Lenovo loses French lawsuit over Windows bundles

[AS]

Some good news!  

A French law states that one item cannot be tied to another when it is sold, but initially a court rejected his claims and his case. That ruling was overturned in late January in a small claims court, and Lenovo was fined and ordered to pay damages, including €120 for the software, €800 for personal damages and €1,000 for legal expenses.

"The current victory symbolizes the crumbling of hardware-software bundling in France. This means that the legal arguments in Mr. Pétrus's case can be used again in any EU country," said the campaigning web site No More Rackets.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2144392/lenovo-loses-french-lawsuit-windows-bundles

[djohnston]

That is good news. Would be even better if U.S. judges had the same values. 

[aguila]

That's really good news. Wonder what that means for Windows 8 and secure boot / UEFI.

That is good news. Would be even better if U.S. judges had the same values. 

That's right. The US are a model for many western countries and many good as well as the not so good things are adopted.

[AS]

That is good news. Would be even better if U.S. judges had the same values. 

In a globalized world this will have it's own weight ... may be not immediately ... 

[Just18]

It appears the judge made a distinction between the hardware and software because the buyer would own the hardware when it was purchased, but the software was only licenced for use .....  therefore they are two distinct parts and bundling is not allowed!

Nice one!  

[Jeddaboy]

As  a past Windy's user this is really good. I don't know how bad they are today but with XP, years ago we bought the full install disk. I was experimenting a lot, finding out more and more about hardware as time went on. Believe me, just a few hardware changes and sure enough you would get the "due to the amount of changes on the system this copy of Mic-----t must be reactivated for continued use"!!!!!!!!!!!!! Man it used to peeve me off !! I was dual booting by this stage, finding out the best hardware for Linux so     a few changes. Boot back into Windy and the same thing.
It really felt to me that if you had IT installed, they took over control of your whole computer and every thing you did with it, an invasion!!
Thank so much for Linux, and still my favorite by a mile PCLinuxOS. The sooner this flows on around the globe the better. Bring it down under asap and some good politicians to go with it. Happy computing. Cheers all, Wayne.

[djohnston]

Believe me, just a few hardware changes and sure enough you would get the "due to the amount of changes on the system this copy of Mic-----t must be reactivated for continued use"!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe you. Been there, done that. Have had to call the "reactivation" center more times than I can count.

[arkanabar]

from the Win7 Home Premium OEM ToolKit EULA on my Dell Lappy (c:\WINDOWS\System32\license.rtf)

1b.  License Model. The software is licensed on a per copy per computer basis. A computer is a physical hardware system with an internal storage device capable of running the software. A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a separate computer. ...

2a.  One Copy per Computer. The software license is permanently assigned to the computer with which the software is distributed. That computer is the “licensed computer.”

2b.  Licensed Computer. You may use the software on up to two processors on the licensed computer at one time. Unless otherwise provided in these license terms, you may not use the software on any other computer. ...

In other words, I don't have a license to use the software on another machine if this one dies.  And Win7 itself can't use more than half of my processors.  The others either sit idle or run other software, if that doesn't count as running Win7 too somehow.

Section 3, "ADDITIONAL LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND/OR RIGHTS" has some really wacky stuff limiting the use of included artwork, icons & fonts.  Section 7a has DRM software rules -- you have to let them download the DRM revocation lists as part of software updates content may require, and you have to let it cripple the players when you're playing content from the list.  Section 8 is probably the most egregiously awful:

8.   SCOPE OF LICENSE.
The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the features included in the software edition you licensed. The manufacturer or installer and Microsoft reserve all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. You may not

·   work around any technical limitations in the software;
·   reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
·   use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;
·   make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
·   publish the software for others to copy;
·   rent, lease or lend the software; or
·   use the software for commercial software hosting services.

In other words, if it's broke, and we don't wanna fix it, that's just too bad for you.

I put the whole thing in a pastebin.