[cornholio]

>A copyright holder, and he/she alone, has the right to make copies or authorize others to make copies of a work.

In this case, Microsoft provided that authorisation to its license holders by making available a web tool where they could create their own installation media for the software they were licensed to use.

So the software was indeed "free" for licensed users - the very same people who were receiving the disks - in the sense they were not required to pay for it. It might be a license violation to download and burn the disks on their behalf, but that's a civil matter.

The crucial element for proving criminal copyright infringement was a personal gain figure that was manufactured by the Microsoft expert witness.