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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 17 2020, @08:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the Sabaku-Taisō dept.

Andy Maxwell over at TorrentFreak informs us Removing "Annoying" Windows 10 Features is a DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says:

Ninjutsu OS, a new software tool that heavily modifies Windows 10 with a huge number of tweaks, mods and extra tools, has been hit with a DMCA complaint by Microsoft. According to the copyright notice, the customizing, tweaking and disabling of Windows 10 features, even when that improves privacy, amounts to a violation of Microsoft's software license.

Since Windows was first released, people have been modifying variants of the world-famous operating system to better fit their individual requirements.

Many of these tweaks can be carried out using tools provided within the software itself but the recently-released Ninjutsu OS aims to take Windows 10 modding to a whole new level.

Released on May 7, Ninjutsu OS claims to take Windows 10 and transform it into a penetration testing powerhouse, adding huge numbers of tools (around 800) aimed at security experts, a few for regular users (qBitTorrent and Tor Browser, for example) while also removing features considered unwanted or unneeded in such an environment.

[...] According to the complaint, the above actions by Ninjutsu OS as mentioned on its Github page provide a "work around technical restrictions of the software", something which supposedly violates Microsoft's software license terms.

[...] "As such, we request that you please act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the specific pages/links described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of Microsoft content, via your company's network, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §512(d)," the DMCA complaint adds.

At first view, some may conclude that Ninjutsu OS amounts to a heavily modified yet pirated version of Windows 10. However, a video explaining how the software works [24m28s] suggests that users will actually need their own license for a genuine copy of Windows 10 to get the modifications up and running properly. Ninjutsu's creator informs TF that's indeed the case.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday June 17 2020, @09:29PM

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday June 17 2020, @09:29PM (#1009298)

    So you put a tool that heavily modifies Win10 on a Microsoft owned site ... Hmmmm ...

    That said are there not a ton of these tools that "optimize" or turn things on and off etc. Those have more or less always been around for Windows, every version has had theirs. So unless it's software piracy related, which according to them it isn't then I don't really know what would be the point of this. But tools for turning off the ads, the telemetry, the other privacy horrific things, all the visual bling-bling, the notifications, the apps and (insert all the other shit here nobody actually wants but that MS deemed fit to include) are still going to be around -- I see they mentioned O&O ShutUp10 in the article. That seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting right there.

    That said downloading something that adds another 800 "tools" to windows is probably not something I would want, that shit is bloated as it is already. Just looking at the screenshot they have over at TF is just to much screencrap ...

    That said I'm sure there will be some accidental torrent release anytime now, someone downloaded it before they pulled them for certain.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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