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

[Bombastinator]

23 minutes ago, MageTank said:

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.

If they simply picked every key sale below a certain price point this could be an issue.  “Thousands” could well be a relatively small percentage of even that though.  A million is a thousand thousand  Germany in the 80’s had a population something like 1/3rd the size of the US.  Even just windows key buyers might be in the millions. Even if the relative population has dropped thats still a whole heckuva lot more than a thousand.  A million people is a single not especially large city. If they’re only picking “thousands” that could well be only a percentage of the really cheap keys, implying that they cut it off and simply aren’t even looking at keys beyond a certain price point even though they may have the same problems. 
 

I don’t think there’s enough information here to conclude what is even going on much less how “right” it is.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Sorenson]

47 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

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.  

I’ve personally bought six windows installs off them over the past few years with friends buying a couple more and we’ve never had an issue. My point was more that if you know where to look the price is not $100+. I’m fairly certain Microsoft price segments it’s products that way only the suckers pay full price for software.

 

Microsoft switched their business model from focusing on selling windows software to advertising years ago. That is why your $200 copy of windows 10 comes with candy crush and advertiser tracking preinstalled.

[leadeater]

1 hour 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 in trouble for that?

Only if you had good reason to suspect that it were stolen, ignored that suspicion and brought it anyway, and actually admitted to that. You don't actually have to admit to that so it becomes very hard to prove, which is why police rarely if ever charge people with receiving stolen good for smaller things like this unless the case is very obvious and/or they want you for something else.

 

Just remember that in general ignorance is not a criminal defense, so it's not a good idea to rely on it even if in cases it can work.

[Distinctly Average]

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Just remember that in general ignorance is not a criminal defense, so it's not a good idea to rely on it even if in cases it can work.

In general, ignorance is not a valid defence either. An extreme example, you cannot say after you murdered someone that you didn’t know murder was illegal. Tax offices all over the world will nail you to the wall for any missed tax you didn’t know about. Same goes for receiving stolen goods, sometimes prosecutions take place not because of the individual value of the goods, but to set an example.

[Bombastinator]

45 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

I’ve personally bought six windows installs off them over the past few years with friends buying a couple more and we’ve never had an issue. My point was more that if you know where to look the price is not $100+. I’m fairly certain Microsoft price segments it’s products that way only the suckers pay full price for software.

 

Microsoft switched their business model from focusing on selling windows software to advertising years ago. That is why your $200 copy of windows 10 comes with candy crush and advertiser tracking preinstalled.

The candy crush replaced some other standard game because someone thought the game was too long in the tooth.  Might have been minesweeper.  There are people who apparently love that game though so I just dont know.  The tracking though?  No excuse.  I got the impression microsoft tracked a whole lot less than Google/Netscape though.  Might still be more than enough to cause problems even if true though 

[Dracarris]

Those keys were sold at nationwide-present supermarket chains (Edeka), like Walmart in the US for the density of stores (but a bit "higher" class supermarket). Honestly, if a retailer with this scale sells you sth, there is no freakin way you have to assume it is not legit. Not even mentioning that many people simply have absolutely no clue, what the "regular" price of Win10 is.

 

Since MS gave Win10 away for completely free as Win7/8 upgrades for years, I was surprised to hear they even charge for it, and then shocked again when I heard that the prices are in the 3-digits. I assumed an OS is now a commodity (which makes money after it has been installed) that you get for free and maybe pay 10-20 for a phyiscal install medium.

 

This is yet another showcase of how utterly bad protected German citizens are from large international corporations and how anti-consumer the whole law system is. Being criminally charged and having very fundamental rights infringed and ignored for cases with south of 300$ of possible damages - W T F. Knocking down a door should be the absolute exception, only done in cases where there is strong evidence for severe criminal acts. Knocking down a door because of a (possibly) stolen Windows key, this is pure insanity.

[Mihle]

17 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

This is yet another showcase of how utterly bad protected German citizens are from large international corporations and how anti-consumer the whole law system is. Being criminally charged and having very fundamental rights infringed and ignored for cases with south of 300$ of possible damages - W T F. Knocking down a door should be the absolute exception, only done in cases where there is strong evidence for severe criminal acts. Knocking down a door because of a (possibly) stolen Windows key, this is pure insanity.

Wtf are you talking about? Where do you get any of that from?

[Dracarris]

36 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Wtf are you talking about? Where do you get any of that from?

Exactly which part do you mean? Knocking down doors because of a 150Euro license? Private homes being especially protected by law not to be forcefully entered unless absolutely necessary?

 

Or do you mean the fact that ISPs are regularly forced by courts to name - in sheer masses - accounts and addresses of people who have allegedly shared a TV series episode through bittorrent? Where all evidence are IP lists that are generated by private companies which are under no control by the government?

 

So again, where was I exactly wrong?

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Those keys were sold at nationwide-present supermarket chains (Edeka), like Walmart in the US for the density of stores (but a bit "higher" class supermarket). Honestly, if a retailer with this scale sells you sth, there is no freakin way you have to assume it is not legit. Not even mentioning that many people simply have absolutely no clue, what the "regular" price of Win10 is.

 

Since MS gave Win10 away for completely free as Win7/8 upgrades for years, I was surprised to hear they even charge for it, and then shocked again when I heard that the prices are in the 3-digits. I assumed an OS is now a commodity (which makes money after it has been installed) that you get for free and maybe pay 10-20 for a phyiscal install medium.

 

This is yet another showcase of how utterly bad protected German citizens are from large international corporations and how anti-consumer the whole law system is. Being criminally charged and having very fundamental rights infringed and ignored for cases with south of 300$ of possible damages - W T F. Knocking down a door should be the absolute exception, only done in cases where there is strong evidence for severe criminal acts. Knocking down a door because of a (possibly) stolen Windows key, this is pure insanity.

There seems to be some conclusion jumping here.  Namely that the police are attempting to prosecute every person who bought keys below a certain price point.  That may not be the case. There are some key words here that are vague.  What exactly is meant by “targeting” for example.  It could for instance mean that they only even looked at stuff below a certain price point because the amount of abuse was so wide spread it was outside the scope of their system.

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

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. 

Hey if what was said was "im pretty sure the prosecuters or DA know the law" then I would have agreed but to say "I'm pretty sure the cops know the law" I would say yes and no. They probably know the law to an extent but not to the extent of if something will hold up in court or if edge cases fall under the law. Tbh there are still cases where DA bring something to court that won't likely stick but do so anyways as its part of due process. Its not like they can always get the exact evidence they want to prosecute a crime and sometimes they simply have to work with what they got in hopes that they will get the criminal and sometimes things like getting them on perjury. anyways there can is shacky st best as there argument simply doesn't hold true as you can find windows keys legally for cheap so to say that low priced key=illegal keys like they argue is simply a false premise.

[SpikeSpiegel]

On 3/8/2021 at 5:55 PM, Venson said:

Add:
Those keys Lizengo distributed originated largely from Asia and are "defacto" legal keys. 

 

In Asia.

Not in europe.

The problem is that Metal Scrappers in China or SEA (South East Asia) are selling the license keys to suppliers in E.U./USA/etc.  And Microsoft can't control what those Metal Scrappers are doing in those countries.  Metal Recyclers and Scrappers just ship the metal computer cases to those countries and they take the license keys off the OEM machines or barebone systems and sell them off a profit.

[Bombastinator]

 

2 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Hey if what was said was "im pretty sure the prosecuters or DA know the law" then I would have agreed but to say "I'm pretty sure the cops know the law" I would say yes and no. They probably know the law to an extent but not to the extent of if something will hold up in court or if edge cases fall under the law. Tbh there are still cases where DA bring something to court that won't likely stick but do so anyways as its part of due process. Its not like they can always get the exact evidence they want to prosecute a crime and sometimes they simply have to work with what they got in hopes that they will get the criminal and sometimes things like getting them on perjury. anyways there can is shacky st best as there argument simply doesn't hold true as you can find windows keys legally for cheap so to say that low priced key=illegal keys like they argue is simply a false premise.

I’m not at all sure they’re arguing that though.  They’re seems to be an assumption that they’re prosecuting every instance.  They may have simply limited their scope of examination to those.  I just don’t know, and while the article implies the first it doesn’t actually say it.

Edited March 12, 2021 by Bombastinator

[TetraSky]

If I'm looking up keys on Ebay, and I get this :

Spoiler

Other than the price, nothings makes it seems like it could lead me in legal trouble...
Sounds like German laws are a bit too draconian in dictating who can sell something and for how much.

At the end of the day, the keys are still legitimate. Because if they weren't and were bought with stolen credit cards, you can bet Microsoft would simply deactivate those keys.

3 years of jail time for buying a product key from 3rd party resellers??? You think you're doing the right thing by buying a key, even if it's cheap, but it leads to more legal trouble than simply pirating the damn thing... Incredible.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

If I'm looking up keys on Ebay, and I get this :

  Hide contents

Other than the price, nothings makes it seems like it could lead me in legal trouble...
Sounds like German laws are a bit too draconian in dictating who can sell something and for how much.

At the end of the day, the keys are still legitimate. Because if they weren't and were bought with stolen credit cards, you can bet Microsoft would simply deactivate those keys.

Dependent on behavior by microsoft.  There’s going to be a delay between someone selling a key bought with stolen money and the deactivation of that key.  That’s a different crime in a different nation than is being talked about though I think. The issue doesn’t seem to be about people laundering stolen credit card money with windows keys, but about keys being shipped across license zones.  Or something.

[Mihle]

7 hours ago, Dracarris said:

Exactly which part do you mean? Knocking down doors because of a 150Euro license? Private homes being especially protected by law not to be forcefully entered unless absolutely necessary?

 

Or do you mean the fact that ISPs are regularly forced by courts to name - in sheer masses - accounts and addresses of people who have allegedly shared a TV series episode through bittorrent? Where all evidence are IP lists that are generated by private companies which are under no control by the government?

 

So again, where was I exactly wrong?

Knocking down door part. 

Also, I don't know where you are from, but Germany(and rest of the EU) have way better consumer protection laws than what Canada and especially US do.

 

If you have done something criminal, you have done something criminal.

 

And the ISP thing, the same thing happens in US or other EU countries(don't know if all)...

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

.

3 years of jail time for buying a product key from 3rd party resellers??? You think you're doing the right thing by buying a key, even if it's cheap, but it leads to more legal trouble than simply pirating the damn thing... Incredible.

If German law is anything like in my country, law being up to 3 years, and you only do it once, you won't get anywhere near 3 years. Probably just a fine. 3 years is for those that have done it quite a lot/many times.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, Mihle said:

Knocking down door part.

And what exactly is wrong about what I said?

1 hour ago, Mihle said:

Also, I don't know where you are from, but Germany(and rest of the EU) have way better consumer protection laws than what Canada and especially US do.

I am from Germany. And those better consumer protection laws do nothing to data privacy at all. If some big company thinks you harmed them the slightest, you simply become the transparent citizen. The same is true for when the government thinks you did sth wrong. Consumer protection is not equal to consumer data privacy. VPN companies like PrivateInternetAccess are US-based, because there nobody forces them to keep IP logs, which is not true for Germany.

1 hour ago, Mihle said:

If you have done something criminal, you have done something criminal.

This is where you are very wrong. Criminial is not equal criminal, there are a lot of different degrees, and the  same applies for the corresponding measures and actions by the legal system. And a "criminal" act with 200-300$ of possible damages never ever justifies knocking down doors.

1 hour ago, Mihle said:

And the ISP thing, the same thing happens in US or other EU countries(don't know if all)...

Again, no. Very few other EU countries, if at all, practice this. Even if it would be true, that would not make it okay. In the US, your ISP sends you a letter telling you to stop, because ISP and film studios are for some strange reason often the same company.

 

In Germany, the film studios order law firms to make as much money as possible for them (it never was about protecting their rights, simply a money-making scheme for all involved parties). The law firms then order private companys to snoop bittorrent traffic, collect IPs from anyone that uploads even a single kB and report all those IPs to courts, which then, without checking at all, order the ISP to give out the account holder.

The problem is that naming the account holder is a serious breach of privacy and again simply not justified for alleged damages of 200-300$, as practiced in most countries. Especially if the collection of the "offending" IPs is done by private companies which could just put any IP on that list and no governmental institution having any way to check whether the entries are legit.

[FloRolf]

In other words, you are better off having the "activate windows" watermark at the bottom than spending 2€ on a key. Got it. 

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

And what exactly is wrong about what I said?

Where do you have it from that they knock down doors because of this?

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

I am from Germany. And those better consumer protection laws do nothing to data privacy at all. If some big company thinks you harmed them the slightest, you simply become the transparent citizen. The same is true for when the government thinks you did sth wrong. Consumer protection is not equal to consumer data privacy. VPN companies like PrivateInternetAccess are US-based, because there nobody forces them to keep IP logs, which is not true for Germany.

How do you know that US government don't have IP logs via government order even if PIA itself doesn't? As far as I know, you can't really know.

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

This is where you are very wrong. Criminial is not equal criminal, there are a lot of different degrees, and the  same applies for the corresponding measures and actions by the legal system. And a "criminal" act with 200-300$ of possible damages never ever justifies knocking down doors.

I know that, my point was that if you do something very small thing, you can't say it doesn't matter because it's so small, if it's illegal, it's still illegal. And where do you have from that they knock down doors because of this? Link?

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Again, no. Very few other EU countries, if at all, practice this. Even if it would be true, that would not make it okay. In the US, your ISP sends you a letter telling you to stop, because ISP and film studios are for some strange reason often the same company.

I am not arguing if it's good or not.

It happens in UK(I know they aren't in EU anymore, but they were in some cases in the past when it has happened), I think I miss remembered what countries had this, or mixed it with they requiring ISP to block spesific IP/network addresses, because that almost will countries do. (Not that it does much or not)

Most countries could do it if it's a sharer tho.

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

In Germany, the film studios order law firms to make as much money as possible for them (it never was about protecting their rights, simply a money-making scheme for all involved parties). The law firms then order private companys to snoop bittorrent traffic, collect IPs from anyone that uploads even a single kB and report all those IPs to courts, which then, without checking at all, order the ISP to give out the account holder.

The problem is that naming the account holder is a serious breach of privacy and again simply not justified for alleged damages of 200-300$, as practiced in most countries. Especially if the collection of the "offending" IPs is done by private companies which could just put any IP on that list and no governmental institution having any way to check whether the entries are legit.

I didn't know no checking happened.

[Dracarris]

15 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Where do you have it from that they knock down doors because of this?

It's in OPs sources, which unfortunately are in German:

Quote

Sources

Windows und Office: Tausende Verfahren wegen unseriöser Microsoft-Lizenzen - Golem.de

Hausdurchsuchungen wegen günstiger Microsoft Product Keys - 100.000 Verfahren gegen Lizenzgo-Käufer! - YouTube

The header of the golem-source is translated as

Quote

Anyone who buys a very cheap license key for Microsoft products can expect to be summoned by the police or have their home searched.

Statement of an attorney, still from the golem article:

Quote

Because the investigations were not very fruitful, a few individual cases in Rhineland-Palatinate actually resulted in house searches being ordered.

This is nothing short of outrageous IMHO.

[Stahlmann]

I'm no lawyer, but i live in germany. I don't think most people have to fear anything from this. I can pretty much guarantee that no one is going to jail for this. The worst thing that could happen if you bought one of these keys is probably a small fine. I german law you are innoccent until PROVEN otherwise. In most cases the key-buyer will just say they didn't have any reason to doubt the legitimacy of the key and it won't go any further. It's very unreasonable to expect from people to do background research on every seller you buy from IMO.

 

And again, it's also very unreasonable to order a home search because you suspect that someone might have bought a illegal SOFTWARE key.

[Dracarris]

8 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

And again, it's also very unreasonable to order a home search because you suspect that someone might have bought a illegal SOFTWARE key.

Exactly, and yet it happened. If I would be affected (having bought such a key), I'd not fear going to jail or being convicted but having the privacy of my home infringed.

[Stahlmann]

4 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Exactly, and yet it happened. If I would be affected (having bought such a key), I'd not fear going to jail or being convicted but having the privacy of my home infringed.

If it would happen to me i'd sue them for invading my privacy (and maybe causing damage to my property) without a proper reason.

[Stahlmann]

@Dracarris

Afaik they also need the approval (search warrant) from a judge to conduct a home search. If a judge actually approves a home search because of this, then they obviously have no idea what this is even about...

[Mihle]

29 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

It's in OPs sources, which unfortunately are in German:

The header of the golem-source is translated as

Statement of an attorney, still from the golem article:

This is nothing short of outrageous IMHO.

If it really says that then wtf.

If it was to search those people that might be selling lots of keys, then understandable, but doing it for every one that buys it seems overkill.