Thousands of criminal cases opened in Germany for buying Windows licenses over 3rd party reseller.

[leadeater]

41 minutes ago, Venson said:

Ok but that is not the case in germany AFAIK

Really? Police just very rarely lay charges for this under those circumstances but it's generally a thing in most places. It's very rarely used here as well but the crime of receiving stolen goods here has no limits other than if it were not reasonable for you to know it wasn't stolen. So if it were too cheap, you did not ask for proof of purchase/ownership then you are indeed liable, just very unlikely to be charged with this crime unless the police need something to charge you with because they are after something else and need time

 

41 minutes ago, Venson said:

If there is no sign that you are buying a stolen good you cannot held liable.

Price is the sign. It is the buyers responsibility to at least check proof of ownership under suspicious conditions.

 

41 minutes ago, Venson said:

But back to topic: The keys are not in fact Stolen or brought with stolen credit cards or something like that, they are Legal, Original keys. But not where they were used in germany. The whole case rests on the fact that although the keys are legal, users in german do not process a license through the act of buying the key.

That's only for the people who brought the keys on ebay. This is part of a wider investigation over the sale of the keys in the first place which is how the money laundering charges are applicable. How else do you think money laundering charges could apply? They would have to be stolen or illegally obtained and sold for this section of the law to apply.

 

Just because you brought a key, you installed it and it activated successfully does not mean the key was not; Stolen, legitimate, or any such similar thing.

 

The fact that you paid money has little to do with anything copyright related, you could go to a market and buy a ripped copy of a movie, even if it were a direct raw rip and presented in identical looking and quality packaging to an authentic retail copy that is still Copyright Infringement. Functionality of the product is separate from whether or not it is a Copyright Infringement.

 

Windows license keys are not region locked or specific, you can legally buy a license from any Microsoft partner you wish from any country and use that key in any other country you like. Making sure you comply with any sales and tax laws aside. So for the keys purchased on ebay the sale of the keys would have to be done under a situation that would make it not legal and thus Copyright Infringement, and as far as I know for the EU that would mean they are stolen/unauthorized sale. It is not illegal to re-sell an OEM key in the EU, it's against Microsoft's license agreements terms but these agreements are not legally binding and would have to be taken to court to test the legal status of them which has actually been done.

 

Quote

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT (Grand Chamber)

According to the decision of the European Court (Curia) of Justice on the 3rd of july in
 2012, (C-128/11.) the sale of software is permitted even without the physical transport of the medium (CD/DVD/Pendrive). The transfer of the used license activation keys is permitted, furthermore the sale, transfer of the unused software licenses is legal
 regardless of whether the software license is on a medium or online license activation key.
The software company shall not prevent the further sale of its license, and usage of its software, including OEM, DSP and ESD versions. The software company’s copyright is exhausted when its software has been sold for the
 first time. The individual sale of Volume License and the trading of online transferable licenses are permitted. (C-128/11., EU
 2001/29/EG, 28., 2009/24/EK)

So unless this doesn't apply in Germany the sale and purchase of OEM keys is not illegal nor Copyright Infringement. Which leaves only that the keys were stolen, unless there is some other situation I am not thinking of?

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

So, we're back to the hypothetical of the buyer knowing before hand.   The government is under this assumption that everyone just thinks, "It's cheap, scam!  Stolen!"   In actuality, more people fall for it.

Pretty much, doesn't mean they will actually succeed in court. Honestly that why it's very rare to get to this point with buyers being charged, it's hard to prove in court "beyond reasonable doubt". Software licensing is still one of those generally not well understood things, and pricing of them. Physical goods are different in that respect which is why receiving stolen good charges are at least more common for TVs, computers, consoles etc.

[Venson]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Really? Police just very rarely lay charges for this under those circumstances but it's generally a thing in most places. It's very rarely used here as well but the crime of receiving stolen goods here has no limits other than if it were not reasonable for you to know it wasn't stolen. So if it were too cheap, you did not ask for proof of purchase/ownership then you are indeed liable, just very unlikely to be charged with this crime unless the police need something to charge you with because they are after something else and need time

Ok now you made me lookup the exact law regarding Hehlerei (buying and selling of stolen goods). In fact the german law states that if you buy something online from a privat person, even when its an auction, you dont "have" to assume it was stolen by only taking the price into account (LG Karlsruhe vom 28.09.2007, Az.: Ns 84 Js 5040/07 – 18 AK 136/07)

 

As i said, the keys were in fact not stolen (this is clearly stated by the article source) but brought (from sites like alibaba). 

I researched a bit more and found another article that states that the German agencies mainly targets commercial resellers who bought larger numbers of keys from Lizengo and tried to resell them commercially. The large number of charges seem to be an "catch all" attempt by the law agencies. In that context the whole operation does make a lot more sense now^^

 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

But most of the time like on eBay, they are legal OEM keys. Just sold because the OEM had too many.

Nope. That's never the case.

 

The VeRO complaints for such things come from the BSA, and explicitly go after the VLK's. 

 

Not every key on eBay is going to be illegitimate, but the majority of them are violating the license. I can explicitly point to a case where you can get legal keys without pirating anything:

 

- Work at a company that has an Enterprise VLK licence

- Find the actual Windows license key on your HP or Dell, it's not actually used.

 

Now those HP or Dell keys are only good for that machine because they're OEM keys. However what do you think happens when you swap a motherboard in a warranty exchange? Up until Windows 10 the dell tech would just give you a disc with a license ... even if the laptop didn't have an optical drive.

 

You could resell a retail key, because a retail key isn't attached to the computer. You can't resell an OEM key because it belongs to the computer it was first installed to, however you can work-around it if you sell the part it was explicitly tied to. 

 

That said, from what I remember, BSA complaints are typically more vague, and imply the seller is selling software that they have not been authorized to sell. This is triggered by having "global" sales rather than limiting sales to their country. Price discrimination and parallel imports is the reason for being able to file these. Can't have Americans buying those cheap keys from another market.

 

[Thaldor]

Ah, Germany, somehow I am not surprised that they have a law that makes it illegal to have a software without a license and/or getting it way too cheap and it's punishable with a prison sentence.

 

After all we can thank Germany for the great man named Patrick Achache and his great companies Guardaley/Maverick Eye/Whatever-Name-Today-His-P2P-Logging-Company-Has and Crystalis Entertainment, Copyright Management Services and whatever "production" companies or more like shell companies he today has to run his copyright trolling business (remembered from Malibu Media copyright trolling cases, Prenda Law stuff and the latest Njord Law CR trolling fuck ups in Sweden) [notice the sarcasm in the beginning].

Someone can correct me but I would remember all that shitstorm started when Germany decided it would be a nice to have a law that made it so that if you see someone commit a crime you can send them cease and desist letter (Abmahnung or something that way) through attorney and demand compensation for that work and apparently you don't even need to have anything to do with the stuff they made. Fucking brilliant.

Don't get me wrong, Germany has done a lot good on privacy side of the things but, IIRC the cease and desist thing, giving everybody right to send a letter to anybody breaking the law and demanding compensation for sending that letter is something absolutely retarded. [joke] And yes, before anyone can say, I apologize for calling retarded people German law makers, you are all clearly far more intelligent than them. [/joke]

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Venson said:

As i said, the keys were in fact not stolen (this is clearly stated by the article source) but brought (from sites like alibaba). 

I do not see anywhere where they say they were not stolen, it just doesn't say there were stolen. And keys brought from Alibaba, well those keys are very commonly stolen, the entire "grey" market is almost entirely supplied by stolen and illegally obtained keys so any down the line sales of these keys are the sales of stolen keys. Illegality of the key isn't removed by subsequent re-sale of the key.

 

Quote

The second product key shown to the same customer was part of a volume licensing agreement that was concluded on behalf of a university in Bulgaria, Microsoft said.

https://www.golem.de/news/software-lizenzen-microsoft-geht-mit-staatsanwaltschaft-gegen-lizengo-vor-2008-150442.html

i.e. Stolen

 

As for the first example, I have no reason to believe those OEM keys weren't obtained themselves illegally as well either. Legitimate OEM keys cost more than that, I've purchased them. If they were a legitimate OEM reseller and had the right to sell the keys at all they would be pricing them higher to cover the cost of purchasing them from Microsoft (the right to sell) and to gain a larger profit. You can always undercut the market if you wish but not at a loss which only a few euro would be.

 

 

https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/shop/components/software/windows/microsoft-windows-10-pro-dvd-64bit-os

 

$249NZD = ~150 Euro.

 

https://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?itemID=432438

https://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?itemID=447645

 

If you are paying less than 10% the key is stolen, there's an extremely high chance that is the case.

[Giganthrax]

Haha, I bought like 5 of those keys. Still using them.

 

Good thing I don't live in Germany, I guess. 

[JZStudios]

18 hours ago, Venson said:

That is A problem. The offence of the criminal cases are Money lauding. The German agencies will ague that it should have been obvious that those keys could not have been legit as they were to cheep as the difference is dramatically high. An Original Win10Pro key does cost ~200€ and they were sold on Ebay for around 40€. The argumentation is that is could not have been possible that thoes keys could have been obtained legally and therefor the buyer did "participate" in the illegal action.

(Source lawyer Christian Solmeke)

That's a dogshit argument. In the US this exact thing has already proven to be legal, but this argument is bogus unless Germany doesn't allow for reselling software at all. Otherwise it could just be that for all they know some private seller or a large company bought a lot of codes in bulk stock at reduced prices and was selling off excess codes, which is a common occurrence.

Telling people they shouldn't buy something because it's cheap is laughably dumb. That's just telling thieves that if they don't want to get caught they actually need to charge more for their stolen goods.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

That's a dogshit argument. In the US this exact thing has already proven to be legal, but this argument is bogus unless Germany doesn't allow for reselling software at all. Otherwise it could just be that for all they know some private seller or a large company bought a lot of codes in bulk stock at reduced prices and was selling off excess codes, which is a common occurrence.

Never the case. Every single "key-only" software on ebay is stolen or generated by a key generator used for piracy, or the same VLK that doesn't phone home sold to everyone. 

 

While you could make a first-sale doctrine issue about reselling software already obtained, that only applies to the US, and hence US sellers selling to another country will have their listings taken down for previously used keys.

 

 

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Telling people they shouldn't buy something because it's cheap is laughably dumb. That's just telling thieves that if they don't want to get caught they actually need to charge more for their stolen goods.

That is exactly the point, and how pirates get caught. Selling anything on eBay that has a known value at less than 1/2 it's retail value is going to trigger infringement flags. This is why the word "used" or "preowned" is critical when selling an item.

 

If it's used or previously owned, you have to have a photo of the exact item in the condition it is in, or it's going to get taken down. If it's new, it has to be pretty close to the known retail price (eg if I go to the official store and an item is $250, and you're selling it it for $25, that's enough to remove the listing for being an unauthorized copy.)

 

Want to ensure you get banned forever off eBay? Sell any luxury product on the site without showing the receipt with the store address and date on it. Like one of the easiest ways to destroy a seller on eBay is to go after them for "empty box, no product" because it enables others to commit fraud.

 

[soldier_ph]

oof and der8auer even did adspots for Linzengo in the German Versions of his Videos sometimes explicitly talking about the dirt cheap Windows Licence keys.

[Drama Lama]

I mean lizengo is known to be a bit fishy.

and it has been proven by the magazine ct that at least some of their keys come from questionable sources that were probably not intended for retail.

[Sauron]

As I always said, buying from key resellers is just piracy you pay for - on top of which you apparently risk being charged with a federal crime.

On 3/9/2021 at 12:25 AM, Venson said:

- Again as discussed in a post above, the buyer cannot say they acted in good faith as the whole case rests on the matter that everyone who should have done a basic price comparison should have noticed that thoese are unresonable prices and could not have been obtained legally. It does not matter that the buyer did not know, but they should have been put some thought into it and should have seen that it could not been possible.

We know this but someone who's not into tech might legitimately not know. Or they could have been recommended to buy one from a reputable forum like linustechtips.com as I often see happen... on this note maybe it's time to crack down on that @leadeater

[Bombastinator]

On 3/8/2021 at 4:39 PM, poochyena said:

I assume they would have to prove the buyer had to have known the keys weren't legit. Might be hard to do, or easy, depends on the context.

That’s the way burden-of-proof works in some American situations but not all. “Ignorance is no excuse” can apply in others. Could be why they only went after the two-buck-chuck ones.  I know even less about German jurisprudence than American jurisprudence.  I assume it’s at least as complicated.

[Venson]

On 3/10/2021 at 9:17 AM, Bombastinator said:

I know even less about German jurisprudence than American jurisprudence.  I assume it’s at least as complicated.

Me nether^^

[Brooksie359]

On 3/8/2021 at 4:43 PM, Venson said:

That is A problem. The offence of the criminal cases are Money lauding. The German agencies will ague that it should have been obvious that those keys could not have been legit as they were to cheep as the difference is dramatically high. An Original Win10Pro key does cost ~200€ and they were sold on Ebay for around 40€. The argumentation is that is could not have been possible that thoes keys could have been obtained legally and therefor the buyer did "participate" in the illegal action.

(Source lawyer Christian Solmeke)

I don't know about German law but in the US that would never fly in court. You have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. There would always be a doubt as to whether they were aware that the licenses were not legitimate. I know there are legit keys that can be bought for a fraction of the price second hand from places so its hard to say that it is unreasonable to believe they were legit. And again you have to prove criminal intent and not being able to recognize a scam or that goods being sold are illegal is not a crime. There are alot of not so smart people in the world but that doesn't mean they are a criminal if criminals use them to their advantage. As far as German law maybe its different but honestly the whole thing seems unreasonable as there are so many websites that sell windows keys for cheap that to say that its reasonable to assume someone knows the market price of windows is simply a lie. 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

I don't know about German law but in the US that would never fly in court. You have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. There would always be a doubt as to whether they were aware that the licenses were not legitimate. I know there are legit keys that can be bought for a fraction of the price second hand from places so its hard to say that it is unreasonable to believe they were legit. And again you have to prove criminal intent and not being able to recognize a scam or that goods being sold are illegal is not a crime. There are alot of not so smart people in the world but that doesn't mean they are a criminal if criminals use them to their advantage. As far as German law maybe its different but honestly the whole thing seems unreasonable as there are so many websites that sell windows keys for cheap that to say that its reasonable to assume someone knows the market price of windows is simply a lie. 

This is the issue.   We don’t know the law and we don’t know the specifics.  I suspect the German police do though.  It’s literally their job.

[Sir Asvald]

In regards to product keys, people are selling retail keys for Windows 2016,2019 and even selling Exchange keys for so cheap on Ebay. Someone Selling Exchange 2016 Standard key for £100!

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

This is the issue.   We don’t know the law and we don’t know the specifics.  I suspect the German police do though.  It’s literally their job.

I doubt the police know that law as well as a lawyer. There are tons of cases that go to court because the cops think they have solid evidence yet lose miserably. Unless a good DA is involved I wouldn't say they for sure know what they are doing to the extent of having sufficient evidence of a crime. Hell I would argue that the argument for the crime is shaky at best as the whole premise of the case is based off of the buyers knowing the market price of windows keys and that its unreasonable to believe that the keys that were purchased were legit. The problem with that argument is its easy to point out the many other sites that sell windows keys for cheap and say its easy to think that cheap windows keys is normal. Also there are plenty of legit ways to get windows keys second hand for cheap as well so the argument that cheap equals illegal/stolen is proven wrong in that case. I believe anyone with a competent lawyer would be able to win this case tbh. 

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I doubt the police know that law as well as a lawyer. There are tons of cases that go to court because the cops think they have solid evidence yet lose miserably. Unless a good DA is involved I wouldn't say they for sure know what they are doing to the extent of having sufficient evidence of a crime. Hell I would argue that the argument for the crime is shaky at best as the whole premise of the case is based off of the buyers knowing the market price of windows keys and that its unreasonable to believe that the keys that were purchased were legit. The problem with that argument is its easy to point out the many other sites that sell windows keys for cheap and say its easy to think that cheap windows keys is normal. Also there are plenty of legit ways to get windows keys second hand for cheap as well so the argument that cheap equals illegal/stolen is proven wrong in that case. I believe anyone with a competent lawyer would be able to win this case tbh. 

I don’t.  “Tons of cases” sure, but what percentage? I think it not super likely  Partially because they’ve got lawyers too.  The dice roll funny for everybody though.  In the US, most issues are a lone officer acting on personal recognizance.  This isn’t that. 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[spartaman64]

On 3/8/2021 at 5:33 PM, leadeater said:

Actually no, it doesn't need to be 1000x, it just need to be unreasonably cheap at all. That's where the "fallen off the back of a truck" meme comes from. If something is unreasonably cheap and thus suspicious and you buy it knowingly anyway you are susceptible to being charged with receiving stolen goods. If you don't ask for proof of purchase then you have no defense.

 

Edit:

But you are right in that this doesn't match the article, it wasn't supposed to. It's just an example of if a price is too low the buyer is expected to reasonably know that it is suspicious.

but how is that determined and how are people supposed to know? i recently bought a watch for $1200 below msrp does that mean in germany i would be in trouble for that?

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, spartaman64 said:

but how is that determined and how are people supposed to know? i recently bought a watch for $1200 below msrp does that mean in germany i would be charged with buying unreasonably cheap stuff

German laws and legal structure are not US laws and legal structure.  Was this watch 90% off?  

[Sorenson]

On 3/8/2021 at 2:51 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id argue that selling those keys for less than 10% of retal seems really sketchy, and seems like someting weird is going on, and that there sellers also aren't large distrubitors, like CDW or newegg. They also aren't microsoft authorized distrubitor. There are probably enough signs that these are stolen goods.

I’ve never paid more than $12 for windows. I either get it through school cheap (definitely legal), through my mom’s educator discount (definitely legal), or of scd key (probably legal). I don’t know anyone that pays full price for windows and I buy the key through YouTube ads so it’s not hard to see why people would think they aren’t stolen.
 

Do I trust SCDKey with my credit card? No. But that doesn’t mean I think the keys are stolen.

[spartaman64]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

German laws and legal structure are not US laws and legal structure.  Was this watch 90% off?  

nope but still what's the thresh hold is it 90%? and how are people supposed to know? also you can probably get an iphone 5 today for more than 90% off msrp

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

I’ve never paid more than $12 for windows. I either get it through school cheap (definitely legal), through my mom’s educator discount (definitely legal), or of scd key (probably legal). I don’t know anyone that pays full price for windows and I buy the key through YouTube ads so it’s not hard to see why people would think they aren’t stolen.
 

Do I trust SCDKey with my credit card? No. But that doesn’t mean I think the keys are stolen.

In two of the instances it’s group association, and in the third instance you apparently worry that it is shady.  It doesn’t seem like this is a strong refutation.  

[MageTank]

On 3/8/2021 at 6:28 PM, leadeater said:

Hey want to buy my 2021 LG 80" OLED TV from me, it's only $1000. Going cheap mate, cash only.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Yes buying this would be a crime, unless I were actually stupid enough to sell my legally obtained OLED TV for this lol

 

Not entirely sure I follow the logic on this one in the context of the article. Plenty of scorned lovers selling the belongings of cheating spouses at an insane discount. I've even come across cheaply sold computer components from parents making an example out of children with poor grades in school. While I am a firm believer in the "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" mentality, it isn't always the case, nor would I consider it a crime to buy from these people (nor would I consider the sellers stupid for getting rid of the goods in a quick, albeit vindictive manner).

 

I've also been known among my circle of friends to get rid of my old hardware at obscenely low prices or even for free simply to make space on my benches or in my hardware closet. I don't really consider myself stupid for taking the loss if someone else benefits from something I am no longer using, lol.