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Sony Wins Battle Over Preinstalled Windows in Europe's Top Court (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: The sale of a computer equipped with pre-installed software isn't an unfair commercial practice because most customers prefer to buy a laptop they can use straight away, Europe's top court has ruled in a victory for Sony. "Failure to indicate the price of each item of pre-installed software" isn't misleading, the Court of Justice of the European Union added in its ruling on Wednesday. The CJEU was asked to intervene after French citizen Vincent Deroo-Blanquart took Sony to court for failing to reimburse the cost of pre-installed software -- Windows Vista Home Premium operating system -- that he did not wish to use on a laptop. Sony refused and instead offered to cancel the sale altogether.
Fine, but you can sell the cheese packet on Ebay if you want. Try selling your OEM copy of Windows on Ebay sometime. The pre-installed software is either chattel goods for sale or it isn't, one or the other. Microsoft (and Apple) want to have it both ways.
Just because you may want the company to offer different products, doesn't mean they have to. My electric razor came with all kinds of useless attachments, but it would be silly to ask for a refund for those I don't use. The seller offers the product for sale, the buyer decides whether to buy it, they negotiate the price, and if both are satisfied the sale takes place.
Asking about "the price of each piece of preinstalled software" is even worse nonsense. We don't obliged sellers to disclose their costs of assembling their products (that's their private information!). And the retail price of the components is utterly irrelevant.
In the specific case of MS-Windows on laptops there is a question of abuse of monopoly power (the ruling does have an exception for when the bundling distorts the market) -- but as long as Sony's policy of not offering component refunds is due to Sony (rather than a contractual obligation between Sony and Microsoft) I don't see how that could be a cause for complaint either. I remember situations where MS insisted that to get an OEM license vendors had to promise to only sell machines with preinstalled OS -- but even then I don't think it had to be MS-Windows that was preinstalled, and this is not similar to what's in the complaint.
I'm tired of the trend of whiney consumerism. If you don't want an OS, don't buy the fucking computer that has it pre-installed. It's not like it was advertised as just the hardware and he was surprised when Windows booted up.
I'm glad common sense prevailed in this case.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
My electric razor came with all kinds of useless attachments, but it would be silly to ask for a refund for those I don't use
Were any of those attachments a third-party product with a not-insignificant cost that were produced by a known monopolist? There are lots of thing we buy that may come with components that aren't used - or aren't often used - but in general those are still part of the product. When I buy a car, it's not like I can't get the options like fancy mags, high-end stereo+woofers, etc... I just pay for them as an option. Including an OS or not is a pretty easy option. Heck, they could even include an unactivated version of windows but require you to pay if you want to use it (and get a serial key etc).
No, you can't. Preinstalled copies of Windows are almost universally OEM versions, with the license is already bound to that hardware before you even open the box. Good luck getting Microsoft to allow you to transfer the license to something else. Maybe you can do it by fraudulently claiming a hardware upgrade, to a cooperative MS agent, but it's a violation of the terms of the license.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think the better analogy is you can go and buy just a box of Macaroni easily.
Most importantly it will be:
1) Offered a price that reflects the actual cost and a reasonable markup
2) Widely available its unlikely any full grocery store will sell boxed Mac'n'Cheese but not sell macaroni and cheese separately. Freeing you to purchase either product without paying for the other.
The Windows tax is insidious because most of these manufactures will not sell a system to this day without an OS installed, and most still don't offer an alternative to Windows on many models. Like the boxed Mac'n'Cheese its actually more effort to provide the assembled product, imaged hard disk vs hdd just installed but left blank. Yet if you are allowed to buy the system without an OS its often not discounted at all. You can make the argument that managing more separate stock imaged/blank would be more work, fine so image them all and don't provide a license key for Windows, to customers who don't order it.
The reality is that in a completely open and free market place a PC with a pre-installed (and licensed copy ) of Windows should cost more than one without, you should be able to order just about any model a manufacturer sells without Windows but you can't. So MS is in some way or did in the past leverage their near monopoly position to affect the supply chain and choke out alternative vendors.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The terms of the agreement have been altered, pray that the corporate lawyers don't alter them further [insert Darth Vader breath here].