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amlutotoday at 12:07 AM2 repliesview on HN

IMO it would be better if there was a general mechanism to prevent profiting from corrupt business practices. For example, a court could determine how much money Microsoft made by selling perpetual licenses that turned out to be a lie, add interest, add a 50% penalty, and require Microsoft to pay all of that into a trust to be collected by any customers harmed.

The point would not be so much to help the customers but to cause the actual cost to Microsoft to be sufficiently high as to disincentivize corrupt behavior.


Replies

wmftoday at 12:15 AM

The general mechanism is lawsuits; in this case class action lawsuits.

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anigbrowltoday at 12:55 AM

You can do class action litigation, but that takes years and the lawyers collect 30-50% of any settlement. The economics for customers don't make sense.

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