BRUSSELS -- The European Court of Justice today ruled that users of Microsoft Windows cannot uninstall anything from their computers. This ruling comes on the heels of a Finnish ruling that users have no legal right to be able to play CDs in their computers.

The case before the ECJ involved Jarmo Järvenpää, an investment banker from Helsinki. Mr. Järvenpää called Microsoft customer support in an attempt to get MSN Messenger removed from his machine. MSN Messenger is an instant-messaging program that, according to statistics obtained by SEDHE, is used by no one.

"I tried and tried to get de Myessenger off of my compyooter, vid no luck. So I called up cyustomer supoort, and ven I said I vanted to remyoove de program, dey sent de police to my house," said Mr. Järvenpää, whose accent has been reproduced phonetically. The police arrested him, citing a little-known EU stipulation that mandates that users cannot do anything to their machines that software vendors do not want. "An end-user of a machine is granted a license by the operating system manufacturer to use said machine. The software manufacturer, not the end-user, is the legal owner of said computing machine, and as such, the end-user is not entitled to do anything to that machine that is prohibited by the software manufacturer," says EU regulation 656-5827-B.

Finnish intellectual property lawyer Tarja Hämeenniemi says that the regulation is bogus. Her accent has also been reproduced phonetically. "De ting is dat de major softvare cyoompanies lobbied to have dis regulation inserted. Dis vay, dey can exercise complete control over deyend-eeyuser. Dis is de fyooture of intellectual property rights," she said.

While the director of Microsoft Finland could not be reached, SEDHE managed to get in touch with the director of Microsoft Sweden, which is just as good. The director, Mr. Weds Cheshif, was less than forthcoming: "Ve heve a poolicy of not tooking about spercific ishyoos vile dey're in de leeteegation phase. All vee can say at deesa point eez dat ve are vorking hard tyoo maintain de control over our eenteelectual property, and eef dat reeqivires de prosecyootion of some people, den so be it. Bork, bork, bork!"

Publicity directors of other companies we contacted similarly framed the issue in terms of intellectual property rights. "Well, of course they are," said SEDHE Intellectual Property Editor H. Simon Gregory. "That's the easiest way for a company to get rights that it doesn't have: scream 'copyright infringement' and suddenly everyone's listening, especially other media companies, who lobby for ridiculously restrictive regulations that breach a person's rights to use the things he bought in the way he wants. Then, this person must go to court and spend time and money proving that he has the rights that he has, anyway. Suddenly, he's the bad guy!"

The ECJ ruling means that end-users must contact the manufacturers of their operating systems in order to get permission to do anything to their machines. In the case of users of Gentoo Linux, the end-user must telephone everyone who ever worked on Gentoo and ask their permission. If just one person says "no," the end-user cannot modify his machine. Even a cool case-mod like ultraviolet lights would be prohibited. A statement from France-based Vivendi Universal said that the issue was terrorism. "We cannot allow terrorists to take control over our property for their nefarious terrorist purposes. And if you don't believe that, then replace the word 'terrorist' with 'pornographer.' And if you don't believe that, call our PR department and we'll come up with a different excuse," the statement said.