[jmull]

This article is quite disingenuous.

The lie is in the first sentence: "...15 months in prison for selling discs that let people reinstall Windows on licensed machines.

(emphasis mine)

The prosecution successfully argued the machines these discs were meant to be sold with did not have valid Windows licenses (and that these discs were part of an effort to avoid purchasing them).

You will want to find another article on this case to read about it since this dances fast to avoid addressing it.

We have a crime, a guilty plea, and sentencing. And a careful review in the appeal. Hard to see what's wrong here.

[Someone1234]

They only don't because Microsoft wanted to double-dip. They want one license fee when the computer is originally sold, and then a second ($25) every time it is resold.

The problem with that is that Microsoft cannot have it both ways, either the license is tied to the physical hardware (in which case recyclers don't need to pay $25) or it isn't (in which case people should be able to resell them on eBay).

[WorldMaker]

Microsoft guidelines appear to state that given the Ship of Theseus nature of machines there is a two-factor of sorts authentication for the license of that machine: the license code sticker, and the original recovery disc (as a harder to counterfeit physical token than the exact state of hardware of a machine; remember all the XP era relicensing woes when you swapped out a RAM chip?).

If you sell all three together on eBay, that's entirely fine, and it doesn't need a relicense fee. It's when you start to lose one of those three that Microsoft asks you pay a relicensing fee.

[Hamuko]

Microsoft wants the $25 if you resell a computer without a Certificate of Authenticity and the recovery media (if it came with one). If you don't have both, then according to Microsoft, the computer is unlicensed, as the Certificate of Authenticity is not the same as a license.

Of course, it would be easy to pass off refurbished machines as having valid licenses if you had the Certificate of Authenticity and a disc that looks like a genuine Dell recovery disc for Windows Whatever with holograms and all that jazz.

[jmull]

I don’t think software licenses are necessarily restricted to common notions of ownership, as you suggest.

Whether that’s right and good is another question entirely. Personally, I’d like to see strong consumer protection laws so that software license couldn’t violate common notions of ownership in cases where negotiation of terms isn’t possible, but that’s an idea for a better future, not really relevant to this case.

[Someone1234]

> I don’t think software licenses are necessarily restricted to common notions of ownership, as you suggest.

They are in the EU. The US takes a much more pro-business stance.