Is Microsoft breaking any laws by forcing upgrades to windows 10? For a while, now users of older versions of Windows have been seeing frequent prompts to upgrade to Windows 10, and many users have been rejecting the offer. Now those computers have begun to automatically upgrade themselves to Windows 10 against the wishes of their owners. This strikes me as a clear case of the common understanding of unauthorized access, but I don't know if it meets the legal criteria for unauthorized access. Is Microsoft breaking any laws by forcing computer owners to upgrade to Windows 10 against their will? I'm in the U.S.A., so I'm primarily interested in U.S. law but curious about other jurisdictions. Some related articles: Microsoft Denies That It Has Made The Windows 10 Upgrade Impossible To Block Don’t blink, or your PC might upgrade itself to Windows 10 Microsoft’s Windows 10 push comes to shove for some angry users
You asked about other jurisdictions. As you'll probably be aware (from cases like EU vs Microsoft and EU vs Google) European countries and culture tend to have much stronger protection laws for consumer and employee rights than the US does. In the UK you could make a strong case, although such cases are not often undertaken. The current legislation is Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, but the unfair contract terms clause goes back to at least the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. Basically the law protects a person in a situation where disparity of size and bargaining power have led to unfair terms in a contract (typically a large company offering "take it or leave it" standard terms) - and specifically if they create a significant disparity in the parties rights and obligations. In such a situation the company which drafted the terms alleged to be unfair must show they are reasonable. A list of common terms likely to be seen as unfair is provided. (Employment terms are covered by other laws but also aim to prevent abuses due to inequality of contracting power) A company which sold a product like Windows 7/8/8.1 and then later said "we are changing our terms of support and forcing you to upgrade" (especially to a different product the user may not want, or a product that is maintained in a different way),would almost certainly be at substantial risk of falling foul of this. It wouldn't matter if it was done by not providing the support/patches as originally implied (by custom or normal expectation) or as agreed in an explicit statement of support life cycle, or by saying "we have the right under the contract to do this", or by forcing what is essentially a change of product to get the updates. It also wouldnt matter how big they are, nor whether or not the user had already agreed "because I felt I had no choice". The law is there specifically to protect against abuses like this, so it is drafted to catch companies who try to find "wriggle room".
You haven't specified a jurisdiction. In the United Kingdom† this is a clear violation of section 3 of The Computer Misuse Act 1990 (1) A person is guilty of an offence if— &nbsp; &nbsp; (a) he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer; &nbsp; &nbsp; (b) at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and &nbsp; &nbsp; (c) either subsection (2) or subsection (3) below applies. (2) This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the act— &nbsp; &nbsp; (a) to impair the operation of any computer; &nbsp; &nbsp; (b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; [F2or] &nbsp; &nbsp; (c) to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data; [F3or &nbsp; &nbsp; (d) to enable any of the things mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c) above to be done.]] Deleting the data is unauthorized (3.1.a) The ethical hacker knows it is unauthorized (3.1.b) Deleting the data prevents access to the data (3.2.b and hence 3.1.c) † This is one of the few Acts that apply to the whole of the UK.
A web site that is serious on protecting some content behind a paywall will put the protected content, or a version of the page with both protected and unprotected content, on separate page or pages, so arranged that a user will not be able to follow the link until that user has signed in and been accepted as an authorized user. A site that merely uses CSS to hide "protected" content is not really protecting it. CSS is designed to be modified by the ultimate user -- that is part of its function. If the site chooses to send you content, you are entitled to read it. Even if some of the content has a CSS tag attached which suppresses or obscures the display of that content, they know perfectly well that any user can supersede this with local CSS, and so I don't see how they have any legal claim, nor any way of knowing if you have accessed the "hidden" content or not. If you attempt to bypass or hack a login screen, that might be circumvention under the US DMCA, or "Unauthorized computer access" under any of several laws.
General The legal discussion hinges on the question whether the concept of copyright exhaustion applies to software. (The linked article also discusses the Court of Justice of the European Union ruling mentioned below in the EU part of this answer.) Copyright exhaustion, in simple terms, allows certain uses (like the ones in your scenarios) of copyrighted (books) or patented (e.g. devices) items for which the copyright or patent holder has the right to first sale. If and when that principle applies, the original seller cannot control further sales or other uses of that particular specimen. Their copyright is &quot;exhausted&quot; with the first sale. Situation in India I want to emphasize that I have exactly zero experience regarding India in any way. All I did was that I went to the google. It appears that the Indian Supreme Court recently ruled in Engineering Analysis Centre for Excellence Pvt. Ltd. v. CIT that the typical EULAs are valid. In particular, copyright exhaustion does not apply and the EULA can restrict re-selling and similar actions. The case is discussed in this article, including relevant quotes. This would make everything illegal which is forbidden by an EULA. As I read the EULA, creating a backup copy is allowed, as is restoring Windows from it, obviously; whether that has to happen on the same computer is unclear to me and may depend on the license type (OEM vs. standalone), although I have two remarks: Microsoft is the copyright owner; if they provide you with a license (for example because you called them after you re-installed Windows from a backup copy, and the internet license process didn't work) without you making false claims it is their prerogative. You are good. What constitutes a different computer? The SSD? The case? The mouse? We do have a case of the Ship of Theseus, or here for a funnier take: How much can you change before it becomes a different machine? The answer: Call Microsoft and find out. Situation in the EU The situation in the EU is fundamentally different from the one depicted with a misguided metaphor in the accepted answer. In Europe, all of your scenarios are legal. In July 2012, the European Court of Justice ruled in favor of the company usedSoft who is a license reseller. (I'm writing this text on a machine with a Windows license that cost me, together with a Microsoft Office Professional license, 30 Euros, from this store.) The title of the Court's press release couldn't be clearer: An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet Not only can you re-install the software, provided it is the only installation, on the same or a different computer; you can even sell it. You can even sell OEM and bulk licenses. The full text of the decision can be found here. The court stressed that it doesn't make a difference whether the software was originally provided on a physical carrier like a DVD or as a download. Crucially, the seller is obligated to continue providing downloads and updates for the re-sold licensed software as if it were still owned by the first buyer. There is no legal difference between software provided on a physical medium or as a download. To quote the decision: 80 Since the copyright holder cannot object to the resale of a copy of a computer program for which that rightholder’s distribution right is exhausted under Article 4(2) of Directive 2009/24, it must be concluded that a second acquirer of that copy and any subsequent acquirer are ‘lawful acquirers’ of it within the meaning of Article 5(1) of Directive 2009/24. 81 Consequently, in the event of a resale of the copy of the computer program by the first acquirer, the new acquirer will be able, in accordance with Article 5(1) of Directive 2009/24, to download onto his computer the copy sold to him by the first acquirer. Such a download must be regarded as a reproduction of a computer program that is necessary to enable the new acquirer to use the program in accordance with its intended purpose. The court also examines the problem of how to prevent abuse of this permission for online copies (as opposed to physical media) and finds no substantial obstacles here. &quot;79 As Oracle rightly observes, ascertaining whether such a copy has been made unusable may prove difficult. However, a copyright holder who distributes copies of a computer program on a material medium such as a CD‑ROM or DVD is faced with the same problem, since it is only with great difficulty that he can make sure that the original acquirer has not made copies of the program which he will continue to use after selling his material medium. To solve that problem, it is permissible for the distributor — whether ‘classic’ or ‘digital’ — to make use of technical protective measures such as product keys. It seems noteworthy to me that the general question of how to prevent illegal copies is only loosely related to the question of reselling anyway. Even if it were illegal to resell, the seller's problem with illegal copies would not disappear. (It might be somewhat easier to enforce by &quot;dongling&quot; it to a specific hardware and not allow any re-installation whatsoever, but mainstream software producers don't appear to do that, generally.) Lastly it is noteworthy that the original seller may strong-arm the original buyer into signing an EULA that expressly forbids reselling; those restrictions are simply null and void in the EU.1 1 The German EULA of Microsoft Windows does not forbid reselling. The EULA for MS Office has restrictions concerning transfer to third parties in point 3 but notes that those are not applicable if the software was bought in the EU or EFTA and the transfer is inside that region.
The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.
It is not a crime or a tort to accidentally sign in to an email provider with an incorrect email address, even if that address is actually held by some other person. Not attempting to enter a password or repeat the attempt makes it clear there was no intent to obtain unauthorized access, and the emails make that even more clear.
Is it illegal to ask a company for money in exchange for information on a bug in their software/website? That in itself is legal. Indeed, the company would incur unjust enrichment if it coerced you to disclose your discovery for free. Only if you threatened the company to divulge to others your discovery unless the company pays you, it would be illegal and trigger charges such as extortion (likewise, legislations outlaw the unjustified delivery of programs or instructions for hacking a software/network/etc., although this goes beyond your actual question). Can the company take legal action against me? That seems doubtful, futile, and it could backfire (please note I have not done any research on legal precedents about this). Although the terms and conditions of the website or the End User License Agreement (EULA) of software might prohibit you to reverse engineer (RE)/decompile/etc. the application, anti-RE clauses are unenforceable and the remedies therefor are indeterminate because the sole act of conducting reverse engineering does not subject the company (or third parties) to any losses. The company's decision to take legal action for your discovery could backfire from two standpoints. First, it calls attention to the fact that the software at issue is defective and unsafe. And second, the bug is likely to be detected by someone else anyway, thereby potentially compromising customers' systems.
are there any safeguards you could take to preemptively block such behavior, such as a disclaimer inside the book cover that reads something like The safeguard you outline would be overridden as soon as the author enters any contract that requires assignment of copyright. (I would not delve in the differences between licensing and copyright assignment because that hypothetical author is dealing with a contract of adhesion which readily requires assignment; the author has no option to change the ToS to allow for licensing only) Under contract law, one of the essential prerequisites is that the conditions of a contract be entered knowingly and willfully. By deliberately clicking on a ToS page to move forward with the uploading a copyrighted work, the author is signaling his awareness and acceptance of the ToS. The fact that the author chose not to read the ToS is irrelevant and very unlikely to strike whatever entitlements the website owner formulated in the accepted ToS. For the same reason, the author's safeguard disclaimer does not bind the website owner: It cannot be said that the website owner was aware of that disclaimer at the time of the formation of contract between the author and the website owner. That is, the website owner did not knowingly and willfully accepted the author's safeguard. The website owner is not even expected to know about any safeguards which one of its potential user intends to establish. The length of a ToS document is also irrelevant because the website owner has the valid argument that "the user-author could have skimmed through the ToS or do a search (via Control-Find) of keywords such as 'copyright' or 'property', whence any allegation of 'inadvertent' assignment of copyright is untenable". Is there a way to protect your IP from inadvertently being licensed/stolen/assigned via TOS "agreements", without having to waste your life reading huge one-sided online "contracts" that are "subject to change without notice" anyway? Yes. That consists of not uploading one's works in such platforms. In contract law that would be expressed as "declining an exchange of considerations". There are many other alternatives for an author to promote his work without being required to assign copyright.