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Western Digital loses class action lawsuit
Posted: 2006-07-06 05:35pm
by Pu-239
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3072
Wonder how they lost this one- it even says on the box that the manufacturer defines gigabyte as 10^9 instead of 1024^3 .
Plus all we get is useless backup software "valued at 30$", while the lawyers make off w/ money
(well, that's usually true in every class action suit but eh).
Posted: 2006-07-06 05:51pm
by Arthur_Tuxedo
I'm glad, personally. Been getting tired of the large gaps between claimed storage capacity and actual. I'd rather not have to divide by 1.024 to figure out what I'm actually getting while I look at hard drives, thank you very much.
The court must have figured that telling the consumer on the box that you're being a duplicitous cockstain isn't as good as not being one, and I agree with them.
Posted: 2006-07-06 06:24pm
by Lancer
Heh, replies/comments from the link got derailed into a "ZOMG t3H Fr0gG13S!!!(shift+101)".
I predict that next we'll be seeing a class-action lawsuit from the SI trying to enforce their definition of a gigabyte over upstart programmers and electrical/computer engineers all over the world...
Posted: 2006-07-06 07:27pm
by Vendetta
Legally they've done nothing wrong. The drives they were selling had the exact capacity they were advertising.
The only way to argue that it is deceptive practise is to rely on the expectations people have of a "gigabyte" being 2^30 bytes not 10^9, even if they are actually wrong.
Posted: 2006-07-06 08:11pm
by Arthur_Tuxedo
The real point is that consumers are better off when what they know as a gigabyte is on the box, and not some alternate definition that's only being used because it makes the drive look better than it actually is. It might be technically correct, but it's still deceptive marketing.
Posted: 2006-07-06 08:30pm
by Pu-239
Um, just to make it clear, I was rolling my eyes at the fact that they've done nothing wrong (as I believe most HDD manufacturers WD included define GB on the box) and lost anyway
.
Posted: 2006-07-09 04:26pm
by Spyder
I never really though the diminished HD capacity was that big a deal. Hard disk manufacturers have been quoting their capacity in bytes since they first appeared on the market and haven't had any requirement to change. While I agree that it would be better if they quoted capacity in 1024^3, that should have been made a written requirement before any action was taken.
And that's a really pathetic settlement.
Posted: 2006-07-09 05:14pm
by PrinceofLowLight
Destructionator XIII wrote:The IEEE in fact did create a new unit to avoid confusion of this sort, called the kibibyte (KiB) (see IEEE 1541).
A gigabyte is 10^9 bytes (and the length of a byte is actually variable too). A gibibyte, the unit they should be using, is 2^30 bytes.
They are not lying about the capacity, just using the proper definition. I don't think the company is wrong in this way (though I do agree that the useless software bundled is bullshit).
The question goes to what their intentions were behind using a standard other than the most common definition of a gigabyte that the average consumer is aware of. Was this a product specifically for IT people who would be better acquainted with their definition? Or was it an attempt to mislead the average consumer into thinking they were getting a better product than they actually were? The latter seems much, much more likely.