How Microsoft helped imprison a man for ‘counterfeiting’ software it gives away for free

▤ Summary

In a sickening concession to bad copyright law and Microsoft’s bottom line over basic technical truths and common sense, Eric Lundgren will spend 15 months in prison for selling discs that let people reinstall Windows on licensed machines.Of course, if you don’t have a DVD burner (remember, this was a while back — these days you’d use a USB drive), you’d have to get one from a friend who has one, a licensed refurbisher, or your manufacturer (for instance, Dell or Lenovo) for a fee.That’s the official registered refurbisher program where a company might buy old laptops, wipe them and contact Microsoft saying “Hey, give us 12 Windows 7 Home licenses,” which are then provided for a deep discount — $20-40 each, down from the full retail price of hundreds.Every disc Lundgren sold to refurbishers, Microsoft argued, caused $20-40 (times .75, the profit ratio) of lost OS sales because it would be used in place of the official licensing process.Although the defense expert testified that discs containing the relevant Microsoft OS software had little or no value when unaccompanied by a product key or license, the district court explicitly stated that it did not find that testimony to be credible.

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