Slashdot Mirror
How Microsoft Lost In Court Over Windows 10 Upgrades (digitaltrends.com)
In June a California woman successfully sued Microsoft for $10,000 over forced Windows 10 upgrades, and she's now written a 58-page ebook about her battle (which she's selling for $9.99). But an anonymous Slashdot reader shares another inspiring story about a Texas IT worker and Linux geek who got Microsoft to pay him $650 for all the time that he lost.
"Worley built a Windows 7 machine for his grandfather, who has Alzheimer's Disease, [customized] to look like Windows XP, an operating system his grandfather still remembered well..." writes Digital Trends. "But thanks to Microsoft's persistent Windows 10 upgrade program, Worley's grandfather unknowingly initiated the Win 10 upgrade by clicking the 'X' to close an upgrade window." After Worley filed a legal "Notice of Dispute," Microsoft quickly agreed to his demand for $650, which he donated to a non-profit focusing on Alzheimer's patients.
But according to the article, that's just the beginning, since Worley now "hopes people impacted by the forced Windows 10 upgrade will write a complaint to Microsoft demanding a settlement for their wasted time and money in repairing the device," and on his web page suggests that if people don't need the money, they should give it to charities fighting Alzheimer's. "If Microsoft isn't going to wake up and realize that lobbing intentionally-tricky updates at people who don't need and can't use them actively damages not only the lives of the Alzheimer's sufferer, but those of their whole family, then let's cure the disease on Microsoft's dime so their tactics and those of companies that will follow their reckless example aren't as damaging."
Worley suggests each Notice of Dispute should demand at least $50 per hour from Microsoft, adding "If recent history holds steady they might just write you a check!"
But according to the article, that's just the beginning, since Worley now "hopes people impacted by the forced Windows 10 upgrade will write a complaint to Microsoft demanding a settlement for their wasted time and money in repairing the device," and on his web page suggests that if people don't need the money, they should give it to charities fighting Alzheimer's. "If Microsoft isn't going to wake up and realize that lobbing intentionally-tricky updates at people who don't need and can't use them actively damages not only the lives of the Alzheimer's sufferer, but those of their whole family, then let's cure the disease on Microsoft's dime so their tactics and those of companies that will follow their reckless example aren't as damaging."
Worley suggests each Notice of Dispute should demand at least $50 per hour from Microsoft, adding "If recent history holds steady they might just write you a check!"
An it services firm would bill out at at least $125 an hour.
And I think it's fair to have an 8 hour minimum. So, a minimum of $1,000 should be billed to MS - even if it just takes you 5 minutes.
On another note, I now regret switching to Mac.
California, where everybody is a stinking communist. A woman has no right for legal representation, her man has to do it in stead of her.
A million claims in small claims court against Microsoft.
Don't see it won't happen. That's what they said about Trump.
Down with evil empires!
A FreeBSD-user since early 90-ies, I can only chuckle at the problems in the Microsoft world... But this:
got me thinking about the KDE-project, which blew away the existing KDE3-users, when introducing KDE4. Leaving us without an ugprade-path and forced to redo all of the customizations.
No, we weren't tricked into upgrading the way some MS-users were. But that's a rather thin defense for any software-maker, which simply discontinues older versions — forcing users to upgrade or remain open to security and other bugs.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I just found out my sister-in-law bought a new laptop because the old one was "broken". Why? Because the formerly functional old laptop ran Windows 7 and whatever Windows 10 did to it broke the drivers and it won't boot, despite her trying to prevent Windows from doing the update for months. She took it to a local computer store and they said they would fix it for $100. At that point she decided to buy a new one. Months later I found out what happened :-(
It's easy to blame the user, but there must be thousands of people out there who have machines that were effectively turned into non-functional doorstops from their perspective because of Microsoft's forced upgrade policy. Granted, these machines are fixable, but that's still a repair beyond many user's ability, and it would cost them money to have someone else do it for them. They're in this spot because of the underhanded tricks that Microsoft used (like the "install anyway" close button on the upgrade window).
I'll reinstall the OS for her and maybe she can recover some money by reselling the old laptop, but really there should be a class action lawsuit against Microsoft for what they've done. Instead they've probably reaped many unnecessary sales of new machines. It's appalling.
You never owned the software. You owned the physical media only. The software was only licensed for you to use.
And your rights to that physical media were probably limited as well. I once tried to sell a full copy not an upgrade of Office 1997 on eBay. It was legit, and I wasn't using it anymore. Microsoft got eBay to drop the listing. They used to do that frequently.
extort: obtain (something) by force, threats, or other unfair means.
how is asking for a fair amount owed to you by a company, that does you direct harm by forcing an upgrade on you that make a fully functional computer become an expensive brick, equal extortion?
you sir have a funny way at looking at justice. do you work for microsoft?
When they started doing it, probably.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are you proud of the work you've done here, making life suck for Alzheimers' patients and countless other customers who lack the capacity, the autonomy, or the technical background needed to circumvent your bosses' intentions?
If you work for Microsoft, then the world is a worse place because you went to work today. Re-evaluate your career options.
Remember, you're engineers. As a group you are capable, experienced professionals in a strong labor market. You have those options, unlike a lot of other people.
And as engineers, you also have ethical obligations, even if they're unwritten ones. Honor those obligations by working somewhere else besides Microsoft.
They need to be nutted by the first sale doctrine
FUCK YOU MICROSOFT
$9.99 for a 58 page ebook? For any that are sold, I can only say that a fool and his money are soon parted.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Yeah... The disappointing part is, I know with near certainty that if this becomes a class action, the settlement amount will be puny compared to the actual time and trouble it caused people who were affected by it. Most likely, Microsoft will wind up having to pay a settlement class consisting of just about anyone who owned Windows 7 and can show their system now runs Win 10 thanks to the online upgrade. (How would you realistically be able to prove whether or not you clicked the "upgrade" button by accident?)
But the flip side is? If it doesn't become a class action, we're left in a situation where only a very few will pursue legal action against MS, vs. all the people who chalked their issues up to "Just one more thing that sucks about computers!", trashing their old PC for a brand new one or resigning themselves to paying a computer tech to fix their problem. And if too many individuals start making demands, MS will probably start denying them -- tiring of the random demands to pay up. By calling the bluff of those threatening MS with letters, they'll further dwindle down the number of people actually willing to go through the courts and fight for the money they're demanding.
And ironically -- I imagine that in at least some of the scenarios where people gave up and bought a new Windows 10 machine, they purchased a Surface Pro or Surface Book, rewarding Microsoft for screwing them over!
For the countless hours of finding and reading the fine print on MS's "security" updates to make sure I don't catch Windows 10?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I was spared the forced upgrade because I had an old Cisco VPN client installed It apparently made M$ sick and it kept skipping my system
They might want to try that in the EU market and see how fast they'll have an investigation on their dealings here... again.
Comcast had some like that with premiums where you just needed to go the channel and it got auto added.
Considering the confusion each change Microsoft have brought when "upgrading" their OS you don't even need Alzheimer to get a severe headache.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Now I want to upgrade to Windows 10 so that I can have enough money to donate to alzheimer's.
You mean I can own Linux? Great! I'm going to change its licence to closed source and sue anyone who tries to download it for free.
You never owned the software. You owned the physical media only. The software was only licensed for you to use.
The Microsoft commercial said that I should buy the software. The store encourage me to buy the software.
The 'licensed' concept only came up after purchase when they wanted to do things I didn't agree with.
Nope, you don't own the copyright.
You own a copy of it.
You can even copy this copy as much as you want.
You can even modify it as much as you want, and you can sell it as much as you want.
But you don't hold the copyright.
aaaaaaa
Bullshit. The Uniform Commercial Code and the doctrine of first sale says I own the (copy of the) software. The only thing that says I don't is a fictional, unenforceable, worthless alleged-document that isn't a valid contract because (a) it's a contract of adhesion presented after the sale is complete and (b) offers me no consideration since I already have the right to do everything it's offering me by virtue of having already bought the software.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As long as stores say "Buy now", I'm buying it and I own it. If they want to license it, they have to say that.
Words have meaning.
What I want to know is, how do I get Microsoft to compensate me for the time and effort of successfully preventing the upgrade, and my increased risk due to the fact that I've had to disable security updates to do so?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The Botnet operators and script kiddies thank everyone who don't upgrade with the latest security patches, or to a support OS.
Wait MS should support Windows 7 indefinitely, even if it means pulling resources from newer, better programs, systems, and updates... wait... no... F' that. As much as I find punch cards and reel-to-reel tapes to be fun, I'm thankful that old systems are abandoned as new technologies emerged.
How has this not become a class-action by now?
Shut up. You got a coupon worth $5 for any Microsoft product*. Be happy.
*Or, alternately, $0.89.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes