I believe the EU has different cost/benefit tradeoffs, but they're still not something to be done casually or easily by a consumer at this scale of damage. Is the EU actually any better for this sort of case, though? In practice, not just in theory? Very asymmetrical advantage for the companies to hit people like this at some scale. Computers make it so much easier to do this kind of thing on the company's side, but they don't help anyone trying to fight it anywhere near as much. By the time you bust through their contract clauses against class action and even find everyone affected you've long since eaten up any value you're going to get from the lawsuit even if you win big and win punitive damages. 01% of several million people to the tune of several hundred dollars, or bones its entire customer base for $1 or something. The legal system, US, EU, or otherwise, doesn't have a good answer to when a company bones.
Plus a lot of people simply assume there's no recourse even when there in fact is ("the US is an anarchist wonderland where consumers have no protections at all" is a harmful and false meme, what we have is the widespread assumption that consumers have no protections), and of those who don't, who really wants to spend a ton of time in any sort of legal or arbitration resolution over 40 books, which almost certainly total far less than any possible legal or arbitration battle will cost?
The companies stick them in the license clauses anyhow, because when you can just stick a severability clause in there, why not grab things willy-nilly? My suggestion is to make that effectively law, so that not just microsoft (who stand to lose from this action) would actually consider it a-priori.Īs is often the case, a lot of these things are either illegal in the US too, or far less settled than the companies would have you believe. Either way, it's clear that for Microsoft, the public relation + court costs outweighed the refund cost. I suspect if Microsoft got to court without a refund, court would have ordered them to refund or give a DRM-free copy. So far, companies like Microsoft who shut down their DRM services have refunded those purchases Companies that folded did not. Try to pay someone salary, subject to the limitation that it is in negative dollars, and see how far that gets you in court. Words have a meaning that cannot just be redefined at will with legalese.
If Amazon folds, how come my "purchased" video disappears with it? There is a law of the land, and it is not overriden by an amazon webpage in general, even if it does in some US states.
PS3 updates that removed Linux abilities - I'm sure the weasel legalese originally said Sony is allowed to do that. Courts in Europe have ordered refunds for e.g. That has a well defined meaning, which contract weasel words can't change. The "terms of use" limitation does not say "until we go bankrupt" or "until we decide to not let you for business reasons", and it does say "purchased videos".