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Windows 8: More EULA, Fewer Rights.
sl4shd0rk writes "Microsoft has adopted a brand new licensing scheme for Windows 8 which effectively removes your right to file a class-action lawsuit against them should you feel the need. '...Many of our new user agreements will require that, if we can't informally resolve the dispute, the customer bring the claim in small claims court or arbitration, but not as part of a class action lawsuit.' Class-action lawsuits are intended to help individuals stand up to corporate law-breaking but this new EULA model simply nullifies that course of action for the consumer."
There needs to be a better mechanism for keeping corporations in line, anyway.
I'm not endorsing MS's attempts to weasel out of liability here (although I guess once Sony took a bite of that particular poison apple, it's only a matter of time before the other tech giants decide that class action immunity is too awesome to pass up).
But class action lawsuits never deliver anything of real value to the people who actually suffered from whatever prompted the class action suit. They often hurt the target company, a lot, but that's vengeance & retribution rather than justice - the only people who actually benefit from the "restitution" and "settlement" are the lawyers.
Really, it would probably be better all round to just have regulators & ombudsmen with real teeth rather than relying on lawyer feeding frenzy class actions to provide a punishment system for corporations. The big problem with that is regulatory capture. I don't have a solution, but I wish I did. The present state of affairs isn't really satisfactory to anyone IMO.
You like the GP are a moron.
Not everyone impacted can take the day off to go to small claims court. This means the company can abuse untold numbers of customers and never pay a dime. A class action is to punish the company while not over burdoning the members of the class as their each individual claim is very small.
All of this is utter nonsense, quite frankly, and persists for no good reason (and keeping lawyers employed is not a good reason.) If there's ever been an entity where it is not merely acceptable but utterly essential to mark as being subhuman, it is the corporation.
It should be for corporations the inverse as it is for actual humans in this country: while people are free to do as they wish unless explicitly prohibited, corporations should not be able to do anything unless explicitly permitted. Otherwise they abuse the rights we as citizens have and eventually leverage that confusion (and other associated nonsense) to even greater heights of power above actual people.