[notahacker]

15 months sounds excessive, but the fact the software could be downloaded by customers for free is not a mitigating factor in a guy attempting to make a profit making it look as much as possible like a paid for product sold by Dell/Microsoft...

[simion314]

The guy is not innocent because he used those logos/brands but there was some weird issues in this case,like emails getting lost by the government, then finding them after 2 years but some of them did not match, also the CDs very evaluated to 25$ a piece which is weird since there was no license included. Microsoft did not lose any money in this particular case but for some reason they wanted to make an example .

[letsgetphysITal]

You don't understand. Without the (license) key (which he didn't sell), these disks are coasters. Windows installations without a valid license key (or a crack, which he again didn't provide) are crippled after 30 days.

These disks are only useful to people who already own a Windows license.

[emodendroket]

Perhaps you don't understand. He deliberately set out to deceive people into thinking they were buying genuine MS-produced discs when they were not.

[letsgetphysITal]

But he was charged and convicted based upon unauthorised selling of licensed software, which he wasn't as he didn't sell licenses. What he did and what he was charged with are two separate things, which is what the entire article is about.

[m-p-3]

He never sold any licenses, he sold the medium and the convenience of having the installation software easily available for his customers.

The OEM license attached to the hardware is still necessary to use the medium (which AFAIK is tied to the hardware, not the user), so I do not personally see any monetary loss for Microsoft. The only way Microsoft (or Dell, etc) lost money is because they charge an absurd price of money for something that is basically a DVD coaster without any license. They only have themselves to blame.

[Hamuko]

He didn't sell licenses, that is true.

What he did sell was a way for refurbishers to avoid buying a refurbishing license from Microsoft if they had a computer with a Certificate of Authenticity but no recovery disc. If you do not supply the recovery disc with a refurbished machine, you do not have a valid Windows license according to Microsoft. And if you do not have a valid Windows license for the refurbished machine, Microsoft expects you to buy one for 25 United States dollars, which is the value for each counterfeit disc in this case.

[Karlozkiller]

> 15 months sounds excessive, but the fact the software could be downloaded by customers for free is not a mitigating factor in a guy attempting to make a profit making it look as much as possible like a paid for product sold by Dell/Microsoft...

I don't know if I would call it 'trying to make profit' when you make CDs in China, ship them to US and sell the CDs for 25 cent a piece.

According to himself he made no money off of this both because no one wanted to buy the CDs and the price didn't really allow for profit.

[notahacker]

According to emails he wrote whilst not trying to defend a court case, it was very, very important to him the disks could not be distinguished from the real thing even though he knew these were far more risky to import than unprinted CDs, and very important to get as many sales as possible. Court submissions seem to indicate he had another line in Canon CDs which he was quite happy encouraging his partner to continue to sell for $30-40 a pop on eBay...

If you read the original court docs, Microsoft also claim the Dell disks normally supplied only to Dell customers allow Windows to be used without activating, and that an active secondary market exists for the real thing because of that.

[Karlozkiller]

Do you have a link to the court documents? This whole thing seems like a mess regardless of who is right. Although I'm quite sure these recovery discs do not allow you to install windows without a license.

They never did when I used such discs back in the days, and why would DELL be allowed to distribute software making such a thing possible? Of course you could argue that he has manipulated the program on the disc but as far as I know that has not been proven and he is claiming he did not.

[notahacker]

Docs are linked to from Microsoft's blog.

They answer your question on the Dell disks, which basically boils down to the convenience of customers unable to reactivate properly for whatever reason, who merely get nag screens. May only have applied to some Dell customer groups and some Windows versions and I'm not about to dig out my old Dell XP reinstallation disk to find out! Presumably they trust that [certain groups of] Dell customers are not buying new computers with bundled Windows versions with the intention of reusing the software on unlicensed older machines, and make enough from selling the OEM licence not to care about the low level of piracy they anticipated as a result.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/FIN...

[icebraining]

In the emails, he writes "This will ensure a steady income for the next year to come!"

[Karlozkiller]

He disputes the emails claiming they are made up and tampered with insinuating his partner in selling these CDs has implicated him to get a lesser sentence.

Obviously someone in this whole mess is lying or grossly misinformed, the problem is figuring out who.

He said he had IT-experts testify in court that the emails had been tampered with, I assume one could look into that in some kind of public record over the case?

[notahacker]

There are court documents linked to by Microsoft, but perhaps unsurprisingly after reading them, generally not by the pro Lundgren blogs.

To be honest, whilst I wouldn't necessarily trust his partner trying to save his own skin, I'm even less convinced by someone that mentions a sale price of $3 for a Windows 7 and $4 for XP (odd pricing, but maybe reflects how convincing the counterfeit disks were or even how usable the software is without a license key...) in their defence in court, then tells the media he intended to give them away at $0.25 cost price.

Sometimes you have to look past the fact one party is a recycling entrepreneur and the other party is Microsoft...

[tripletao]

Do you have a link where he alleges the tampering? I'd be interested to learn more. I should try to find the court documents, usually available through a PACER-type thing for a nonzero but modest charge.

[Karlozkiller]

It's quite a long video, I can not claim to have seen it all, but the allegations should come up within the first 36 minutes and after the initial introduction by the third party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7hnVYMoctM

EDIT: The court documents were linked in another comment, I relink it: https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/FIN...