Microsoft Software Class Action Settlement
Fantastic News if...
* you were a Canadian resident as of May 25, 2016...
* and between 1998 (dec 23) and 2010 (mar 11) you bought...
* a license for PC versions of Microsoft MS-DOS, Windows, Word, Excel, Office, Works Suite or Home Essentials software
* as a purchase for personal or business use in Canada
* on an Intel c\
ompatible PC
* (or if you purchased a PC pre-infected with Microsoft software during the class period...)
Woo Hoo! YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR COMPENSATION FROM THE MICROSOFT SETTLEMENT !!!
Up to $6.50 to $13 per Microsoft product license !!!
Up to max $250 for individual licenses
Shhhhh! No receipts are required. But don't tell anyone that!
or up to $650 for volume licenses with required documentation and jumping through hoops
From the article:
Microsoft and Microsoft Canada have agreed to pay up to $409,936,100 CAD to settle several class action lawsuits over allegations they were involved in a conspiracy to inflate the prices of certain Microsoft products.
[...] "The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft engaged in an unlawful and anti-competitive campaign that had the purpose and effect of destroying competition in the markets for Intel-compatible PC OS and office productivity applications software," according to the Microsoft class action settlement documents.
The plaintiffs accused the defendants of engaging in a variety of anticompetitive practices that allowed them to artificially raise the prices of their products. According to the Microsoft class action lawsuit, Microsoft allegedly entered into unlawful contracts with competitors, personal computer makers and independent software vendors\ since 1988.
In addition, Microsoft allegedly made false, misleading and deceptive statements to its competitors, industry participants, and to the public.
But then...
The Microsoft defendants deny any wrongdoing or liability but agreed to settle the Microsoft software class action lawsuits to avoid the burden and expense of ongoing litigation.
It is great to see justice quickly done with fair compensation paid to all who were harmed.
(what about all of the companies that were destroyed in the wake of Microsoft's monopoly?)
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday December 16 2020, @06:20AM (9 children)
and if no-one does what happens to the pot of gold?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Wednesday December 16 2020, @06:34AM
A buddy of mine filed his claim for the CD price-fixing lawsuit [wikipedia.org] back when that happened. He had about 220 CDs in his collection and a large portion of them were from that time period covered by the suit.
The RIAA agreed to pay out $67 million. They sent him $12... It was such a lowball check amount that he never even cashed it. He just kept it as a souvenir of corporate greed.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday December 16 2020, @11:34AM (2 children)
I just put in a claim for $50: the last 2 class action suits i put in for i got cheques for $20 each, so i'm guessing i'll end up with another cheque for $20...
...but SCREW MICROSOFT, so I'll cash it. Feck 'em... :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday December 16 2020, @11:07PM (1 child)
wait i thought you owned 40 individual licenses no?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday December 16 2020, @11:28PM
:)
I wish: been using linux since (Space) 1999, so just bought for my wife (she likes what she's used to because she doesn't want to learn something new even if what she's using is crap, and as she says you can't do ANYTHING with linux, but then she doesn't take the time for me to install an anti-virus, so she can't connect to the internet now without her laptop being re-directed to some Russian site or something, lol. So now she uses my linux box to surf or her Android tablet (but you can't do anything with linux...oh... android IS linux?!?? Gotta love her, but she can be frustrating at times, lol.
I put down that i had Dos, Win 3.1, Win 955, 98 and XP, i think. All true>> yes, my shame is showing. :) Wish they'd let me claim DR-Dos too...and Corel Linux....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 16 2020, @03:03PM (3 children)
If some of the settlement money is unclaimed, then Microsoft and the Lawyers will split it up when they die and take it with them into the infernal neither regions.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday December 16 2020, @03:57PM (1 child)
They will go to hell and find Bill Gates has taken over and satan is his bitch. Also everyone uses dragonfly bsd in hell.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 16 2020, @04:14PM
If they go to heaven, they get a choice of mac or linux. If they go to the other place, it is Windows.
They get Comcast in the other place. Also they get usenet, but only one newsgroup, which is comp.alt.soc.rec.sci.bin.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2020, @05:50PM
Yep, into the City of Yakima, WA.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday December 16 2020, @10:39PM
It undergoes a magical conversion, through a lawyer, or weasel-mage, whereby it is transmuted into powerful summoning spells. Hookers with a minimum +20 beauty, +20 constitution, and the ability to suck the chrome off a trailer hitch 5x/day are typical, as are large mounds of Wizard's Snuff and dried magic mushrooms.
Many weasel-mages often get together to perform these class action summons, that through the use of powerful Informercials, help hypnotize the working classes to summon the pot of gold in the first place.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Wednesday December 16 2020, @06:23AM (4 children)
As usual, big bucks for the company hoping they never get sued. Big bucks for the lawyers that file the suit. Tiny settlements for the people affected.
I propose a new class action lawsuit payout schedule: company pays 150% product price refunded to the customer, 50% to the lawyers. Right now it seems like the customer gets 5-10% product price refunded and the lawyers get 50-90% of the money.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday December 16 2020, @07:33AM (1 child)
Came to say something similar. $6.50, even USD, let alone CAD, just isn't worth the effort (even if I qualified). MS made bank. The lawyers make bank. The people from whom that money comes though, just got taken all around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2020, @05:00PM
At least it is money.
When the anti-trust investigation against Microsoft happened in the US, Microsoft gave a ton of money to the incoming Republican administration, and anti-trust was all but completely dropped once that administration took power. The settlement was that MS had to give out coupons for discounts on MS software to folks who bought a computer pre-loaded with MS software that they didn't want and didn't use. Corrupt fuckers all of them.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Wednesday December 16 2020, @09:19AM
There's an easier solution that also create a motivation for more meaningful and fair settlements: lawyers are only paid as a percentage of claimed and cashed plaintiff settlements.
Most people this is applicable for won't claim it, and of those that do many won't even bother cashing the check since it'll be for pennies. But the lawyers will walk away with what will likely be tens of millions of dollars and that will likely be the lions share of what Microsoft ends up having to pay out. Making class action legal cost payments directly contingent upon the amount of claimed and cashed payments would solve this problem by making sure the lawyers are fighting for the plaintiffs and not for themselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday December 16 2020, @11:49AM
I don't really have a problem with the big payout for lawyers because the intent for class-action lawsuits is to incentivise someone to bring a suit and punish the perpetrator when the harm to any given individual is too low to be worth taking to court. If you think that you suffered tens of thousands of dollars of damages, you can opt out of the class and bring a separate suit that refers to the class action as precedent and have a good chance of winning. If you think you're owed a hundred dollars, it's probably not worth it.
The problem with paying the lawyers like this is that they get a pretty big payday even for fairly small individual payouts so they don't have an incentive to argue for a penalty that's proportionate to the damages. Ideally, you'd want to make the lawyer's payout half of the amount by which the payout was greater than the larger out of the profit the company made from the illegal behaviour or the actual damages suffered by the class. If a company does something that costs a million people $10 and makes them $100m in extra profit then the class action payout would have to be $100,000,001 for the lawyers to see even $1 of payment. That gives them a really good incentive not to accept a settlement that the company can rack up as the cost of doing business.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 16 2020, @07:22AM (11 children)
I'm somewhat bitter, so I can't agree with that "fantastic".
What would be fantastic is, that .4 billion were quadrupled, or more. AND, every nation on earth were to get a similar payout. Justice will not be done, until Microsoft is cut off at the knees, and the elbows.
What might Word Perfect be worth today, if MS hadn't shafted them, and every other office production company? And, what about Digital Research, who perfected the disk access that Microsoft needed to make Win9x work?
Can't complain too much about Windows itself, since the guy who created it seems to have willingly sold the rights. But all the REST of Bill Gates' evil will go unpunished in this world. I always want to barf when people hold Gates up as a "successful" businessman. He is the Donald Trump of the tech world.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2020, @07:35AM
"Donald Trump of the tech world."
Explains the wokes' love of Apple.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday December 16 2020, @11:41AM (1 child)
I'm bitter about them forcing Corel to discontinue Corel Linux... it was very nice.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday December 16 2020, @03:18PM
When SCO sued IBM in Mar 2003 over supposed "copyright" violations in Linux, Microsoft suddenly found some need to purchase a license from SCO, which was really just an excuse to inject about $16 million into SCO to help fund their baseless lawsuit.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday December 16 2020, @03:16PM (3 children)
Don't be bitter. Become cynical and sarcastic instead. Doesn't your sarcasm detector upchuck when you read the word "fantastic" ?
You mention several companies Microsoft harmed or destroyed. I would also mention Stacker Electronics and MS-DOS 6.
DOS (4.0) ain't done until Lotus won't run.
Tweaking Windows to deliberately NOT work on DR-DOS.
Netscape. Spyglass. OS/2.
Attempting to corrupt Java's write once run anywhere, which ended up costing Microsoft $1.2 billion for violating the clear license terms.
9 Companies Microsoft Devoured or Sued Into Oblivion [pcmag.com]
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 16 2020, @03:25PM (1 child)
Dr. DOs, and then Novell DOS, as well as Novell Office, were killed off by poor distribution channels and a pricing scheme that made it not worth it. As well as poor interaction with the various programs. Same with Borland and their attempt at an office suite.
As for Java, at that time it was too slow for anyone to give a damn anyway.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 16 2020, @04:11PM
At that time, Microsoft thought it important enough to include the bloat of Java into the bloat of Windows.
Trying to destroy the WORA (write once run anywhere) was just icing for Microsoft.
After having to pay $1.2 Billion to Sun and no longer include Java, it was still so important to have "Java" that Microsoft cloned Java giving the world C# and .NET. Today, all these years later, most enterprise business software is in Java, and second to that is C# and .NET. Microsoft understood something few on SN have a clue about.
All of this vertical market software is an invisible thing that makes the world go around. There are specialized software packages for almost every sort of business. Your doctor uses a special purpose application. Your lawyer. Baker. Cabinet maker (yes, really). City utility billing. Hotels and hospitality. Restaurants. And much more. The far flung parts of my employer make some of these.
This kind of software is the bulk of software development, service and support. It's not sexy. It doesn't get much attention on places like SN. It's as boring as COBOL. The there is an actual reason why languages like Java are very popular in this business. Microsoft understood that.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:04AM
I've met people who used Windows on DR Dos, and it worked fine.
What Microsoft tweaked was the Windows installer. Hidden in self-modifying code was a test for DR Dos and an ensuing warning that it might not be compatible.
But it was.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 16 2020, @03:16PM (3 children)
Ruining your main product is always going to have a reverse halo effect.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 16 2020, @06:26PM (1 child)
From my post:
Forget WP if you don't like WP. Would you care to address my real observation? MS built then exploited a monopolistic position against any and all competitors.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 16 2020, @10:23PM
Same as CorelDraw. Copeland was caught inflating revenue figures by stuffing the channel with extra shipments that distributors hadn't ordered, booking the revenue as sales, thus juicing the stock price. Totally illegal. He also got financially addicted to the revenue from annual upgrades to CorelDraw, leading later versions to be buggy. It also pissed off users who said to themselves that they'd be fine skipping an upgrade or two, costing sales long-term.
Too many companies pulled the same crap, as well as making too many versions (Standard, Professional, Enterprise - Borland, I'm looking at you for this shit).
Also, Windows software ran fine on OS/2. Don't know where you got that from. It was the preferred platform for Windows software development for Computer Associates, since Windows crashed too much.
WordPerfect was slow out of the gate with WordPerfect 6 for Windows. That pretty much let Microsoft take away plenty of their customers. Bad management or underfunded R and D, take your pick, but they tried to ride the DOS pony one cycle too many.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:05AM
I bought the Linux version of WordPerfect. The installer tried to write on the installation CD and would not continue when that failed.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Wednesday December 16 2020, @04:04PM (1 child)
It was actually fascinating to go back though my computing history, from MS-DOS, through many versions of Windows. Sadly we still run Office 97 on our Windows boxes, so no big payout on that side.
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 16 2020, @05:38PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday December 16 2020, @05:06PM
I was like, hmm..., interesting, but the very first thing was a "...if you were a Canadian resident...".
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2020, @08:06PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:45AM
Okay then, I bought 4380 individual Microsoft licenses between 1998 and 2010. I used to buy one per day. Yes your Honor, that's how much I like Microsoft product.