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Comment by wqweto | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure you can use the serial on the sticker of a refurbished PC. The sticker is not a license as well as the serial on this sticker is not an OS license.

The original license holder cannot transfer the OS license (unless a company is being bought by other company) so using the serial on the sticker of a refurbished PC by the new owner is generally illegal.

Probably the damages for MS come from refurbishers "assisting" their customers to install OS from repair CDs using serials from stickers left from previous PC owners -- clearly not legal.

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Source for this clearly not being legal? From my knowledge, OEM licenses allow exactly that: transfer a PC and the license transfers with it, unless the motherboard is changed. In contrast full retail licenses can be freely transferred between PCs, and volume licenses are bound to a company, but can be moved between PCs owned by it.

But of course it's possible they limited that at some point, and nobody would accuse Microsoft licensing of being transparent.

EDIT: it's just microsoft support forums, but one reference in support of "the license is tied to the motherboard": https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

I would say this really depends on the jurisdiction. Microsoft can put whatever nonsense they want in the EULA. For example, the original owner can't transfer the license to a new owner. As I've understood it, that shit doesn't fly in EU, and still might be questionable in parts of the US: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120703/11345519566/eu-co...

> Probably the damages for MS come from refurbishers "assisting" their customers to install OS from repair CDs using serials from stickers left from previous PC owners -- clearly not legal.

Is this true? By this logic every PC bought on craigslist would need a new Windows license. I think the license follows the computer not the user, thus you can't transfer a license between machines but it is valid for the original machine it was purchased for. Maybe not relicensing Windows after purchasing a used machine is illegal-- I don't know, but virtually no one does this and likely only pay Microsoft if they need to upgrade from a previous version not covered by the original license.

Hang on, I thought OEM Windows licenses were nontransferable between computers, not between owners?

I think you're right. You can always sell your PC and that includes the license (and for OEMs, Microsoft ties that license to the hardware; typically the UEFI serial or the CPU ID). That can technically be enforced at the hardware level.

But before they did that, you could peel off your case serial number, install Win XP on another machine and sell your old one blank. Is this violating your license? I'm honestly not sure, but we did it all the time.

Also if we didn't have an XP key, we'd often go to Staples and write them down off the store units.

Seems somewhat irrelevant, he was sentenced for selling ”counterfeit software” but what he sold was fake branded recovery discs. That is to say he sold a tool that could put the operating system into a working state, not cracked install cds.

I see people repeat this lie often, it is completely false

the OEM Licensees is tied to the Mainboard of the System, it is forever linked to that Mainboard, you can transfer that mainboard to other owners with out issue and it is still a licensed copy of windows.

Please stop spreading this lie

> The original license holder cannot transfer the OS license (unless a company is being bought by other company) so using the serial on the sticker of a refurbished PC by the new owner is generally illegal.

Wow. That's godawful if true.

Before the law some legal persons are more equal than other legal persons.

This seems to be yet another case of non-natural legal persons having more rights than natural persons.

Whenever in 'doubt', rule in favor of the more generous tithe collector...

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