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[Editor's note: We generally try to provide balanced coverage of a story. This interview is "straight from the horse's mouth" and is, therefore, going to contain the biases of the interviewee. Nonetheless, we thought the story interesting enough that we wanted to put it out to the community to discuss. --martyb]
Roy Schestowitz over at Techrights has an informal, follow-up interview with e-waste recycler Eric Lundgren about his ordeal with Microsoft. Lundgren spent time incarcerated as a result of his efforts to re-use old Wintel computers and keep them out of the landfill. He is now finally out of prison.
"The judge didn't understand the difference between a "Restore CD" and a "License"," he complained, "and Microsoft convinced the judge that the "Restore CD" was of equal value and functionality to a new MSFT OS w. new license! I was honestly dumbfounded.. I kept waiting for someone to get it in court .. Instead – The judge threw out all of my expert witness' testimony and only kept Microsoft's testimony.."
[...] Lundgren was sort of tricked if not blackmailed. It was the old trick of plea 'bargain' that was leveraged against him. "They threatened me with 47 Years in Prison," he told us. "So my only choice was to plea-bargain.. I told them I would ONLY plead guilty to "Restore CD Without License" but then Microsoft convinced the judge to value a Restore CD at the SAME VALUE as a Full Microsoft OS w. License!"
Earlier on SN:
Microsoft's Full Response to the Lundgren Counterfeiting Conviction (2018)
California Man Loses Appeal in Copyright Infringement Case (2018)
'E-Waste' Recycling Innovator Faces Prison for Trying to Extend Life Span of PCs (2018)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05 2019, @03:28PM (1 child)
Microsoft will now let you download a windows 10 pro iso straight from their website. No questions asked.
I wasn't able to use it (no burner) so I used my stand alone OEM copy of windows 10 pro on a laptop with a bad install. Crossing my fingers I'd be able to use the laptop's license key with my media. Apparently you also need a special burning tool for usb drives and it only runs on windows. (I'm sure i could have figured it out but I couldn't find any explanation why this tool is special.. anywhere)
Well somehow it knew the laptop's key and worked flawlessly without asking me any questions.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:47PM
It's not that you need a special tool, but they give you one for free.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56485 [microsoft.com]
You can still use something like Rufus https://rufus.ie/ [rufus.ie] if you want a non-microsoft tool on Windows. I honestly don't know how to do it on Linux. I use dd for Linux .isos, but I don't know if it would work for a Windows .iso.
Trivia: The USB download tool was open source before Microsoft put codeplex out to pasture. Someone (I guess I'll volunteer) needs to go see if that can be forklifted over to GitHub.