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So, the price MS paid to have him jailed was less than the cost they would incur if people used those discs to restore their machines instead of buying new ones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft wasn't giving them away for free though. According to the article, they get $25 for each disk from computer manufacturers.
The $25 includes the cost of a Windows license. The restore disks Lundgren was intending to distribute required the user to be in possession of a license already. Lundgren should not have been sentenced to prison for this. At most he should have been punished for trademark infringement. It’s a god damn travesty that we have judges who don’t seem to understand the very important technical details of the court cases th…
>The original Microsoft (COA) attached to the PC does not allow you to reload Microsoft Windows software when no original recovery media is present.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mssmallbiz/2011/10/05/looki...
So that's the crucial point. Yes, the software was free to download, but you needed the original recovery disk to legitimately sell a refurbished computer. By creating counterfeit disks he would enable refurbishers to avoid the fee to Microsoft.
As a CEO, you can have a business model that is ethically and morally wrong without getting into jail. As a CEO, you can ignore obvious security flaws leading to 100 million social security numbers getting leaked without getting into jail. As a CEO, you can sexually harass your employees without getting into jail. Try and save the world by repurpose old computers, causing one of the biggest companies in the world to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft wasn't giving them away for free though. According to the article, they get $25 for each disk from computer manufacturers.
The .iso was available for free off of their website.
Just because it’s free doesn’t mean the owner doesn’t have rights. (This is also the basis of the GPL.)
but then illegal for Lundgren (also on behalf of an end-user) to request a microsoft server for the recovery disc download and then send a disc of those bts to the end-user?
Is it because Lundgren is no ISP, or is it because the disc is considered a medium of exchange?
From the article "“These sales of counterfeit operating systems,” Microsoft lawyer Bonnie MacNaughton wrote to the judge, “displaced Microsoft’s potential sales of genuine operating systems.” But Lundgren’s disks had no licenses and were intended for computers that already had licenses." and even worse, "Hurley decided Lundgren’s 28,000 restore disks had a value of $700,000, and that dollar amount qualified Lundgren…
I dont quite understand the basic legal details behind this. Say I buy a computer with windows pre-installed that means the OS license cost is bundled in to the price of the machine. Say I have a computer without windows, or maybe an older cheaper version of windows. Is it correct that these restore disks arent a utility to get a free new copy of windows? Just trying to understand
That is correct. You still need a licence key to install Windows using those disks. Without the key the disk is worthless. They aren't and never were a way for people to get "free" copies of windows.
I guess pressuring MS to drop the charges is too late. We can't have good man in jail over this.
As a CEO, you can have a business model that is ethically and morally wrong without getting into jail. As a CEO, you can ignore obvious security flaws leading to 100 million social security numbers getting leaked without getting into jail. As a CEO, you can sexually harass your employees without getting into jail. Try and save the world by repurpose old computers, causing one of the biggest companies in the world to…
he didn’t actually cause anyone to lose revenue. microsoft isn’t pressing charges against him in this case. (to my best understanding)
But I cannot phantom how they cannot see how this will backfire quite badly, making them look both greedy and environmentally disconnected.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The $25 includes the cost of a Windows license. The restore disks Lundgren was intending to distribute required the user to be in possession of a license already. Lundgren should not have been sentenced to prison for this. At most he should have been punished for trademark infringement. It’s a god damn travesty that we have judges who don’t seem to understand the very important technical details of the court cases th…
I did a little bit more research and my original post was factually inaccurate, but the point was correct. An article from 2011 says this: >The original Microsoft (COA) attached to the PC does not allow you to reload Microsoft Windows software when no original recovery media is present. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mssmallbiz/2011/10/05/looki... So that's the crucial point. Yes, the software was free to download,…
Thank you for digging this up. This is an important point, and I think a lot of us, including myself and the hapless recycler, have naively assumed that sticker plus iso equals a legit install in Microsoft's eyes. Nevertheless, it's still a travesty that he was convicted for this.
As a CEO, you can have a business model that is ethically and morally wrong without getting into jail. As a CEO, you can ignore obvious security flaws leading to 100 million social security numbers getting leaked without getting into jail. As a CEO, you can sexually harass your employees without getting into jail. Try and save the world by repurpose old computers, causing one of the biggest companies in the world to…
he didn’t actually cause anyone to lose revenue. microsoft isn’t pressing charges against him in this case. (to my best understanding)
“These sales of counterfeit operating systems,” Microsoft lawyer Bonnie MacNaughton wrote to the judge, “displaced Microsoft’s potential sales of genuine operating systems.” But Lundgren’s disks had no licenses and were intended for computers that already had licenses."