gold][great uncles death][ect]. However, if you provide me with your bank account number, I will wire you three times the amount you are asking."
(IANAL, blah, blah...)
If you're not the copyright-holder of a piece of GPLed software, you have the right to sell copies of the software, but you do not have the right to sell the legal, controlling rights to that software.
Here's the relevant bit from the FSF's GPL Licensing FAQ:
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
It's interesting that the FSF talks about selling copies rather than just about licensing a copy. I believe their point is that in order to distribute the software (for free or for money) it's necessary for you to transmit a copy to someone else, and because the GPL puts restrictions on distribution, not use, there's no point in using the term "licensing".
coding is life
8. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, link with, or distribute the Library except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, link with, or distribute the Library is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. [emphasis added]
Selling a copy of the software—with an up-front price, like you said—would be one thing, but it appears that they are trying to impose a secondary license agreement (the EULA) on top of the LGPL that contractually binds the user to some payment after the fact. The license, and all other versions of the GPL and LGPL, forbid that outright. In fact, that company may now be forbidden from distributing OpenOffice.org to anyone at all, since they voided the entire license for themselves. (Not a lawyer.)
Many countries have Buyer Regret laws that allows *anything* to be returned within 10 to 14 days.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Does not make a difference in this case. They are probably charging her for the service of providing openoffice to her.
What sort of hoops did this person supposedly go through to Google a site which charges for OpenOffice.org ??
Going to www.google.de and searching for "openoffice" goes straight to the official de.openoffice.org web-site. Similarly for 4 of the first 5 results are OpenOffice.org sites and the top 10 results all appear to be legitimate.
I wager it would be very difficult even for a n00b to get to a scam site accidentally therefore I call this story BS.
I used to try to report those thieving scum on society directly to OOo and would get flamed for it by some folks. Apparently trying to educate those less knowledgeable being met with hostility leads to apathy by my behest. Long story short, caveat emptor.
+5 informative!
98 Euros isn't such a bad price. I paid $699 for my whole Linux distribution.
Can they legally call it OpenOffice.org if they change a part of it? Doesn't Sun own that trademark, and can't they sue someone for distributing such garbage under the OpenOffice.org name?
Your friend should have someone knowledgeable with german law check whether the practices of that company may fulfill the legal definition of fraud. Generally fraud is defined as a *deception* made for personal gain or to damage another individual. So if you revisit the site and see what information it conveys about the payment for openoffice. It might be set up in a deceptive manner. Also - if what they are charging her for is the *service of providing openoffice* and not the usage of openoffice itself, she must have agreed to pay *before* she downloaded the file. Asking for the payment after she's got the executable in her computer (and reads the EULA) is too late. As far as I know they cannot charge her for the *usage* of openoffice since the usage is GPL and therefore free. You can charge for taylor-making, distributing and maintaining (servicing) GPL software - not for running it or for further distribution.
This misuse of the open office logo.
I would suspect that the people behind it can be sued for every penny they have over that alone.
They clearly try to duplicate the look and feel of the ooo website which shows their intent to mislead consumers.
It is bait and switch pure and simple. Advertise using the keyword openoffice, use the open office logo, write free download all over the site, get dumb sucker .... and wham....PROFIT!
I would not pay and I would challenge it with the credit card company if I had been billed an allege fraud and misuse of trademark and she should be good to go as the CCC will investigate and find it's true. They will then turn around and recover their fees from the biller who will most assuredly find themselves in trouble over the issue.
Oops. Scratch profit.
PS> To those that say this is perfectly legal, I beg to differ. It's an issue to OOO because their trademarks are being infringed on creating ill will in the market towards them. Further as stated above the technique being employed is a form of fraud also. Yes, it's fine to charge for the software, however, it is not fine to mislead on what you are selling.
She only has to pay if it was a valid contract. A basic test for a valid contract, at least in Canadian law, is whether an objective person, viewing the circumstance, would have concluded both parties intended to be bound by the agreement.
Given the internet and open source context, there are thousands of arguments fairly made to assert that your friend didn't see this as a contract nor did she intend to be bound by it. Not least of these is the fact that OpenOffice is well-known to be free, and the fact that it was not free in this instance should have been brought to the attention of the consumer.
If there's no personal information linking to a money source or national indicator (social insurance, credit card or bank account type stuff) I wouldn't pay a single cent to these guys. Let them make the decision to SUE ME for their 98 Euros. 99.999999% chance they will forget about it.
You're thinking twice about recommending a product called OpenOffice.Org to people?
Wait, WTF?
How in the fuck can someone end up at the wrong URL to download a product which is named after its own URL?!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Wait... what? She was tricked into buying an already registered domain?
(You decide: is TFA's title careless, or is naming a software product after an Internet hostname careless?)
5 dollars US at 5dollarsoftware.com for the CD. if you want the disc there you go or http://www.openoffice.org/ for the free download.
please don't pay for Open source software or over prices software. there is a world of free software that is as good if not better then the "name brand".
start here for free software. http://sourceforge.net/
good luck with those scammers.
Is there no consumer protection agency / association in Germany or what? /tried/ to collect that shit.
Here in Frankreich they'd get locked up faster than you can say "invoice" if they even
Why didn't the person just download it from de.openoffice.org which has multiple language options from the first page...
Ave Molech Setting
Recently i saw a report on TV about a scheme on how to get money from free software.
1. Get web space and host free software
2. Claim software to be tested and place that claim on web page
3. Hide the information about how much money you demand for this "service" well on that page
4. Profit
No "????" required. Or, rather, the "????" is on the 'customers' side.
There's a web site about this http://www.abzocknews.de/ (sorry, all German)
Germany has reasonably strong consumer protection laws.
She can "return" her merchandise to the seller for "full refund".
In this case it amounts to unistalling the OpenOffice, deleting the installer, might be even taking a screen-shot of the message showing "uninstall complete" and send a polite and firm message to the scammers (optional).
Just ignore the demand. Its not like they will take her to court.
If she was stupid enough to give them a credit card number and they debited her account, then she should phone her bank and tell them there's been an unauthorised debit made on her account.
This is another reason to build your own binaries (even if it takes hours for O0o). This reminds me of Suse, they sold a "service" with their product. Can she get a year customer support or something for the money?
How hard is it to remember the website for OpenOffice.org is OpenOffice.org. It's the only open source project I can think of where the address is in the name!
If you gave your friend the proper information, and she still got scammed, I'm sorry, but your friend is a moron.
I found a piece of software available for purchase on eBay once. The seller had taken screenshots of some software for simple image editing (or something similar) and blurred out the title bar trying to hide the name. There was still enough information to find out that software he was selling was open source and freely available on sourceforge. I confronted him, using the "Ask seller a question" feature and he replied saying the GPL (or similar) allowed him to charge a fee for providing the software.
And all this time I thought it was annoying to name the product OpenOffice.org.
Although Mozilla's strong protection of their Firefox trademark has caused trouble with their unwillingness to grant a blanket license to organizations like Debian, one advantage it does have is that they can force these kinds of sites offline for trademark infringement.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Tell your friends not to give out personal information on the internet. Dropping your address and email around will bury you in spam and attract pedophiles cyber-bullies stalkers and terrorists. Since she bought a subscription, it should be possible to cancel. Since the price was hidden, she shouldn't have to pay. Since German companies charge after the fact, there must be regulations governing such billing; otherwise there would be many deadbeats and even more fraudulent bills. How do they even know it was she who downloaded it?
You also own a copy of the software.
No you don't. The author owns the software, copyright and the license allow you to use a copy of it.
You can't charge for the Openoffice.org, only for services related such as support or downloading it.
Since they already let her download it without charging her, they're boned. Of course, depending on how much in the way of personal info she forked over, she could have other problems now.
Sadly, paying a lawyer to send that letter probably costs more than they are asking.
Unless she downloaded it without being notified upfront of the cost, she ain't going to win this one.
That depends on German and EU law. In the UK contracts are not valid unless the company can demonstrate a clear "meeting of the minds". So click boxes etc. are generally useless in terms of showing you have agreed to bizarre details of a EULA - you really need a signature.
Never, ever, fill out a registration for any F/OSS program. You should explain this to people. Free software means you don't have to register in the same way as with scam software. Explain to download OOo but warn that they must get it from www.openoffice.org and without filling out any registration. The registration for this good software package is optional and happens either during the installation or during the first run, I can't remember which.
OOo is LGPL licenses. I believe that the terms of the GPL and LGPL do actually allow you to charge for the software - you simply cannot then require any further payment from end-users for their further copying. Quoting from the preamble of the LGPL 2.1: "Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)".
Now, these users might have some sort of consumer protection laws they could invoke if it wasn't clear that they were going to be billed for downloading OpenOffice. I really can't say - I'm no laywer, much less a German lawyer, but this is something I would definitely be trying to speak to an attorney, or a consumer advocacy group about, or, if Germany has an equivalent - to an Attorney General's office.
Trademark law provides exactly the kinds of remedies and rules which can prevent this confusion.
This is exactly the sort of case in which ICANN can seize a domain name, like OpenOffice.com, from the people who are using it deceptively, and give it to the owners of the OpenOffice trademark.
The hitch is that the OpenOffice trademark is owned in the Netherlands by a third party. Therefore, OpenOffice.org are not using OpenOffice as a trademark, and are instead calling their product OpenOffice.org.
But the third party that owns OpenOffice should be defending its trademark, and should not let it be used in OpenOffice.com for these purposes. If they don't defend their trademark, it becomes invalid, and if they support this use of it, they are infringing on OpenOffice.org's trademark by encouraging confusion with it, and offering downloads of Openoffice.org software through sites labeled by the OpenOffice name.
So either the owners of OpenOffice should shut down Openoffice.com, or else OpenOffice.org should try and invalidate OpenOffice as a trademark, since it is not defended, or is being used for infringement purposes.
Clearly, download-new.com is using the OpenOffice trademark, and is damaging the reputation of Openoffice.org, by encouraging confusion of the two trademarks, and by implying (by charging a large fee) that OpenOffice.org software is not freely downloadable without charge from almost every other place on the Internet. OpenOffice.com is diluting the OpenOffice trademark, and the OpenOffice.org trademark, by just acting as a parking place for search results. So OpenOffice.org has remedies against the offending sites and/or the owner of the OpenOffice trademark.
Share. Until it becomes uncomfortable. Or at least a little.
Return it via email. One file at a time.
That's what you get for dealing with commies, if you sticked with microsoft word this would have never happened.
What exactly is covered in that fee? Tech support? Custom templates/borders/clipart?
It might be worth the money.
Or it might be a complete scam. Since you didn't post the license agreement or the invoice or anything, it is hard to say.
If it was distributed under the GPL, they can't change the license. You mentioned that they did change the license. That could be a breach. Of course, they can charge a fee. They must also supply the source code.
So that price must at least include source code. In some reasonable format. And ftp is probably no a reasonable format for that price. It should include a nice DVD of the program, installer and all, jre, source code, and maybe even a User Manual.
If they are not willing do provide these...
Most OSS licenses allow you to sell the software, but you cannot create a "license" to the software unless you are the copyright holder. I would love to see the site and actually see what they are claiming to license in the EULA.
A lot of people take law and order too seriously and forget that a fully functional Democracy is not complete without individuals standing up to bad laws, or good laws in scenarios where they turn bad.
Put another way, if I exceeded the speed limit on my way to work today, should I write the state a check? In the town I grew up in there's one of those silly laws on the books that says you can't pass through the center of town with a turtle unless you're wearing a veil. Should turtle owners be turning themselves in?
No, and no, and your friend shouldn't be paying anyone either. Stand up for good, rational thought and do what's right. Delete the scam from her computer and install the real thing. And absolutely do not pay the scam artists.
Most credit cards will refund the money to you if you call them and tell them it was a scam.
They even extend warranties and give other buyer protections. Just contact the credit card company and ask them for the refund.
Well, there are two ways to solve the problem. The first is the right to cancel an online contract within two weeks. So she should delete the files, download OpenOffice.org from http://de.openoffice.org/ and send them a letter that she wants to cancel the contract.
The second way it to loock at the download site if the price is clearly visible. If it is not visible before completing your personsal information or is it hidden somewhere in a long EULA or wherever then take some screenshops and keep them. Ignore all payment requests until you receive a summons (in German: Mahnbescheid) from a court. Then hire a lawyer, give him/her the screenshots.
Consider it a tax on stupidity.
I know what your point is, but I think your example is a bit confusing. When I read your post I thought that I had to provide something physical, or extra material.
What you mean is what GNU says here.
Strictly speaking, "selling" means trading goods for money. Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.
However, when people think of "selling software", they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.
So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term "selling software" and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say "distributing free software for a fee" - that is unambiguous.
I'm not insane! My mother had me tested.
The program can be seen in German here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0ks_ttU7Yo
The Kriminalpolizei (sounds so much cooler than our plain police. :) ) advices that victims of this scam under no circumstances pay.
So to the OP: Don't pay!
That's not quite right. If you possess a copy of open office, you do have "ownership" of the content: you own a license to distribute it, subject to certain restrictions. It doesn't matter whether you personally contributed any code to open office.
The GNU GPL just assumes that people aren't stupid enough to do it except in special circumstances. The free market doesn't guarantee free beer. I've seen people selling New York subway maps, which are handed out for free on the New York subway, for non-zero prices in other places.
Certainly, it's quite reasonable to pay for a support contract, and a contract for support often includes an installation package.
However, in the absence of anything other than the raw installer, one could argue that nothing of value had been delivered, and no contract was formed. In British common law, a contract requires consideration on both sides, each party must get something. (German law may be quite different.)
More significantly, if someone tries to imply that they are selling the right to use the software for a limited period, then they have truly delivered nothing of value (you could argue that hosting the download is something of value), engaged in fraud, and it might be argued violated the GPL which requires that recipients of software be made aware of their rights.
A third argument is, if the installer is binary-only, and source was not offered, the seller is clearly violating the GPL v3.0 section 6 d). (OpenOffice is licensed under LGPL 3.0, which is GPL 3.0 plus some additional permissions not relevant in this case.) A contract to perform an illegal act is not valid, so even if hosting the download is a valuable consideration, if it is illegal, no contract is formed and thus your friend has no obligation to pay.
Of course, these are all legal arguments, which only really take effect if placed before a judge. There may be pragmatic arguments for compromising before you actually get into a courtroom.
One trick that may work well, if a credit card is involved and the GPL was indeed violated, is to tell the credit card company that you were sold pirated software. You can probably get a statement from openoffice.org stating that the binary-only distribution violates their copyright.
There is nothing wrong with charging for OpenOffice distributions.
The problem here is the form in which the contract was supposedly entered. In the US, such a contract is probably not enforceable; it doesn't matter whether it's for OpenOffice or Microsoft Office. If you want to enforce a sales contract, it's effectively your responsibility to make sure that the other party understands that they are buying something and need to pay for it.
German law may be different; there are a number of consumer-hostile provisions in German law that favor companies (and crooks) that wouldn't hold up under US law. This may or may not be one of them.
So I take it you never say anything like "Photoshop is great" without telling people where to get it (Three blocks north, then turn left ...) and how much you can expect to pay? Linux users tend to be more paranoid and geeky that the average population, but in this case even the Linux user wasn't so anally retentive as to quote URLs in casual conversation, nor so paranoid as to believe it was necessary. Presumably the Windows user had done many "download, click setup, press next (repeat)" cycles successfully, and there was no forewarning that this particular time it would get them scammed.
When I used to work at best buy, we were told to "sell" open office. Basically if someone cannot be convinced to purchase M$ office, or it would be more profitable to convince the person otherwise, include open office as an alternative for like $70 or however software suite installation used to cost. We stopped doing it when we got word that Microsoft reps were coming by or whenever a secret shopper would enter the store (yay for walkies). In return we would get pretty bonuses like you get a couple of hours for free to play rockband or something.
Yeah, it was scandalous while it lasted, and heck.. I found it upsetting when they held off a bunch of wii's and two of them got secretly auctioned off to employees back when the wii was hard to get. Needless to say, I hated working there.
You can't "sell" GPL software, because it it not yours to sell. You *can* *only* sell the service of providing it.
Is there really a distinction between selling something and selling the service of providing it? Suppose, I went to my grocery store to buy an onion. At the checkout, the cashier explains to me that the store gives away onions. However, before she will give me the onion I have to pay them from the servce of acquiring it from their supplier and holding it in stock for me.
Other than the the moment in which I stare at the cashier in disbelief, would this transaction differ in some fundimental way from a transaction in which they sold me the onion out right?
When you burn GNU software to a CD, the CD and the copy of the software on it belongs to you. When a customer buys it from you, the CD and the copy of the software on it belongs to them. Does it make a difference if you call it a service?
How did this get modded up?
Actually you can absolutely sell GPL software. What you can't do is sell it without the source. Further anyone you sell it to is free to give it or sell it to whomever they wish.
Ordinarily you wouldn't be able to sell something that you didn't own the copyrights to, but the GPL specifically lets anyone sell GPL'ed software.
Yep, 'on sale' nonetheless. At a sideways 8 markup from zero.
That a scam be well written and manages to fool people into paying, I can understand, that's what scams are.
But what's puzzled me here is that it appears very easy for a scammer to get the justice to let them collect.
Additionally, what you're saying here is strange to me:
Not only is it next to impossible to collect any money in any reasonable time here for locally contracted debts (and it's admittedly a problem for business-to-business transactions), it's next to impossible for foreign-bound debts without a fully fledged court decision, not a mere automated administrative decision. No such default judgement is ever going to be declared against a person, as opposed to a corporation.
You can't charge for something that's free, and so your friend should not pay. That site doesn't have a legal status, and there was no contract, so she should of course refuse to pay anything.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
The way the story is told I'd suggest that the practices of this company are at the very least deceptive, and there's ways to deal with this. I'd recommend waiting for legal papers (Mahnbescheid*) and then have a lawyer tell them to shove it. They won't go to court because they know that their business practices are "Sittenwidrig" (including laesio enormis - the service (that's what was sold) is in no way proportional to the costs) which essentially means that their practices are amoral/against proper business practices and thus not legal. *) A Gerichtlicher Mahnbescheid is a kind of legal paper anyone can get from a local court without any real checks by paying a few bucks to the court. This paper is then used for forclosure. However, this claim can be challenged, which would lead to a proper civil trial - if the claiming party will go that far, which in this case, they most likely won't.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
The store isn't giving away free food, the supplier (farmers, Mother Nature ? ) is.
The store would then merely charge you for the convenience of having lots of all kinds of foods in one place and hidden transport+storage costs.
But the source (plant seeds, recipes, etc.) are totally free to grab.
Fertilizers, cropland and an oven are another thing. (oven=compiler ? )
I am a little bit unsure about the consumer rights in the EU, but I am almost certain that you have the possibility to uninstall the software and not pay, with the law in your hands.
Germany has a very consumer protection laws. In particular, you have an absolute right to return mail-order purchases within (iirc) 30 days - this also applies to Internet orders. She should delete the software and inform them that she has thereby "returned" it. If she is concerned, she should ask a local lawyer for the right language to use.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Somewhat off-subject: you are dealing with a country who imposes a federal tax on your salary that is sent to the religious organisation with whom you are registered. No surprises then that many immigrants are "atheists"
When working for a lab, our lawyers stopped me from putting a map showing a conference venue because the link to the mapping web site didn't go to their site index, because this is illegal. You read that right: how you write html links on web pages is a federal matter in Germany .
O2's customer help line told me verbally that my contract had finished, but then sued me for 22 Euros when I left the country before my phone contract ended, to take up a new job in France. Their lawyers came after me with 100% enthusiasm, because they add their own costs onto that which increase with a monthly interest rate. By the time it was over, I owed a lot more than 22 Euros.
Solution: GET T.F. OUT OF GERMANY.
Ever heard of the "customer protecting" Verbraucherzentrale?
They even got letter templates against such subscriptions: http://www.vzhh.de/~upload/vz/VZTexte/TexteTelekommunikation/AbofallenimInternetLeitartikel.htm
I don't need a licence to use software any more than I need explicit permission to read a book. Copyright restricts rights and doesn't allow me to do anything that an absence of copyright would prevent me from doing. Copyright simply prevents you from making and distributing copies.
You've fallen for the argument that proprietary software vendors use to try and convince you yo don't own the software you've bought.
Real information how to handle this can be found here (in German):
http://forum.computerbetrug.de/allgemeines/54304-opendownload-de.html
Please mod all the uninformed clowns down who spread bullshit here.
and it belongs to the same source like nachbarschaftspost.com and a lot of others (just start searching for nachbarschaftspost)
the cost they try to justify is always in the range of 50-100eu
go to the police and let her take a lawyer, they can tell better than me (or you) if she has to pay (and in most of these cases she doesnt have to)
for a further reading i suggest rotglut.org
(esp if she got the letter from "deutsche inkassostelle" or "zentrale inkassostelle", which both got a long tail of complaints already in court)
also calling the "verbraucherzentrale" will help a lot, as they do know how to handle this best
And ANY purchase has to be stated up-front.
So if it's only in the EULA that she has to pay, there's no need to pay under German Law.
If the payment was stated on the website before download and easily attainable, then she only has recourse to distance selling regs (like the UK) or to take it as a contract agreement which, like in the UK, you have 28 days to refuse for a full refund.
In Europe, when a consumer buys something over the internet he has an ABSOLUTE right to change his mind about the purchase within 14 days.
That right cannot be taken away by any contractual bullshit. If she is within this period, she can just write them an email and that's it.
If you were recommended OpenOfffice without a long-winded explanation of its free-ness and then went away and searched on 'buy openoffice' you might get what you're looking for.
Google's response to this query is pretty compelling to not buy OpenOffice but download it, but if you were determined you wanted to buy it you might get past that. This is especially likely given that spammers bombard people with offers of illegal copies of Microsoft Office at discounted prices, that people might have trained themselves to ignore, the opposite might be true if searching to buy OpenOffice and they ignore the results which offer it as a free download.
Pete Boyd
You dont give enough information. Although it is legal to sell openoffice (you charge for packaging a hardcopy, or download), it doesnt mean that the way it is sold constitutes a valid sale. Further more, there are some european limitations on consumer sales over distance (be it by phone or internet). As a consumer you have some time to reconsider. It greatly depends on what was being sold, and how they did it. If it was unclear that you were buying something, chances are that a court would rule the agreement void. The law favores consumers over companies, since companies a supposed to know what they are doing.
In second- and third-last sentences: "lose", not "loose"
That's because your real-time clock is broken!
Yep, that famous formula for Funny - inverting clauses.
Bogusize website, Register OO for real ... because usually (!) the program itself isn't hacked (yet).
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
i know about one of the sites and there is an illegal point:
first the "cost" of the subscription (they sell a subscription, not a product) in not clearly visible to you. its visually seperated in another part of the page so that you are not aware of the cost as you click submit.
second, by accepting the general terms and conditions (AGB) you decline the right of withdrawal (widerrufsrecht) with the same button. This is also illegal imho. Its a scam.
A friend of mine had the same problem. he just ignored the request email. he had not provided his street adress, so the only thing they had was the email which is not enough.
even with the right adress you could state that it wasnt her that filled out the form :P
good luck for your friend!
This part
'She went home and searched on Google for it and thought she found the website, filled typical registration information, and downloaded OpenOffice.org 3.0.'
is what I'm worried about.
If you go to google.de (or google.com) and search for OpenOffice, how in the hell do you get to a scam site without trying any of the numerous download links on the first page (where most of them point to openoffice.org)?
In Germany, clauses in contracts that come as a surprise and are not prominently displayed are routinely rejected by courts.
Since your friend was not aware of the extra costs in the "contract", I assume the clause with regards to the costs was not very prominently placed on the page. Also, you can not expect costs on pages that state "free", "at no costs", "opensource" and the like.
Therefore if I were your friend:
1. check if the costly clause was not prominently displayed and disguised by other words like "freeware" "at no costs" etc. and if this is the case:
2. make a screen shot of the page. Print it out, date and sign it.
3. reject the first bill that comes in by a letter with proven delivery ("Einschreiben mit Rueckschein"). In the letter, state that the cost clause came as a surprise and that you therefore do not accept the contract. To be on the safe side, also cancel the Contract at the same time (use the words ("Hiermit widerrufe und kuendige ich ausserdem vorsorglich...").
4. sit back and ignore all further bills and communication from that company or their lawyer and money collector. Don't get nervous if they try to scare you and use big words. Ignore them, you already told them all you had to tell them.
5. once eventually a court signed bill ("Gerichtlicher Mahnbescheid") arrives, you MUST reply to the court to reject this bill! Do not ignore this!
6. see if the company dares to go to court after this. I bet they will not as they will very very likely loose if the cost clause was not obvious.
Good luck!
I was wondering how anyone could accidentally download from a third-party pay site, since the real site is always at the top of my search results. Then I realized that I normally don't even see the sponsored links; my brain filters them out automatically. Clicked on a couple of them, and some do look pretty slick; I could see someone falling for it once they've gotten to that point.
Apparently the EULA stated this cost and here in Germany she is required to pay up.
So, in Germany subscriptions are mandatory? I don't see how that could possibly work.
So I thought I would ask Slashdot, should she pay?
If she attaches no value to money, by all means.
It is so apparent willyhill, jwilcox154, macthorpe, or whatever sweaty b wants to be called today is astroturfing for M$. M$ has even threatened twitter using AC as well as the accounts Macthorpe andjwilcox154. Jwilcox even admits the sweaty ballmer troll Ed Avis will threaten Twitter and his family. The staff at slashdot should take this seriously by handing the I.P. addresses to these posts over to the FBI for investigation, then arrest those involved with this massive campagin by M$ to disrupt all discussions dealing with free software by threatening the users.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
May I point out the Free Software Foundation's essay "Selling Free Software" http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html
http://forum.computerbetrug.de/allgemeines/54304-opendownload-de.html
Copyright restricts rights and doesn't allow me to do anything that an absence of copyright would prevent me from doing. Copyright simply prevents you from making and distributing copies.
No, copyright law defines the legal rights, privileges, and restrictions people have with regard to published works.
Copyright simply prevents you from making and distributing copies.
It does more than that, it also attempts to define "fair use" of copyrighted material.
copyright law is currently very complex, and *IAA lawyers are whittling away at "fair use" with precedent. Ask any intellectual property attorney and they'll tell you, you can't absolutely be sure what the current boundaries are of "fair use."
You've fallen for the argument that proprietary software vendors use to try and convince you yo don't own the software you've bought.
You don't own the software, you own the physical medium on which it is stored. "Fair Use" allows you to use your legally obtained copy of the published works.
Far from agreeing with proprietary software companies, IMHO "fair use" prevents them from certain restrictions. For instance, Microsoft says I can't run Windows in a virtualized environment. I have a legally obtained copy. I have rights to use this copyrighted work under copyright law. Screw Microsoft's claims. They may own the software itself, but by publishing it, they lose ultimate control over to copyright law.
The more-or-less serious comment first: that envelope should probably be sent registered mail.
Okay, now, how does one "return" a download? We know the bits are ephemeral, so a CD or DVD with the image burned on it would be a nice piece of sarcasm.
But I like sending the download printed at 300 BPI as a bitmap graphic. Monochrome would be the easiest to claim can be read at the other end, but grayscale or color would work, if the printout included a calibration header. (Let's see, how many pages is that going to be in monochrome? hmm. That could be a kind of fat envelope.)
e-mail the image back to them?
(The friend does know perl, right? Python, Ruby, whatever.)
Another possibility might be a request for a url that would accept the image as HTTP POST.
Gotta request that URL. If you just POST the thing to their on-line form without a warning, you're likely to be charged with an attempted DOS. Especially if you rent a bot-farm to make the POST. (No, I'm not encouraging this kind of behavior. Just for the record.)
(I'm trying to invent a protocol for returning digital images that will hold up in court. Heh.)
Show me where the GPL says you cannot sell the software. You cannot sell the copyrights (because you don't own them), just as a store selling Windows doesn't sell the copyrights for that OS.
Apart from that, you cannot put additional restrictions on the customer, so as to prevent him from giving copies to the rest of the world, but neither can a shop selling Windows make any changes to the Windows license.
However, neither of those prevent selling the software in the exact same way that you would sell Windows.
You get modded down because you are wrong.
Contact the Verbraucherzentrale (can't think of any English term for that; it's an institution that protects consumer rights). They'll be able to help you with that.
There were some similar cases here in Germany where people were tricked into paying for using websites. The courts decided depending on how obvious the costs were.
So, if there was for example a big button saying: "download now for 96 Euro", she most likely will have to pay. If the costs were somewhere hidden, she doesn't have to pay.
If you know, what site she was using, you most likely are able to find some other people who were scammed by them on ze German Internets and find out, if they had to pay.
There's several approaches to combating such "bullshit companies".
In this case, I see e.g. defamation, improper use of a trademark, coercing people into a contract because of not visibly telling them the cost and more
Even more, for online contracts people have a right to back off in the first 28 days.
And that's not all, slowly politicians are recognizing that the information provided in registration forms mostly isn't much private anyway, and there's been calls to require a *written* signature (or possibly a cryptographically securely) signature. Of course this won't stop idiots from buying free stuff. While the 'victim' can do whatever he/she likes, why didn't the ask her collegue wether it is free before stupidly buying off a scam.
We have an government institute BSI that takes care of privacy/security concerns of people, mostly because the abuse of expensive phone numbers for scams and trojans. And we have RegTP, an institute specifically for banning abuses phone numbers and that way allowing people to deny the charges for these numbers (I personally had a case on 50EUR).
So... nobody here can claim they didn't know. They can claim they didn't care - nothing more.
This case here is a variation of the above, a company selling services on a product. But depending on the wording of the text on the scammers' site, it's an improper abuse of a trademark, they lacked the *required* cost details.
Ideally Openoffice.org and the victim cooperate on this issue.
Finally a hint for those from Germany who falled for a scam like this and noticed early. If *YOU* made the deal, immediately send them a "Einschreiben", backing of the contract. If if your son/daughter made the deal and is younger than 14, send them a "Einschreiben", too - telling them the contract was void because it would have needed your consent (contracts of value more than their allowance). Finally, with non-signed contracts, there's a chance of calling the contract fake.
--
satmd
Yep, that famous formula for Funny - inverting clauses.
Hey, if it ain't broke....
The "first hit" on German Google is a paid ad. Google could shut these scammers down by refusing to sell the ad space to them.
Germany does not have the invasive credit reporting system the US has. While there are services used by mail-order businesses
the main reporting agency Germans worry about is the SCHUFA - Schutzgemeinschaft für allgemeine Kreditsicherung, My have
we got long words. Unlike the free for all of the US reporting agencies (especially Experian)), businesses reporting to
SCHUFA are carefully vetted. Another thing is that credit information is made available only to lenders considering to give credit
to a borrower, it can not be used as part of a background check.
I
If that's got anything to do with a hot, thin, dark-skinned young woman with long black hair and little or no clothes, I'm definitely interested.
Wait, what's the inverse of "jolly"? Never mind, I don't want to meet her. I think we're talking about my ex-wife.
But my point is, here, merely having to contest it would be considered abusive.
That was mean to humorous. Whatcha gonna do, call the language Polizei?
If the company didn't get payment before they allowed download, that is their own problem. She doesn't owe them anything. Tell them to go piss up a rope. If they try to pursue you, pursue them in court.
I don't understand the problem. Just write a counter-proposal, stating that if you stop using the software, then you are no longer obliged to pay for it.
Write this proposal on a 3x5 card, and send it to the company on a sealed envelope. Also, the card should state that opening the envelope constitutes agreement to the counter-proposal. If the proposal is not acceptable, then the envelope must be returned unopened.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
I'm not a lawyer and more importantly I'm not a German lawyer, and ultimately I think that getting German legal advice if possible is a much better idea than asking Slashdot. I'm finding this whole case difficult to understand, however. I can't see how she could be liable for anything or how this distribution could have been legal, simply because they shouldn't be allowed to change the OpenOffice.Org LGPL distribution licence.
What I find very confusing is the use of open source software with subscriptions. How does that actually work, and how is it possible to offer a "1 year subscription" to use OpenOffice.org at all?
OpenOffice.Org 3.0 is distributed under the LGPL, which to my understanding (please correct me if necessary) typically means that once you have the software, you can use it as you like, even as far as giving the software and its source code to someone else. Given that the LGPL already says that you can only re-distribute LGPL software under the LGPL (or the GPL), what right would some random company have to attach extra conditions such as requiring that a user may only use it for one year?
Subscriptions and OSS go together frequently, but in such cases the subscription is nearly always for services that surround the software, but which aren't specifically for using the software. Is this company perhaps trying to claim that she agreed to purchase a 1 year support contract? (Hint: Get a lawyer to check the actual wording and give real advice.)
It's also not uncommon to see companies charging for OSS, but in such cases as others have already pointed out, the charge usually accompanies the form of distribution (like a disk or in a package), and the distributor still can't stop the user from receiving the software under (L)GPL. If the distributor already gave the user the software in this case, surely it must have already been given with the complete LGPL licence (if it was given legally), and the company wouldn't have any mechanism to demand further money after it's been received.
I bought my first copy of redhat back in the day, I was too lazy to download through my dialup access, and for $25 I got the CDs and a year of RHN support.
This is how you are SUPPOSED to profit from OSS.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
They can't charge for the source code, can they?
Fraudulent contracts made under false pretenses are not legal or binding, neither in the US nor here in Germany.
There are several similar fraud schemes that advertise "free" services such as horoscopes, ringtones, internet-to-SMS sending, personality or IQ* tests, and later invoice you for the subscription fee hidden in the Terms of Service.
(*The only way to win is not to play.)
You don't need to take these scammers to court. It's usually enough to firmly tell them to shut the fuck up, because hardly any of them will continue to bother you. They're malicious, but they're not stupid - they're not going to spend money on pursuing a shaky claim when they can scare so many others into sending them money.
They're a bit like the RIAA in that respect, but somewhat less self-righteous/confident about it (and therefore easier to fend off).