Windows 10: Why does Microsoft falsely claim that Windows is a service to justify abusing Windows...

"Service" vs "product" are two separate legal entities, with separate legal requirements to their advertising, what is exchanged in a point-of-sale, and the rights that come with each classification. The format of Windows 10, and what is offered in a point-of-sale exchange is in no way legally a "service", and is absolutely a product. Windows 10 is definitively a product that is able to connect to services out of the box. Windows Update, OneDrive, Microsoft Store, are all services, but Windows 10 itself is most definitely a product.


As the European Union's highest court has ruled and which no country's highest court has ever ruled to the contrary of, people own the software that they buy licenses for. They don't own the software Intellectual Property, but they do own the non-reproduceable instance for which their license is, and they alone possess all property and decision-making rights over that non-reproduceable instance of software.


The situation with software licenses is identical to purchasing a car, where you don't purchase the vehicle's IP, its brand name, its patented technology - you purchase a license to use all of those things in a non-reproduceable instance of those things. Buying physical retail goods and buying perpetual software licenses is an identical process, and the rights held by the purchaser over what they've bought, with either physical goods or software licenses, is the same.


https://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/eu-court-when-you-buy-software-you-own-it

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d1ff4369-afcc-4879-97fa-7a8afd8b3380

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120703/11345519566/eu-court-says-yes-you-can-resell-your-software-even-if-software-company-says-you-cant.shtml


To be clear, not a single country's highest court has ever ruled contrary to the European Union's highest court. So, there is no basis for Microsoft or any other company in the world to suggest anything different than what the EU's top court has ruled.


Both of these are true, and represent what is the case with perpetual software licenses (the kind that everybody with Windows 10 Home or Pro have):


This software (IP) is licensed, not sold

This software (license / instance) is sold, not leased



People with Windows 10 licenses own their Windows 10 software - not Microsoft. Microsoft must submit to its legal obligations and stop unilaterally messing with people's Windows 10 settings without permission or authorization. Microsoft is violating the law (and in many respects, as various EU privacy investigation authorities have been reporting) by resetting people's settings, and it must stop.

So, please, let us know how can we permanently disable Windows Update in our Windows 10 operating systems, which we, not Microsoft, own.



Windows 10 is NOT a service, and it never has been. It is a product that is presented and sold as a product, to be engaged as a product - one which is able to connect to services and has access to various services integrated into it, but while being, itself, a product nonetheless.

:)

 

Why does Microsoft falsely claim that Windows is a service to justify abusing Windows owners' rights?

I think that the rationale for why Microsoft is violating consumer and property laws while falsely presenting its product as a service for the sake of effectively-stealing personal and personally-identifiable user data would be an important thing to be addressed
by Microsoft to Windows owners.

Certainly, Microsoft's staff who post on this site are representatives of the company, and they explain things as they have been taught to by Microsoft. Yet, some of them are making patently-false claims, such as Windows being a service. Now, that isn't
an innocent and harmless claim, it's one which is judged by laws which determine Windows to be a product and not a service - which completely invalidates some of the actions that Microsoft are doing with Windows.

The false claims given as responses by Microsoft staff on this site must cease. And some real answers to people's questions should replace those corporate propaganda and disinformation responses meant to quell valid customer concerns without actually explaining
anything.

I also encourage you to read the lengthy second post I made, JimWynne.

 

Why does Microsoft falsely claim that Windows is a service to justify abusing Windows owners' rights?

There are no direct employees of Microsoft here, except for a rare post here and there. I read what you've posted, but mainly for the amusement value. I'm a big fan of unintentional hilarity.

 

Why does Microsoft falsely claim that Windows is a service to justify abusing Windows owners' rights?

Hi UltraViolet,

Thanks for the link to Microsoft's 'Windows as a service' documentation. I'll address it at the bottom of this post.

Now, you absolutely can purchase Windows just like the way you purchase your computer or computer components.

A license is a right to make use of something that is proprietary of someone else. All of your computer hardware is a license to ownership of an instance of their Intellectual Property, with the IP being owned by the developer or manufacturer, such as Nvidia,
AMD, Intel, etc.

Both your computer hardware and software are licensed off of their Intellectual Property, which belongs to the IP holder. in fact, every single physical mass-produced product that you purchase is a licensed instance of an Intellectual Property.

So, in both the case of your computer hardware and your software you are not purchasing the IP, but a right to an instance of the IP - which, in the case of computer hardware is your specific physical instance of the hardware IP, and in the case of the software
is your specific non-reproduceable instance of the software IP.

When you buy a physical product, the IP holder doesn't really need to make you aware that you aren't allowed to mass-produce and sell their IP, since that's not an easy thing to do with physical products, anyway. However, there are still copyright symbols
and legal wording in the packaging of many, maybe practically-all physical products.

The Windows 10 EULA itself shows that you own your specific instance of the software IP just as you own the specific instances of your clothes, your computer hardware, your car, your TV, etc. See this excerpt from the Windows 10 EULA for demonstration:

--------------------------------------------

2. Installation and Use Rights.

a. License. The software is licensed, not sold. Under this agreement, we grant you the right to install and run one instance of the software on your device (the licensed device), for use by one person at a time, so long as you comply with all the terms of this
agreement. Updating or upgrading from non-genuine software with software from Microsoft or authorized sources does not make your original version or the updated/upgraded version genuine, and in that situation, you do not have a license to use the software.

--------------------------------------------

Notice the specific usage of "the software": Microsoft's EULA grant the purchaser the *right* to an *instance* *of* "the software", and therefore the instance is not "the software" itself which the EULA refers to, despite the instance itself also being software.

This is a matter of semantics:

This software (Intellectual Property) is licensed, not sold

This software (license / instance) is sold, not licensed or leased

The instance in Microsoft's EULA phrasing is *of* the Windows I.P., and so therefore "the software" in Microsoft's phrasing is the Windows I.P.. And Microsoft's EULA states that the owner of the license has the right to one (software) instance of "the software",
which is the I.P..

Nowhere does the EULA claim that people don't own their (software) instance of "the software". Instead, the EULA says that the purchaser of the license / instance has a right to that instance.

And this is an EULA for a "perpetual license", which means that it never expires. The license represents a permanent instance of Windows, which the purchaser holds BY RIGHT - as acknowledged in Microsoft's EULA.

In other words, the owner of a Windows license owns a non-exhaustible, non-reproduceable, all-encompassing instance of Windows.

If Microsoft or any other individual, company, or corporation ever claimed that people don't own their non-reproduceable instance of the software they've purchased, that claim would be false and invalid - because no individual, company, or corporation possess
the power to claim that people don't own the software that they've purchased licenses for. Such a claim would suggest the IP-holder was a thief for selling but not delivering, and the claim could risk invalidating an entire EULA.

The situation is the same with people's clothes, their TV, etc. When they purchase those things they aren't buying the I.P. for them - so they don't own their clothes (IP), their TV (IP), their computer (IP). But they do purchase instances of those things,
and so they do own their clothes (instance), their TV (instance), their computer (instance), just as they own their software (instances).

Software companies like to use the vague "this software" term to refer to the software I.P. because it confuses and misleads their customers into oftentimes assuming that they don't own their software (instance), and in doing so potentially wards off problems
and challenges arising for the publisher. However, the phrasing of the EULA, the first-sale doctrine, and consumer and property laws, as well as the EU's top court ruling on the matter all make explicitly clear that people do own the software that they purchase.

Microsoft's own Windows EULA is written to acknowledge this, and never once refers to the Windows license (right to an instance of the IP), or the owned Windows instance (a product), as a service. "Windows as a service" doesn't refer to the licenses Microsoft
is selling, and so doesn't refer to the instance of software that those licenses represent. "Windows as a service" is a business philosophy and ideology that doesn't and cannot influence Windows owners' rights over their own Windows OS.

So, when people on these forums ask why Microsoft is over-riding their custom configuration of their personally-owned OS, 'because Windows is a service' is not an applicable answer, because the legal identity of people's Windows licenses and instances is
as a product.

Thanks for the link to Microsoft's 'Windows as a service' documentation. It appears to not mean that Windows instances are a service (and they're not, they're products), but that Microsoft has a build work and release flow that it views as service-like.
So, Microsoft's internal philosophy does not answer why people are being frustrated by Microsoft in their efforts to configure their Windows products / instances.

Microsoft's internal work and release flow of Windows builds doesn't grant Microsoft any rights over people's owned Windows software.

So, Microsoft resetting people's settings and effectively-stealing their personal and personally-identifiable user data is not rationalized or justified by anything. And those support assistants here responding to questions with 'because Windows is a service'
are not using Microsoft's own definition of 'Windows as a service'. The Windows people buy is not a service - only Microsoft's internal work-and-release schedule is a service, for Microsoft.