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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: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday August 05 2019, @04:38PM (18 children)
Media with an information downloadable for free from the MS site [microsoft.com], right?
So, his only offense was "making visually high quality counterfeits" and saving MS bandwidth, ain't it?
Or was the mistake that he didn't want to pay a new license but use the original one printed on the OEM label still stuck on the refurbished computer?
'Cause that's what MS asked the judge to consider, a lost profit from not selling new "refurbisher licenses", when the original ones (the doctrine of first sale) were perfectly valid and legit. So please mr judge, sir, lock him up, we don't care about those computers becoming ewaste, our profit must not suffer.
So which of the two, Elizabeth?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday August 05 2019, @06:01PM (10 children)
She makes a good point, don't harsh on her like that. MS' licensing practices suck to be sure and the rules about who can and who cannot use the downloaded ISO free are completely arbitrary, but if MS wants to be that way it can.
As for first sale doctrine, surely that applies when you actually have the thing first sold. If I buy a book, lose the last chapter somehow, and sell the book, the next owner can't go down to a bookstore and photocopy the last chapter, reinsert into the book, and then sell it again. You sell what'cha got. With these computers, the original restore discs that were first sold with the machines are gone for whatever reason. When he went to China and made exacting duplicates, he was trying to help people get something they never bought.
Secondly, I would guess that in the wholesale market for refurbishers, the lack of a restore disc and the $25 hit that entails would be well known and that computers without restore discs cost less. By counterfeiting restore discs, he's hurting linux users by artificially increasing the public retail value of these old computers. A person like me would actually prefer one that has no MS license because presumably, I should get at least a $25 break on the hardware.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday August 05 2019, @07:52PM (4 children)
Except what they bought included the original license. The same MAY actually apply to that damaged book as well. Perhaps it's time to revisit the whole wave/particle duality that publishers want us to believe. It's either a physical medium OR it's a license. No more picking whichever one brings in the most money on a per-incident basis.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 05 2019, @08:48PM (3 children)
If it is a physical product then the answer is easy: the discs are lost and Eric was counterfeiting.
If it is a license, then we need to know what the license says about transferability. It appears that there is a license that follows the physical discs as opposed to the purchaser, so that is at least somewhat lenient -- MS could if it wanted to, make the license follow a person/computer combo if it wanted to be the most draconian.
Anyway, the issues people have is that MS is greedy. That's a surprise. /s The problem in this case is that Eric and his partner were looking to profit from MS' greed through counterfeiting Dell discs. That's not so laudable and contributes nothing to the world at all. In contrast, look at all the people who have worked on free software over the years -- they're heros for doing it and have made the world a better place.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday August 05 2019, @11:05PM (2 children)
I agree that Free Software and the people working on it are making the world a better place.
$4 is not actually a huge ask for saving the trouble of downloading, burning, and labeling a disk. It seems the profit is coming from actual work done rather than from unjust copying. Back when burners were less common and most people were stuck with dial-up, that was about the going rate for a Linux CD and most considered it fair enough.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 05 2019, @11:55PM (1 child)
It does seem to be a lot of effort for a low margin product, but Eric's situation is arguably different than burning and mailing a linux distro in two ways:
1: He didn't do the work, he contracted the work to Chinese (likely near-slave labor) companies. His job was essentially quality control and arranging bulk shipping.
2: A linux distro comes with a license that expressly permits -- perhaps even encourages -- people to share the work. MS' products aren't distributed that way.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:23AM
Most of the Linux CDs were contracted out for production as well. Very few were some guy in his basement (or an office) burning disks all day.
MS has the same damned ISO on their site free to download. Their license enforcement is in entering the license key when you boot the disk. Eric made no effort to alter that enforcement.
This is more like the guy offering free water suing the guy that sets up next to him offering paper cups for $0.05
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 05 2019, @09:51PM (4 children)
Hang on a minute. The publisher allows downloading the last chapter for anyone to print, except not for second-hand book sellers, for which entire books are sold.
Yes, legally the publisher is entitled to do so, but.. this doesn't mean a book without that chapter is not trashed if the book seller doesn't want to pay?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:02AM (3 children)
The double negative in the last sentence makes it hard to understand, but I'm thinking you are saying that without the last chapter, the book would be trashed because it couldn't be sold.
Anyway, it appears that a consumer can download an ISO and install windows him/herself. A refurbisher without the original disc, must pay $25 for a new one so the refurbisher can install Windows. What is stopping a refurbisher with a machine that came without discs, from saying to customers: here's a computer with windows installed for $185. If you buy it with a blank HD and download and install windows yourself, you can have the machine for $150 (I built in $10 for the time required to install Windows).
So back to your book analogy, the book with the chapter torn out could be sold. A bookseller might sell a complete non-damaged version for $3, but also put out the damaged one and say "this one is $2 but you have to go [here] and download the last chapter. It's stupid but I'm not allowed." What the book seller can't do, is download and print the last chapter and essentially charge $1 for the service by gluing it back into the binding of the damaged book.
Is that stupid? yeah. But such is the law.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:38AM (2 children)
Yes, posting before morning coffee tends to have this effect.
Nothing stops him doing so, but delivering a machine that:
1. has a blank HD and has not been tested doesn't seem in line with "selling a refurbished but working computer". If you test it installing form a recovery disk only to wipe the HD clean afterwards... what's the point?
2. as a buyer, when your money and available time is tight, you may postpone indefinitely buying a tool which can help you get out the shit (sending job applications left and right), because you can't afford $35 and the time to get that ISO from MS and burn it on a computer you can't use because, well, has a clean HD**
** I had a couple of hardship periods when $120 meant my food for 2 weeks - didn't do my heath any service eating that cheap shit, but I wasn't willing to waste my time I dedicated to looking for a job in software to get a "shelf stacking" type of job, I simply couldn't afford the time/energy budget to do it. Fortunately, I didn't miss a computer in those periods and didn't need to rely on social security.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 06 2019, @03:00AM (1 child)
I went through a time right out of school where I was couch surfing and eating wild blackberries because that is all I could afford. I do know what it is like to be poor even if I'm comfortable now. As I mentioned elsewhere, he'd be doing poor people a true favor by demoing how they can write resumes on linux just fine, plus check their facebook and twitter. It could even serve as gateway for some users toward server admin type careers. He didn't do that though -- he just counterfeited discs for personal profit.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 06 2019, @03:52AM
I get that he was to generate income from that, yes. I admit he could turn a profit, yes.
Do you care to demonstrate he intended to do this purely for personal profit reasons? (many intention are possible, including getting funds to support his recycling operations).
I love better these guys [computerbank.org.au]: based on volunteering, selling second-hands with Ubuntu installed. I donated twice when I refreshed my computers, I even pre-installed Ubuntu myself on the donated computers.
However, I'm not gonna dismiss Eric's actions as useless only because he chose to do worse then computerbank guys; and my opinion is based on the ground that stopping him is a loss for the society (less computers being reused, less people benefiting from a computer), with nobody being better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 06 2019, @03:21AM (4 children)
No, his crime was making discs containing cracked versions of Windows and selling them as legitimate Dell OEM media. It violated Microsoft's copyright, Microsoft and Dell's Trademarks, country of origin labeling laws, and customs declaration laws.
.. and again, you're not talking about small change here. The government documented $70,000 in wire transfers for these shipments.
I personally disagreed with my company's former stance of not making Windows available for download. You couldn't download XP or Win7 when this case was brought. That said, I cannot in my free-software-loving heart defend someone that selling disks of cracked software that overtly tries to deceive consumers. It's wrong.
reference: https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/2LUNDGREN6.pdf [microsoft.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 06 2019, @03:34AM (3 children)
Illegal, yes.
Did his action cause any damage to someone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:45PM (2 children)
If you ignore the monetary damage to Microsoft (Refurb licenses not sold).
If you ignore the cost to Dell (Phone support: "I tried to use my restore CD and the NIC driver wasn't installed")
If you ignore the possibility that the disc contains malware.
Then you still had damage to the end consumer when a Windows update un-cracks the distribution and the user gets the "Your software is not genuine" warning.
This was XP, and the Windows Genuine Advantage thing was a thing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday August 06 2019, @10:48PM (1 child)
Beth, you are arguing in bad faith only to paint him as "Oh, the Piiiiraaate, he solds cracked copies of Window".
You ignore the restore CD ISO was available for download, so that anyone having a secondhand computer with the original OEM license still available, could legalaly:
1. download the restore ISO and burn on a CD
2. restore the system
3. input the original OEM license
and end with legal functional second hand computer.
What he has done was to use the advantages of mass production to make step 1 cheaper and less wasteful (in terms of time and bandwidth).
> If you ignore the monetary damage to Microsoft (Refurb licenses not sold).
Unlikely that they would have been ever purchased, with an ISO available for download.
In this case, the 'refurbisher license ' is MS way to create an artificial scarcity without delivering any advantage to the eventual purchaser.
> If you ignore the cost to Dell (Phone support: "I tried to use my restore CD and the NIC driver wasn't installed")
Unlikely that would have happened, refurbishing a computer does imply testing it as working. The Recover CD is for situation post-sale.
Besides we are talking about ]second hand computers, I doubt Dell would offer warranties for equipment older than 1 year, so cal into Dell support is unlikely.
> If you ignore the possibility that the disc contains malware.
Oh, come on now. An exact copy of the original Dell Restore CD, right?
> Then you still had damage to the end consumer when a Windows update un-cracks the distribution and the user gets the "Your software is not genuine" warning.
BS - the restore only installs the system, the original OEM license is either accepted by MS after restore (and he can sell a working second-hand computer) or is not (and he can't sell it other than as ewaste).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:37PM
I can't tell if you are ignorant of the evidence in this case or just trolling.
The government's evidence from the case is here: https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/2LUNDGREN6.pdf [microsoft.com]
If you don't want it from a microsoft blog then you can create a Pacer account and download it from the court directly.
There are plenty of cases to rail against where the court gets things wrong, but do you really want to plant a flag on some back-alley shyster selling cracked copies of Windows and trying to pass them off as the real thing?
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 06 2019, @03:52AM (1 child)
Just because you can download it does not mean you can distribute it, and it definitely does not mean you can distribute it commercially and make a profit.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:00AM
It's illegal, yes. Now, spell the harm he caused by doing it.
'Cause dam' sure, I can tell what harm the (otherwise, legit) Microsoft's actions caused to society.
Demonstrate he was going to make a profit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford