{"id":4824,"date":"2014-09-14T06:50:16","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T06:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=4824"},"modified":"2014-09-14T06:51:19","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T06:51:19","slug":"italy-court-of-cassation-rules-against-windows-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=4824","title":{"rendered":"Italy: Court of Cassation rules against &#8220;Windows Tax&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2014\/09\/broken_windows-150x130.jpg\" alt=\"broken Windows\" width=\"150\" height=\"130\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-4825\" \/>Italy&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.repubblica.it\/tecnologia\/2014\/09\/11\/news\/hp_perde_causa_il_software_preinstallato_indesiderato_rimborsabile-95533181\/\">La Repubblica reported<\/a> on Friday that the country&#8217;s Court of Cassation has ruled that anyone who buys a computer with pre-installed software and does not accept the terms of the licence when the computer is first booted up is entitled to a refund. The case involved was that of a Florentine consumer who&#8217;d bought a laptop with the Windows operating system pre-installed.<\/p>\n<p>The judges criticised the practice of selling PCs with a pre-installed proprietary operating system as &#8220;a commercial policy of forced distribution&#8221;. The court described this practice as &#8220;monopolistic in tendency&#8221;. It also highlighted that the practice of bundling software (<em>affectionately known as &#8216;crapware&#8217;. Ed.<\/em>) with the operating system means that end users are forced into using additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they wanted these programs or not.<\/p>\n<p>The decision was welcomed by the <a href=\"https:\/\/fsfe.org\/\">Free Software Foundation Europe<\/a> (FSFE). &#8220;This decision is both welcome and long overdue&#8221;, said Karsten Gerloff, President of the FSFE. &#8220;No vendor should be allowed to cram non-free software down the throats of users. This practice of forced distribution needs to end. We hope that the Italian authorities will turn this ruling into a real win for consumers and ensure that computer buyers can choose their device with any operating system they want, or none.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Italy&#8217;s La Repubblica reported on Friday that the country&#8217;s Court of Cassation has ruled that anyone who buys a computer with pre-installed software and does not accept the terms of the licence when the computer is first booted up is entitled to a refund. The case involved was that of a Florentine consumer who&#8217;d bought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[19,11,23],"class_list":["post-4824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-source-software","category-tech","tag-free-software","tag-open-standards","tag-tech-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4827,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824\/revisions\/4827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}