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Comment by preciousoo | Hacker News Reader

Have there been any cases of someone suing for a refund because they didn’t like the change to licensing?

In Belgium, someone sued because windows showed its license only after you paid for it. It was declared illegal. Instructions about the license are now printed on every boxed copy of windows, so you know the license before you pay.

That’s cool, I wish you could do that to online (one time purchase) services that change your license terms after purchase. Keep my license terms static or full refund.

Although that standard might lead to them just moving to a monthly subscription model

Most licence terms already include a term to change the terms. So technically once you buy it, install it, and agree to it, you are also agreeing the terms may change. They probably also have arbitration clauses you are agreeing to so you can't directly sue them either.

That can’t be legally valid, because you wouldn’t know the future terms you’re now ostensibly agreeing to.

That's why they get you to agree to new terms and conditions with an update, or when there is a new TC you get a lovely email or whatever to ignore. Either you don't accept it so you don't get the update or you don't accept them and you can't continue to use the service if you don't accept the new terms.

The consideration for the change is getting the new features, updates, or using the services.

If for example your phone company changes its terms with you, it has to tell you, and you can exit the contract.

I'm not sure how this works if it's one of them subsidised phones however.

They can usually cancel the contract early, then you keep your subsidized phone without paying it off. In such a case they usually accept to keep the old conditions until the phone is paid off, because they don't want to give away a phone for free.

A court could also order a full reversal of the performance to the pre-contract state.

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