Man gets 15 months in prison for selling "worthless" Windows restore disks

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, STRESSMASTER said:

I just believe that replacement discs should be sold to people for cost plus S&H at most. I personally can get them online from MS and make a bootable DVD or USB but there is a ton of ppl that can not do this.

erm... ok... Even when I was on dial up (preonline downloading, over a decade ago) I never had that issue... Besides most people who know how to use the install disc would more than likely know how to get/make one for free, or be at least smart enough to ask. For everyone else there is BB GS or other shops.

 

Also the pay for shipping method is a failed reason why Ubuntu doesn't ship discs anymore. They used to offer them for free but that was expensive, then they asked for a small fee, then ultimately stopped. $25 is a reasonable fee for a replacement disc where MS could simply say "buy a new OS at full price"

[STRESSMASTER]

2 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

erm... ok... Even when I was on dial up (preonline downloading, over a decade ago) I never had that issue... Besides most people who know how to use the install disc would more than likely know how to get/make one for free, or be at least smart enough to ask. For everyone else there is BB GS or other shops.

 

Also the pay for shipping method is a failed reason why Ubuntu doesn't ship discs anymore. They used to offer them for free but that was expensive, then they asked for a small fee, then ultimately stopped. $25 is a reasonable fee for a replacement disc where MS could simply say "buy a new OS at full price"

I normally would agree with that and if it was 2 years ago I would totally agree with it. However, now MS has closed off downloads of there OS's unless your part of the partner program.

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, STRESSMASTER said:

I normally would agree with that and if it was 2 years ago I would totally agree with it. However, now MS has closed off downloads of there OS's unless your part of the partner program.

As a stand alone customer I seem to have access to my OS and windows 7 seems to be fine too(I don't have a key with me to test it)...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows7

 

[STRESSMASTER]

23 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

As a stand alone customer I seem to have access to my OS and windows 7 seems to be fine too(I don't have a key with me to test it)...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows7

 

yeah about that site..... It does not work worth a darn for anything OEM. works fine for retail keys and if you have windows 10 oem or retail but not for many OEM keys older than windows 10. I have had to call MS many times to get a reissue of a OEM to RETAIL key just to use that site.

[ScratchCat]

So putting an official freely downloadable program onto a disk and selling the item for the price of the disk is producing counterfeit products?

I am not too sure how he was found to be guilty of producing counterfeit goods:

1. Microsoft offers a similar tool in the form of the Media Creation Tool.
2. He was not making any money off it - simply helping people who couldn't do it by themselves.
3. Windows disks cannot be used to produce counterfeit copies of Windows - you need a licence key for that. Microsoft, if this really produces counterfeit copies please remove the activation requirement for Windows. Nope? Then this is not harming your sales.

Windows 10 force upgrades, Windows 10 in general, Cortana, data collection.... Microsoft what are you doing?

[AshleyAshes]

2 hours ago, STRESSMASTER said:

It costs about 25 cents for a DVD blank. he wasn't doing it to make money that is for sure

I'm not really sure that he used record able DVD media.  He produced 28 000 units, that's a LOT of discs, like a HELL OF A LOT.  You'd basically have to be insane to produce 28 000 units using recordable media.  With that many discs, you'd go to a replication plant and get discs pressed since it'd be a lot cheaper and faster on that scale.

 

It's kinda like using your desktop printer.  Gonna pent 50 copies of your resume?  Time for a desktop printer.  Gonna print 5 000 copies of your novel?  You need a printing press.

[GoodBytes]

 - Thread Merge, and unlocked -

[GoodBytes]

I don't know, to me it is simple.

 

 1- He was making money by charging 25$ for his restore disk that are Windows ISO images. So basically, he was distributing Windows without permission from Microsoft and making money.

 

 2- Giving him the benefit of the doubt, instead of getting the OS actual ISO image, he torrented or downloaded ISOs from the web, thinking they are legit, non modified copies of Windows, thinking he is doing good, but a or some were not. They might not activate Windows as the license if missing and isn't cracked, but they have been been modified. This is a point that Microsoft must have demonstrated this in court. Probably did a md5 and sha-256 of of the his disk and the official disk of Windows showing to the court that they are not identical to Microsoft official release.

 

I don't know what exactly happen in court. He probably had a terrible lawyer defending him, or Microsoft showed point #2 (the Windows install disk he was distributing didn't match the official disk), and he could not defend the point that Windows is still secure by showing what changed, or defend his point by showing the md5 and sha-256 of HIS OFFICIAL disk, which I assume could not do as he got it online instead.

[ARikozuM]

"Companies don't sell recovery discs". Dell does, HP does, et cetera. They only keep those discs for a year or two and good luck trying to get them afterwards. They usually charge $20-40. Losing "potential" sales isn't verifiable for similar reasons to piracy as those "lost sales" most likely weren't going to purchase anyway. This is only hurting consumers and machines that would already have Windows licenses attached. 

[knightslugger]

guys, it doesn't matter. the recovery disks are IP. If you burn a copy onto a CD/DVD and then offer it for sale as genuine (explicit or implicit)... it is a counterfeit product.

[AntonChigurh]

I honestly don't get what the fuss is about. I agree with the court tbh. If he's an activist in this field, then he should have been smart enough to understand copyright laws and their interpretations. His cause and intentions were noble, but his execution was poor, if not terrible.

[Canada EH]

On 4/25/2018 at 3:27 PM, RoyalGamer1 said:

because of the $700,000. if it was a few hundred then they wouldn't care 

You got that right, plus I bet he has prior convictions.

 

So I bet this is in the USA, he will be out in no time, or House Arrest like Bill Cosby is getting for rape.

In Canada the MS Disk guy would have gotten probation.

[vanished]

There's now an actual news post on this so the discussion should continue there

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/921071-prison-for-making-counterfeit-windows-restore-disks/