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CAUTION: Scam Fees: Con Men At Work. There's inumerable sites
where one can freely download free
software; but con men too could set up sites where they
hide download fee, & send you a bill later.
A German court ruled against deception ( see here), but there's a world of
national laws & languages out there. Plenty of scope for
other cons in in other places & languages etc. Take care.
PS If you, an innocent do get caught by such a scam, some ideas
(though IANAL = I Am Not A Lawyer):
- As well as consumer rights bodies, & normal national
legal defence re hidden charges
- There's possibly another way to hit back: See if what
you'r downloading is licensed for the site to distribute. It
could be eg with things like OpenOffice or Mozilla Firefox
that maybe the licence only allows distributors to make a
reasonable charge, & not an unreasonably high charge, so
you may also be able to come to an arrangement to represent
the software consortium that issued the software free, to
counter sue the distributor for breach of licence &
damages. German law also seems to allow people to sue on 3rd
party's behalf, without 3rd party even knowing, till they
collect, far as I can figure (that law too got abused by at
least one dodgey lawyer who ended up doing time (2 years as I
recall); Maybe other countries have similar scenarios.
- If you'r eg a German caught by a scam .de web site, run
by eg a foreign ie English Ltd company (perhaps owned by
Germans?). Don't despair, don't think just because its quite
easy to open an English small company ... that does Not
mean you have no recourse: A director whose firm is
"wrongfully trading" or behaves criminally can be
banned for 2 to 15 years , see UK companies house who
also have pages in
French & German).
http://www.finanzblog24.net/category/anwalt-und-recht/
Artikel Nr. Opendownload muss Inkasso-Schaden ersetzen
Donnerstag Januar 28th 2010, 7:31 pm
http://www.chip.de/news/Urteil-opendownload.de-verliert-erneut-vor-
Gericht_41166255.html
http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/Home/Nachrichten/Startseite/Artikel,-
opendownload-abzocke-urteil-_arid,1627683_regid,2_puid,2_pageid,4288.html
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