I'm all for capitalism and making money, but this is just wrong. Sure you can say, well people are dumb enough! Yeah, most people are dumb, but that doesn't mean you go ripping them off.

I think this a problem that people have - they (somehow) equate corruption/taking advantage of people/kickbacks with "capitalism". This is not the case - I've spent some a bit of time in more socialist and communist countries, and these things seem to happen even more there. People trying to take advantage of others happens regardless of economic or political systems.

Protection against corruption/taking advantage is built in. Don't like it? Don't buy it.

There is such a thing as an immoral yet free transaction.

The point was that this interaction wasn't a feature of "capitalism" - it wasn't a free and honest exchange. The seller here was pretty clearly trying to deceive and cheat people. This happens under all sorts of economic and political systems.

But here's some examples - it wasn't just selling something for more than the market rate. The seller is clearly trying to deceive/misinformative/cheat people. If you look in depth at the screenshots, it wasn't "borderline", it was pretty egregious:

The URLs and advertisements all list free download and don't make it clear that they're not officially with Firefox.

They change and mix up the pricing right next to each other, it's designed to look confusing:

"Get 3 years... only £9.98 per year"

"Get 2 years... only £0.99 per month"

Then there's this doozy:

"Signup now and join the millions of users that download files on the internet"

The order page (second to last image) says on the header, "Download FireFox 3.5 Instantly!" without explaining that the 76 pounds they're charging isn't for Firefox, it's for some membership support something-or-other.

It's like when people put ads for fake things on Craigslist. This particular instance probably isn't criminal, but it's really toeing the line on fraud - I'm pretty sure if anyone was refused their money back and went to small claims, they'd get their money back plus damages.

But again, this isn't a "capitalism" thing. Under theocracy, churches used to take money to help get your dead relatives into heaven faster. People pay large money in Africa and Eastern Europe to be smuggled across borders. Lots of bribery necessary to get things done in corrupt countries, or to have a shot to get into a Communist/Central run business or education system, where it becomes all about who you know instead of the more objective free enterprise exchanges.

Is what's going on here bad? Yes, definitely. Is it "capitalism"? Oh hell no. It's corruption and fraud. Humans sometimes try to cheat each other, again regardless of the economic and political system in place.

There is a capitalist core though. I think that core says that the non-market system (governments, societies, etc.) need to make sure that things are free. Emergent order will take care of the rest. Incentives & feedbacks will make sure (via the mechanism described above) that transactions are profitable for all parties, that they are safe & that they are otherwise ethical. Honesty is usually included in this.

Again, when I say 'usually included,' it's hard to nail down what I mean. Most people have obviously never considered this particular aspect. They use think in more general terms. But the Capitalism-as-philosophy guys (Libertarians in the US, Austrian-schoolers or Liberals some other places), would consider honesty as something that emerges, part of capitalism.

It might be an axiom of some models of capitalism. It would be very hard for an analyst to reason about a transaction if you were required to take imperfect information into account.

Interestingly, in a different model you might factor in the cost of obtaining information about the transaction; and still determine that it was more efficient for you to pay £75 than find the free Firefox.

You would still be rational. Just very rich, or perhaps extremely lazy. But you are not required to be omniscient in that model, only able to estimate the cost of obtaining the information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information

Convincing stupid people to make bad deals is immoral but not punishable by law, else most CEO's of banks and phone-companies would be behind bars. And forbidding unequal deals would be the same as forbidding profits.

Also, capitalism without 'a reasonably clear, consistent and fair application of the rule of law', would mean no taxes, no regulations, no law enforcement - just private property and free trade, yes? I too think that there would be a lot of problems with that, especially resolving contract disputes and cases of fraud without resorting to violence.

That said, how and where has that "fact" you present been "painfully and repeatedly demonstrated"?

FTR, I'm not libertarian, but seeing them called fundamentalists with an unsubstantiated argument, in an unrelated thread, annoyed me.

And I would be scared of a business ethics committee deciding which companies are allowed to run. It would be worse than the App Store.

As the media deals in anecdotes, even if you really minimise the amount of people in either of these categories by an exceptionally well crafted law, it is still easy for them to generate stories that make the law look too weak, or too draconian (depending on the political preference of the journalist/news organisation) by trotting out whichever handful of cases they dredge up that supports their views.

Why?

Because when I go to one of my bosses and say "I think we try and transition away from IE. Here, this is Firefox, it is free and it is wonderful", their reaction is "Free?!" and visions of shitty freeware from the 90s fill their heads.

In order to keep us geeks happy, they could offer a source distribution that needs to be compiled or has some trivial dependency that needs to be installed.

The Windows XP EULA states "Except for any refund elected by Microsoft, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, if the Software does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty, and, to the maximum extent allowed by applicable law, even if any remedy fails of its essential purpose."

It goes on to state that the only remedy offered is your money back. Mozilla also offers your money back, all $0 of it.

Or, to flip it around, beggars can't be choosers, and since they're executives...

Actually, since it's legal, you could start your own company that sells Firefox to businesses. I think the only requirement is that you can't call it Firefox but have to call it something else (trademarks or something).

Also, I'm not sure if you're right or not. From what I remember, you can only call the product Firefox if the code matches verbatim; Debian &c. apply custom patches not included in Firefox proper and are therefore obliged to rebrand. If you used the Mozilla builds, are you sure this would apply? Curious here.

I think they missed making that more clear, suggested rewrite:

"Clueless newbies we like to rip off, everybody else is a waste of our bandwidth, so go away"

Euclidinvestments/Cardtransaction.com, the company behind all this is based in the UK:

   Saphie Number One Limited (Reg 91918)
   26 York Street                       
   London,  W1U 6PZ                     
   United Kingdom    

That being said, my computer raises all sorts of red-flags when I go to the site.

Now, I just wonder how good their customer service is, 'cause if clueless newbies fall for the trap, the least they could do is to support them as they figure out how to turn their computers on, explain what a browser is and what they should click to access the internet...

They do claim to answer every call in 90 seconds (800 978 7657) and I was talking to someone within about 30 seconds.

They're scammers, pure and simple, they should have no right to a merchant account. I don't even much care if it is legal or not, legal does not always mean 'right' and in this case 'legal' might be clearly 'wrong'.

VISA et al make lots of value judgments as to which customers can have merchant accounts and which don't.

So in this case they can make that judgment too. Especially the 'upsell' on the last screen off-center is the mark of the real scammer. There was a time when a company called IBill would facilitate this kind of junk, they crashed because of it (and several other good reasons besides, but that's another story, the $1 fake transactions to dillute the chargebacks had a lot to do with it too), if assholes like this can't get merchant accounts then life will be better for all of us.

Not that long ago we applied for a merchant account to sell 2nd hand CDs and we were turned down, in spite of being a perfectly legit business. These jerks being able to operate their scam seriously pisses me off.

the beauty of capitalism is that no one (even you smart geeks) gets to decide what the price of things are. you live and die by consumer demand.

Rubbish. They are charging people to download Firefox. The reason they can do this is because people don't know it's free. If you approached these people & said, "do you want to buy access to our call center?" They would say no.

Really? Despite the fact that what the site in question is doing is blatantly predatory in nature? I would be willing to wager that it heavily depends on the naivety of new (read: probably elderly) computer users in order to make money. If you're fine with this, I don't know how you could justify such a position.

"the beauty of capitalism is that no one (even you smart geeks) gets to decide what the price of things are. you live and die by consumer demand."

Except of course, in situations of monopolies, combines, and cartels (and their respective subsidiaries and holdings), which is how the capitalism you speak of works in the 21st century.

I absolutely agree that "they're charging for access to their call center basically. I don't really see anything wrong with that.". However, I also agree that "what the site in question is doing is blatantly predatory in nature".

I would say that there is no transgression in selling these services. However, they should be held liable for deceptive and predatory marketing practices. These things are wonderfully taken care of by the market and consumers. You see, consumers got together and formed an organization to look for people who are trying to take advantage of them and then kick their asses if they don't stop. I believe in most countries it's called a government.

as far as being blatantly predatory, unless the site actually lies there isn't a problem. if telling half truths is morally wrong then you have some bigger demons to grapple with than someone selling firefox (car industry, fashion industry, healthcare industry, it never ends).

You talk as though the government arbitrarily picks which corporate entities will become powerful monopolies and which will fail. Last time I checked, the market--that mystical thing people like you so dutifully worship--renders such judgment. What you perceive should is some kind of government patronage, usually at the level of individual politicians, that allows a monopoly situation to arise in the first place, is actually corporate interests intervening in political life for the purposes of fostering a monopolistic agenda and practice. Look at any political campaign. Where does much of the funding come from? Why do corporate interests fund both parties? Simple, to gain a political foot-in-the-door, so to speak. Hell, look at many government advisorial position. Most are occupied by former (although still share holding) CEOs. And corporate directorial boards? They contain former politicians, many with considerable ties to political figures holding office.

"as far as being blatantly predatory, unless the site actually lies there isn't a problem. if telling half truths is morally wrong then you have some bigger demons to grapple with"

Your cavalier attitude toward this kind of behavior is sickening, at best. If you feel exploitation in any form is justified, then you will have to deal with whatever comes your way, chief.

as for exploitation: I am an aware consumer, and everyone else should be too. relying on mommy regulation agency to protect people leads to corruption, or are you unaware of how many deaths are caused by the FDA?

Apparently, you've never heard of the Pure Food and Drug Act either, or why it was created, given the presence of adulterants common in goods at the time. People like you don't want to understand--rather, you'd like to adhere to your flawed worldview. There's no sense in arguing with people like you. I hate to say this, but it needs to be said: you're an idiot.

What they are doing at freedownloadzone is exactly that "theft of information and abuse of credit cards".

Credit card companies block sites like allofmp3.com but still help these kinds of scammers. As soon as they start blocking/refusing these kind of sites it gets a whole lot harder for them to scam people...

> These sites get their custom through advertising. We and the major search engine providers do a reasonable job of keeping these people's adverts away from our trademarked terms and keywords but we can't be everywhere, and they can often be found on smaller search engines.