Class Action Lawsuit Launched Over Forced Windows 10 Upgrades (courthousenews.com)

Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes The Register: Three people in Illinois have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming that its Windows 10 update destroyed their data and damaged their computers. The complaint, filed in Chicago's U.S. District Court on Thursday, charges that Microsoft Windows 10 [installer] is a defective product, and that its maker failed to provide adequate warning about the potential risks posed by Windows 10 installation -- specifically system stability and data loss... The attorneys representing the trio are seeking to have the case certified as a class action that includes every person in the U.S. who upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and suffered data loss or damage to software or hardware within 30 days of installation. They claim there are hundreds or thousands of affected individuals.
Microsoft responded that they'd offered free customer service and other support options for "the upgrade experience," adding "We believe the plaintiffs' claims are without merit." But the complaint argues Windows 10's installer "does not check the condition of the PC and whether or not the hard drive can withstand the stress of the Windows 10 installation," according to Courthouse News, which adds that the lead plaintiff "says her hard drive failed after Windows 10 installed without her express approval, and she had to buy a new computer."

Comments

Re:Wow

[Gravis Zero]

I haven't seen a Windows upgrade (note: UPGRADE) destroy data in a meaningful way in.....I don't even know how long.

As someone who has worked closely with NTFS, I can tell you that it's not far fetched to think that someone's NTFS partition could have been corrupted. There are no backups of the file index (unless they changed it since Win7), so if your file was fragmented and the index is lost then any file that is fragmented will be unrecoverable with the publically available automated tools. However, I can also tell you that losing the filenames and directory structure of all your data can be just as devastating as losing the files themselves.

That's a neat trick, unless they mean their IDEA of their computer rather than the physical hardware. Windows is shitty, not malicious.

If this were 20 years ago, you would be 100% right. Unfortunately, UEFI has made it entirely possible for a ill-tested operating system installer to brick your system.

Re:You don't want this to succed

[Gravis Zero]

Don't think OSS would be immune either. The argument of "but I didn't charge for it" doesn't eliminate liability.

Apparently you haven't read any open source licenses because they took care of liability a LOOONG time ago. Normally the text would be in caps but Slashdot didn't like the caps.

GPL:

in no event unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing will any copyright holder, or any other party who modifies and/or conveys the program as permitted above, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the program (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the program to operate with any other programs), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

MIT:

the software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. in no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.

BSD:

this software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. in no event shall the copyright owner or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.

Ya, and that will hold up... not

[Sycraft-fu]

Here's the deal: All proprietary software has that in there as well. Every piece of software has an EULA that says they are responsible for nothing. Have a look at the MS EULA if you wish, there's all kinds of shit that supposedly limits liability, requires arbitration, etc, etc https://www.microsoft.com/en-u....

You can say it all you like, doesn't make it true. I can write an EULA saying "By using this software you agree I get to take your first born child," and yet if I tried, I'd still go to jail because just saying it in an EULA doesn't make it so. You can't disclaim all warranties, all damages, etc by law. For some info on it look up the Uniform Commercial Code.

Ok well all that aside when it comes to an issue like this courts are not known for applying the law one way in one case, and a different way in another. They don't say "Oh we like this nice OSS" and give it one rule and "We don't like this mean commercial software" and give it another. Thus if courts find that software makers are liable for incidental data loss then it will apply to ALL software. OSS has no special get out clause. You don't get to have it both ways where OSS gets a magic liability shield just by putting something in a text document but commercial EULAs aren't worth the bits used to store them.

In fact, OSS will be MORE vulnerable. Commercial companies have lawyers to help them wrangle out of things. They also can always go the real contract route, where you sign an actual contract up front with them before buying (you see this with some enterprise software) which can enforce more stringent terms. OSS that is just distributed on the web doesn't have all that.

Re:benefit for attorney?

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of a class action is not to make every class member fully whole. It's to punish the company who harmed the class members (assuming they're found liable), while streamlining the process and not bogging down the courts with thousands of individual cases. The initial representatives of the class, who assume much greater risk/expense/effort than you do by filling out a postcard, will get a larger portion of the settlement. Their attorneys, who do all of the work and front their own time and expenses, get paid nicely for their efforts. As a side effect, you and the other eligible class members get more than you would each have received if someone else hadn't done all the work.

The point isn't to buy everyone a new computer or OS, it's to fuck over Microsoft for fucking over their customers.

Re:Wow

[Fly Swatter]

You can replace your HDD but that won't help because UEFI bootloaders are stored on your motherboard in flash memory.

Secure boot signatures maybe, but the bootloaders are in the EFI disk partition, at least for me:

/dev/sdb2 923648 1128447 204800 100M EFI System

If the bios does not allow initializing a new blank disk, then that is between you and your vendor.