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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."
Not sure that that's even legal -- would be surprised if it held up in court.
Good - class action lawsuits are bad for the individual consumers anyway, only make money for the law firms. I'd rather 200 people file small claims suits than someone file a class action.
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.
If one man has a grievance and sues a company he's portrayed in the press as crackpot. A class action takes the same grievance and because numerous people are involved there's the appearance of wrongdoing, no matter if it's real or not. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs try the case in the court of public opinion until a settlement is forced because the defendant feels their reputation is becoming tarnished. A settlement will mean pennies on the dollar for the numerous plaintiffs, and that's after the attorneys take out their costs.
Microsoft thinks they are clever enough to circumvent this cycle. Does anyone think they class action lawsuit industry will let Microsoft's new license stand? Not without a fight.
Yes, class action lawsuits don't help the victims. Neither does putting murderers in jail. But the goal is to give people and businesses a reason to think twice before committing a despicable act. Thanks to SCOTUS's decision that companies can stick a "you can't sue us!" clause in any and all contracts, there is now no mechanism by which companies can be made to pay for abusing their customers. Day-dreaming about alternate mechanisms is pointless. This is the one that we have (or had, at any rate), and for all its flaws, it did work. Companies that abused people were made to pay. But no longer.
So does this mean I can put a sticker on my car that says:
"By Reading this Bumper Sticker you agree to the following Terms and Conditions:
In the event of an accident the operator of this vehicle shall be held harmless for any damage or personal injury incurred to any person involved. You agree to take full personal and financial responsibility for any damage incurred to this motor vehicle and belongings."
Forget about class action. Go with crowd action. Let 100,000 people file in small claims court at the same time. Assuming the courts can handle the load, I'm guessing even MS doesn't have enough lawyers to appear personally in each suit.
They don't allow plaintiffs to pay out coupons in small claims court.
There are numerous requirements for something to be a contract in US law and the EULA fails a number of them. The biggest is contracts have to happen before the exchange of goods/money. They can't be ex post facto. So if a company requires you to sign a contract before you buy the software, that's a real contract. An EULA that you are introduced to after the sale, not a contract.
Easy to see here at work too. I work for a state university so they are very big on the "only approved people can sign contracts for the university" thing. Any contract has to go through the contracts office and be approved by the lawyers. EULAs? They tell us don't worry just click through. In other words, they are confident the EULAs don't bind us to shit. If they though they did, we'd have to get them all approved.
Just by not buying Windows, Microsoft won't see they lost a sale.
Everyone go out and buy a copy of Windows 8, open the box so it can't be resold, then return it for a full refund with the reason that the EULA you can't see until you try to install it was an unacceptable attack on basic civil rights.
This is about the only way Microsoft would get a clear message and see how much its costing them.
They're called adhesion contracts. EULAs are the most common example, but so are the warranties that come with mass produced goods, the terms on your ticket stub at a ball game or a parking garage -- these things are contracts and they are enforceable. They're just held to a (very slightly) higher standard of fairness before being held unconscionable.
Theoretically you could break a contract of adhesion, hire a lawyer, and get away with it. But that lawyer will charge you more than you would have to pay for windows (unless he's a very cheap lawyer, or you get a really bad deal on windows). So, click accept little sheep, go down the ramp into the windowless room now please.
many aspects of the modern world that simply couldn't be done without the kind of resources that a Ford or a General Electric can bring to the table. The government could fill in somewhat
Hi. I'm a child of the 20th Century. You might remember us. We fixed a Depression, killed Adolf Hitler, held Stalin in check, invented the atom bomb, rebuilt Europe and Japan, built a national infrastructure of highways and electricity, got Jim Crow off the books at least, added a Moon rock to our mood ring collection and then watched Al Gore invent the internet -- all without a single corporation as the driving force.
Mozart wrote his operas, Shakespeare wrote his plays, Nobunaga conquered Japan, Genghis Kahn ruled an empire, Rome took Europe, the Mings handled China, and Ogg invented fire all without a single patent or copyright protection to their name.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."