The car dealer does not necessarily need the customer's permission to substitute 3rd party parts for "factory" parts; it depends on how the sale is represented.
If you go to the dealer and buy a specific car off his lot, and it (already) has a 3rd party radio when you see it prior to the sale, no permission is needed, the presence of the radio is "self evident", and "what you see is what you get" (this might not be the case for an
invisible mechanical assembly, however).
If you order a car with a radio, you will be presumably be specifying and paying for a SPECIFIC radio -- be it by the car mfgrs or a 3rd party, since even the car mfgr offers multiple options. As long as you get what you ordered, it should not be a problem.
The key is that the dealer cannot misrepresent; in the case of Compaq,
as long as their literature says "Windows 95 operating system, Netscape Navigator Browser", the end user probably wouldn't have a cause to complain. If it is the "general perception" that IE is part of Windows 95, then the CD-ROM, diskettes or images on the hard drive should allow the user to subsequently install IE himself after he buys the system. I know of no OEM that installs every optional component of the operating system by default.
As for antitrust laws, some are for the protection of the consumer, but quite a few of them are specifically for the protection of the competitor; in other words, some of them are indeed intended to protect a Netscape from a Microsoft, without regard to the impact on the consumer (viewed as protecting the consumer indirectly, and in the "long run"), while others do exist to directly protect the consumer in the short run. One possible, but I think unlikely outcome of the current action would be that Microsoft would indeed be required to charge for IE, and to raise the price of Windows 95 if IE was included. For the moment, however, I think that the more likely outcome will be that MS will be required to allow the omission of IE and/or the installation of a competing browser, but that they will probably not be prohibited from simply including (offering) IE at no additional charge. |
