| gabriel rosenkoetter on Wed, 24 Apr 2002 14:36:15 -0400 |
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On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 02:21:37PM -0400, Fred K Ollinger wrote: > 2. license to use sw? Probably not. If you lose cd and you format c: do > you get a copy sent to you from MS? I never heard of this happening, but > it _could_ be true. They'd probably send you another CD if you made enough of a fuss (and had your paper license key and all, and it was registered), but they'd probably (over)charge for the materials of the new CD. (Incidentally, I *know* that Apple will do this.) If you blew away Windows, but then decided you wanted it back and installed from a friend's CD (or even made a copy of his CD) you might be okay, provided that it'd accept your CD key. (I'm pretty sure it will, though; there's no way that companies buy a new Windows CD with every PC, rather they just buy licenses.) In any case, I'm pretty sure you'd be okay *legally*. > So what did you buy? Not much. Which is rather the point of all the public bitching about software licensing absurdities these days (read /. much?). I think you're sort of preaching to the choir here, though... > Can you format c: and send stuff back and get money back? No? Why not? Yes, actually. People have done that. (Though newer EULAs may have been changed so that the loophole's not there any more.) Keep in mind that when you do this you're screwing the vendor (since they're obligated to pay MS regardless of whether or not they ship Windows on a given machine, and their licensing doesn't allow for returns), rather than MS, though. > Also, MS doesn't deal w/ people, but oems. So if you pirate MS sw you > bought from oem, does oem come after you. Why does MS? They didn't sell > you anything. B/c of this, you can't make an agreement w/ them. So you > aren't bound by anything. Or are you. Erm... OEMs are special as far as this goes, I think. They're passing product to the consumer, not selling original product. But IANAL (and don't want to be). > I suggest a class action lawsuit against MS to straighten out what is > actually going on. Yeah, that'd work. Publicity steering the public away from getting hosed down by MS is about all you can do without losing a lot of money to no purpose. It's a slow process. > It seems to me that MS wants to have things both ways, not to sell > anything, but to control that thing that they did not sell. Well, of course, and make lots of money off of selling you nothing. That's something of a capitalistic dream, is it not? -- gabriel rosenkoetter gr@eclipsed.net Attachment:
pgpYBJbWME8aT.pgp
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