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E-Waste Innovator Will Go To Jail For Making Windows Restore Disks That Only Worked With Valid Licenses (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: California man Eric Lundgren, an electronic waste entrepreneur who produced tens of thousands of Windows restore disks intended to extend the lifespan of aging computers, lost a federal appeals court case in Miami after it ruled "he had infringed Microsoft's products to the tune of $700,000," the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Per the Post, the appeals court ruled Lundgren's original sentence of 15 months in prison and a $50,000 fine would stay, despite the software being freely available online and only compatible with valid Windows licenses: "The appeals court upheld a federal district judge's ruling that the disks made by Eric Lundgren to restore Microsoft operating systems had a value of $25 apiece, even though they could be downloaded free and could be used only on computers with a valid Microsoft license. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit initially granted Lundgren an emergency stay of his prison sentence, shortly before he was to surrender, but then affirmed his original 15-month sentence and $50,000 fine without hearing oral argument in a ruling issued April 11." All told, the court valued 28,000 restore disks he produced at $700,000, despite testimony from software expert Glenn Weadock that they were worth essentially zero.
'He didn't intend to commit a crime.'
I hear that works great.
Are you a Microsoft employee? I don't see how any normal rational person could justify his distribution of free-as-in-beer bits software as a violation of Microsoft's rights or that the disks had any value beyond shipping/handling, a dime for the disk and a small amount for HIS time to provide the service.
If my old computer is fucked because Microsoft Windows ate itself how am I supposed to download and burn a disk to repair it? Oh, right. With my other Microsoft Windows computer I bought just to restore the first Microsoft computer I bought. Makes sense, uh huh. In Redmond, maybe.
This was a grave injustice. There was zero justification for a fine, much less JAIL TIME!!! for providing a useful service to victims o Microsoft' s shitty self-destroying software.
Microsoft nor anyone else was harmed in any way by his actions.
How is our Microsoft stock doing, shill?
He plead GUILTY.
Having plead GUILTY he had admitted he was guilty and therefore admitted violation of the law, and all that transpired was to determine the extent (for the purposes of sentencing) of his self-admitted GUILTYness. After having pleaded GUILTY to HAVING COMMITTED A CRIME it was not open to him to argue that NO CRIME occurred.
He should have pleaded NOT GUILTY and gone to trial. on the merits.
This is a prime example of the 'Golden Rule': Those who have the gold make the rules. Microsoft, being the asshole corporation they are, has probably an entire building full of high-priced lawyers, and they will pile on anybody they feel like and bury them. This Eric Lundgren probably doesn't even have a fraction of the liquid assets that Microsoft has and was just plain destroyed via attrition. The reason why, by the way: it went against their long-term objective to force everyone to use Windows 10, and become part of the Microsoft bot-net. Microsoft needs to be taken down and chopped up again. Hell, for that matter, big corporations in general, especially here in the U.S., need to be taken down and chopped up. There used to be such a concept as 'capitalism in the public interest', but I don't see that happening today. I think it's about time it started happening.