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Microsoft Files Suits Against "Malvertisers"
eldavojohn writes "Reuters is bringing us news of five civil lawsuits filed by Microsoft against 'Soft Solutions,' 'Direct Ad,' 'qiweroqw.com,' 'ITmeter Inc,' and 'ote2008.info' that allege they 'used malvertisements to distribute malicious software or present deceptive websites that peddled scareware to unsuspecting Internet users.' Microsoft's Tim Cranton outlined the suits and provided links to all the filings for download. 'Cranton added that names of specific individuals behind these activities were not known and the lawsuits were being filed to help uncover the people responsible.'"
It's a no brainer for two reasons.
1. There are two evils fighting.
One of them has some legal business, the other is purely illegal and harmful.
Choose the lesser evil.
2. The malware people don't work to eradicate M$. So, if they 'win', it means both evils stay around.
M$ doesn't have much chance, but if they 'win', it means, one (or more) evil stops bothering us.
Choose the meaningful choice.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Wouldn't they have to organize a class action for this to go anywhere?
Probably not. This sounds like tortious interference to me. The theory is that Microsoft's interests are damaged by a third party interfering in its relationship with its customers. When it comes to calculating damages there are all sorts of theories you could use. As you say, any would probably start with lost customers, but you can also look at higher support costs, reduced sale of upgrades (moving to a non-MS OS is not necessary for MS to lose profits), stymied growth in market share, etc.
Of course, if we're interested in the consumers' remedies, that's a whole different can of worms. They couldn't sue for tortious interference (probably) because they're not the ones engaged in the relevant business activities. But they might be able to bring other causes of action (in fraud, for example). They could sue individually, but if they want to get a big shot lawyer involved they would need to go for a class action so there's a bigger lump payout to take fees out of.
(IANAL, but I am a law student. I am not competent to give real legal advice.)
caritj.org
I don't know if you're trolling or not, but I think you're almost certainly correct (and, btw, that your -1 Troll mod probably isn't fair). Though bear in mind that MS has always had an incentive to clean up the malware situation proportional to the risk of its customers defecting to another OS. The threat of cloud computing to them just cranks up the risk, and thus the incentive. Whether or not it definitively tipped the scales in this case is hard to know - maybe they would have gone ahead with this 5 years ago if their lawyers told them they could win - but I'm sure it had some effect.
caritj.org