4 ms·

Off of their website. It might be free, but Microsoft is still the only party who can legally distribute it (or OEMs that have been granted that right from Micr

Off of their website. It might be free, but Microsoft is still the only party who can legally distribute it (or OEMs that have been granted that right from Microsoft). Just because it’s free doesn’t mean the owner doesn’t have rights. (This is also the basis of the GPL.)

dahauns 9y ago
I agree with you in principle, but the copyright infringement itself was not even up for debate in this case - he pleaded guilty on that. It's about the damages.
- mbreese 9y ago
  I agree that the damages seem excessive. But that’s almost an impossible thing to figure out. On one hand, it’s free to download. On the other - there maybe some value to Microsoft to know who is using that recovery tool. There probably is some lost license revenue too. But how do you calculate that? I hope that aspect get appealed and a more reasonable punishment is found. From my reading though, it didn’t seem like he did plead guilty to the copyright infringement of the data, only the logos. I don’t know what all of the counts were, but he only plead to a subset of them. And going in, his press interviews seemed to suggest that he didn’t quite get what the problem was. But again, the punishment seems really harsh.
djrogers 9y ago
No, but the value of the disks is directly linked to sentencing - since the value was determined to be $25/ea, the sentence was very stiff. If the value had been determined to be closer to $0, it could have been a small fine, probation, time served etc.
drtillberg 9y ago
That is the way copyright works in general, except it isn't the way the Internet works. When I download from Microsoft, I actually am getting a secondhand copy from my ISP, who got it maybe from Microsoft, or maybe some other party in the chain between me and Microsoft. In addition, if we are talking about general content of the Microsoft website, search engines routinely index store and cache the contents, and offer to serve it to third parties, without any intervention from Microsoft. So no, if you post it on a website society recognizes that you are offering to allow a host of intermediaries copy and serve the content to intended end-users. Maybe this guy isn't all that sympathetic, maybe it's a little confusing because we are talking about CDs and binaries, but when you sit down and think about it this decision makes no sense. What a colossal waste of resources.

dahauns 9y ago

I agree with you in principle, but the copyright infringement itself was not even up for debate in this case - he pleaded guilty on that. It's about the damages.

mbreese 9y ago
I agree that the damages seem excessive. But that’s almost an impossible thing to figure out. On one hand, it’s free to download. On the other - there maybe some value to Microsoft to know who is using that recovery tool. There probably is some lost license revenue too. But how do you calculate that? I hope that aspect get appealed and a more reasonable punishment is found. From my reading though, it didn’t seem like he did plead guilty to the copyright infringement of the data, only the logos. I don’t know what all of the counts were, but he only plead to a subset of them. And going in, his press interviews seemed to suggest that he didn’t quite get what the problem was. But again, the punishment seems really harsh.

djrogers 9y ago

No, but the value of the disks is directly linked to sentencing - since the value was determined to be $25/ea, the sentence was very stiff. If the value had been determined to be closer to $0, it could have been a small fine, probation, time served etc.

drtillberg 9y ago

That is the way copyright works in general, except it isn't the way the Internet works. When I download from Microsoft, I actually am getting a secondhand copy from my ISP, who got it maybe from Microsoft, or maybe some other party in the chain between me and Microsoft. In addition, if we are talking about general content of the Microsoft website, search engines routinely index store and cache the contents, and offer to serve it to third parties, without any intervention from Microsoft. So no, if you post it on a website society recognizes that you are offering to allow a host of intermediaries copy and serve the content to intended end-users. Maybe this guy isn't all that sympathetic, maybe it's a little confusing because we are talking about CDs and binaries, but when you sit down and think about it this decision makes no sense. What a colossal waste of resources.