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

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, FloRolf said:

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

Maybe.  People are attempting to draw complete conclusions from partial information. All we know is that a large number of cases have been opened in Germany.  We don’t even know exactly how many, whom they are targeting, or what their basis is.  The behavior of microsoft regarding distribution and licensing of windows hasn’t made a lot of sense for a long time.  This is one more wrinkle in that. 

[Tieox]

Bureaucratic overreacting. 

 

Take down the company selling the keys, blacklist the keys via MS if possible, stop fucking about with people with cases that will land in court with all the effectiveness of an erection on a stud during a lesbian porno shoot. 

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, Tieox said:

Bureaucratic overreacting. 

 

Take down the company selling the keys, blacklist the keys via MS if possible, stop fucking about with people with cases that will land in court with all the effectiveness of an erection on a stud during a lesbian porno shoot. 

Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  The description seems constructed to make it seem that way.  It’s been a repetitive problem with reports of various legal actions here and elsewhere in the past.  I’ve heard people rail on about this or that legal decision, but it is generally done because they assume things about the situation that they were meant to assume by the people relating partial information to suit their purposes. 

[rand_althor_cometh]

German law is so outdated. It's a software key it could easily be discounted 99.99%. And there could be a million reasons why there could be cheaper keys via second hand resellers. Heck, Microsoft's competitors give it away for free. It's not up to the buyer to know these things.

For example: If I buy a million keys on discount, then my business goes bankrupt before I use them all, I would liquidate my keys for cheap via one of these key resellers. It's not like Microsoft is going to refund me. The buyer could imagine any such scenario. It's not their responsibility to know the inner workings of how Microsoft distributes keys.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, rand_althor_cometh said:

German law is so outdated. It's a software key it could easily be discounted 99.99%. And there could be a million reasons why there could be cheaper keys via second hand resellers. Heck, Microsoft's competitors give it away for free. It's not up to the buyer to know these things.

For example: If I buy a million keys on discount, then my business goes bankrupt before I use them all, I would liquidate my keys for cheap via one of these key resellers. It's not like Microsoft is going to refund me. The buyer could imagine any such scenario. It's not their responsibility to know the inner workings of how Microsoft distributes keys.

It’s possible it’s outdated in this situation, but even the situation is something that we don’t have a lot of information on.  My suspicion is the German police looked real close at the situation before they decided to pull the trigger on this one.