[jeroenhd]

Copyright law does not grant you tge right to spread something you downloaded even if it was free. The original rights holder may decide who can and cannot host what part of their product for what reason. Free software usually permits you to redistribute the software you download, but there's no such freedom in closed source software. This is part of the "free as in speech" qualifier of open source software.

Microsoft does allow you to download the ISO for free, which is why I don't understand why they didn't include a patcher either.

Looking at the official twitter account for the project, it seems like the project maintainers (and likely their users) reside somewhere in the Middle East, given that they seem to speak Arabic. Perhaps the average Internet near the project's target audience are low enough to warrant uploading a customised, minimised ISO? I don't know, a patcher seems like a better choice to me. Maybe they'll switch models now because of the takedown?

[redis_mlc]

> Copyright law does not grant you the right to spread something you downloaded even if it was free.

Software source code is copyrightable (to a large extent, for the past 30 years) in the US, but a program exe might not be as there's no artistic expression at all in the bit pattern alone.

So an exe might just fall under license terms.

Source: I have successfully filed software copyrights and trademarks.

[sjwright]

That's so wrong it's almost painful. Copyright is the only reason why anyone pays attention to the license associated with compiled software. What would be the point of a license for an artefact not protected by copyright?

It also is absurd to suggest that there is artistic expression in source code but not in a direct translation of that same artistic expression.

And it's also worth remembering that binaries contain more than just executable machine code—they also contain strings, bitmaps etc. Are you claiming that strings and bitmaps cannot be copyrighted too?

[redis_mlc]

Actually there was a court case that agreed with my reasons, and that was the law initially.

It looks like object code became copyrightable in the US in 1983 through a few court cases:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/18ba/427b7142a61534006f4fda...

Don't know about other countries.

[sjwright]

An assertion that one court somewhere on the planet erred in a spectacularly ridiculous way isn’t evidence of anything.

[labawi]

Similarly, asserting a court erred in a spectacularly ridiculous way is not an argument.

Note that before 1989, rules in USA were quite different. Instead of: everything is IP, almost forever - explicit copyright registration was required for protection of works.

While object code was ruled as copyrightable for pretty obvious reasons, initial rulings seems quite consistent with law at the time. Current 100+ year copyright terms might seem similarly ridiculous to copyrights founders.

[sjwright]

Yes, it is an argument. It is not evidence, it may not be compelling argument for you, but it’s unquestionably an argument.

I refuse to accept that courts deemed compiled code to not be a creative work or intellectual property. Remember—a lot of early computer code was written in assembler...

[iso1631]

That's a crazy viewpoint, I've never signed any license agreement with microsoft, but if I were to have a copy of a windows 10 ISO, or even just calc.exe, I wouldn't be allowed to share it

[redis_mlc]

No, it's not crazy, and copyright was only extended to binaries in 1983.

[mrkstu]

An OS iso is going to have a multitude of copyrighted assets beyond complied programs.