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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 think this was probably the correct legal conclusion. Clearly, the computer and operating system were meant to purchase as a bundle. If I buy any other product bundled up with something else, returns or exchanges are "all or nothing" (speaking as a U.S. citizen, anyway).
You can't just buy the package deal of a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, and say "I want to know what the included toothbrush is worth, and get refunded for just that part of the package, because I still want to use the toothpaste."
That being said? This probably helps clarify that bundled OEM software or operating systems should be treated as free "throw ins" when making computer purchases. They're generally restricted in their licensing provisions anyway, so they're useless for anything except that specific computer they were bundled with. About the only significance I see with the pre-loaded OS is that hardware manufacturers may have designed the whole machine not to run many other options.
Hopefully, more people will put pressure on the vendors to ensure their computers can run alternate OS's, instead of just buying them first and making assumptions it "should be able to work". My workplace was recently bitten by this when we bought one of those Intel NUC PC's to replace a dead Dell PC running our Finance's scanning software and flatbed scanner. The old system was all configured in Windows 7 Pro so we hoped to just image the drive and blast it back onto the NUC, to get things back up and running. Nope! The NUC seems to not be able to run anything older than Windows 8.
i dont care if it's a dime or a 100$ , it's the fact that i simply dont have a choice , i see it as getting raped by an Operating System , some people at microsoft and sony doesnt understand no means no
Show us on a picture of the laptop where Sony touched you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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).
The EULA that comes with Windows specifically allows customers to return it for a refund. The agreement is the first thing that pops up on a new computer.
Based on the ruling and your logic, the MS EULA is invalid. Sony is not bound by the terms of the written agreement. Keep in mind that the customer does not see the agreement until the computer is purchased and in their possession.
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.
True, but things are often different when dealing with a convicted monopolist with a long history of illegally abusing its position to coerce manufacturers into not offering alternative OSes.
--- 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
You are the whiny idiot, not the consumer.
This is not a problem of the consumer whinnying, but of a major software using illegal monopoly power to force companies to either sell computers with ONLY their software or NONE of their software.
Let's be honest here - Sony didn't decided "Hey, I want everyone to use Microsoft". What, you think Sony loves Microsoft? Yeah right.
No. Microsoft went to them and said "Sell ONLY our stuff or you get no Windows."
Sony caved like a coward, signed an agreement, and were contractually obligated to refuse to sell non-windows computers. They don't care that much, because most consumers want Microsoft.
It's the poor consumer is forced to buy Windows that they do not want, not to keep Sony happy, but to keep MICROSOFT happy.
This is nothing but a cowardly country refusing to enforce anti-monopoly laws because the monopoly successfully used a complex contractual agreement to trick them.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The terms of the agreement have been altered, pray that the corporate lawyers don't alter them further [insert Darth Vader breath here].
Where does the EULA *MICROSOFT* produces say "it" being the entire computer, most of which is not theirs?
I don't have the Windows Vista EULA handy, but the Windows 10 EULA states:
Key words: "which might require you to return the software with the entire device on which the software is installed"