Software Farce and Fraud
Ablang
11.07.08
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2336572,00.asp
Software licenses are an out-and-out scam. It's allpart of a game the
consumer can never win as longas the consumer keeps tolerating the
situation.
by John C. Dvorak
There oughta be a law against both software activation and bizarre end-
user licensing agreements (EULAs), which are ridiculously onerous and
are written solely to protect the vendor from any obligation
whatsoever and, essentially, to tell customers that they are idiots
and can go screw themselves if anything goes wrong.
Whatever happened to the consumer-protection movement? It was taken
over by the "screw the consumer" movement while state legislatures,
courts, Congress, government agencies, and others cheered along.
This is the state of affairs in general. A lot of people like to blame
it on deregulation, but I personally don't see how any of these
problems has much to do with regulation, except antitrust regulation—
and nobody does anything about that except to raise the flag of
globalization and say that bigger is necessary to compete on a global
scale. What a farce! What does allowing what were regional Bell
operating phone companies such as Pac Bell to be all bought up and
returned to AT&T have to do with global anything?
The problem is that these monopolies are not designed to compete
globally (find me an AT&T service in Germany) but to gouge the
American customer with overpriced no-real-alternatives shoddy service
and crappy products. There is nobody to complain to if you have a
problem, and you get the runaround if you do find someone to complain
to. Worse, with monopolistic phone companies and banks, you're hit
with endless bogus charges, and there's no law enforcement agency
willing to do anything about what is obvious fraud.
In the tech sector there has never been any resistance to a company's
buying the competition, unless there was some sort of political
motivation to stop it. By that I mean the company involved was not
coughing up enough cash money in donations to congressmen. Let's be
real about this. If you look into campaign contributions, many of them
make no sense except as a payoff.
Microsoft was in this boat and ended up in an antitrust suit. Then
later, when it tried to buy Intuit, the deal was nixed. Since then the
company has played ball and buys whatever it wants.
The worst part of this situation is that these buyouts and mergers
have been institutionalized and encouraged with the implementation of
Sarbanes-Oxley, which makes it impossible for a little company to go
public to get some operating capital. So big companies buy the
competition and get bigger and bigger to the point where only a few
monopolies exist. We end up with a mess in which nobody benefits but
some billionaire executives.
And, of course, with a monopoly there is less choice, and the customer
can be treated like dirt—as is shown by EULAs that tell the user to
pound salt. Boil down any EULA and here is how it reads: "We are under
no obligation to do anything, ever, and you agree to not sue us or
complain under any circumstances or else you cannot legally use our
software. The software is for use on only one machine by one person,
ever, and cannot be resold. If the software does not work, that is not
our responsibility either." And the courts in this country are fine
with this sort of thing since, according to them, it is a binding
contract.
Like you had a choice? Who are we kidding with this bullcrap? This
practice is an out-and-out scam. When will a sharp lawyer come forward
and destroy this idiotic fake contract mechanism?
Software activation is another horrid idea that inconveniences the
user to an extreme. It exists only because there is not enough
competition in the market. The fact is, this is nothing more than the
modern version of copy protection that began with special formatted
floppy disks and dongles. Software activation is an online dongle. A
dongle in the cloud, as it were. And it craps out a lot.
There are literally thousands of people who complain about activation
failures. Hours, even days, are lost to fixing these problems. Often
the "fix" is botched by the cheap worker in Mumbai who cannot follow
the instructions given to him in a binder filled with customer-service
scripts. In a normal society, where there is some notion of consumer
protection, you could sue the software company for your lost time and
aggravation. But not in America, because the "contract" says you
cannot sue the software company ever.
Linux and the open-source products under its umbrella are the only
possible hope we have to move things in a different direction. But
since all the forces of government are openly promoting monopolies,
where the companies get bought by competitors to get rid of
competition, things will only get worse. It's all a game the consumer
can never win as long as the consumer keeps tolerating the situation
without complaint.
I don't see that changing anytime soon.