I was all set not to believe you, but after I read Eric’s emails, I agree with you. It appears both MS and Eric are overstating their altruism.
Emails: https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/2LU...
Emails: https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/2LU...
A) They didn't bring the case, US Customs did.
B) As the victim (financially) of the Crime they were approached to state the financial damage to decide on the restitution amount and they chose to pick the lowest price on market and further reduce that amount to depict their actual profitability for selling obsolete software.
C) Eric's intentions were clearly not to recycle and reduce waste but to profit from this racket of duping buyers into buying "genuine" recovery discs with Microsoft and Dell logos and tampered activation keys (read the court docket for more details).
That is where you're wrong. Read the docket, better yet here is a screenshot from the demonstration that the discs had keys replicated from original Dell recovery discs:
Moreover, "so they were worth a few cents apiece." - The value of financial damage (especially in this case) matters only towards deciding the restitution amount. They also have a cut-off, above which the crime is considered to be under federal jurisdiction which wouldn't have mattered in this case since the amount was obviously above the cut-off and the crime was of inter-state nature.
However, in this case you wouldn't see "Contact Dell for Support" on a lenovo laptop as demonstrated during the trial (see screenshot above).
If the disk had no activation info, setup would have prompted for a key (trial keys for 30 day are available online).
Big OEMs including Dell and Lenovo use an activation baked into the BIOS and a SLIC (system licence internal code) that's also in the BIOS. No activation required after restore from legitimate or otherwise CD or restore partition. It won't match the code on the machine's sticker, even if it's 100% legit just bought new from maker.
Search will turn up plenty on how SLIC works.
Maybe we should see more CEOs in jail in a similar manner, when their decisions to commit fraud intentionally causes the loss of savings and homes for so many average working class people?
In any case, we're seeing his small shop and his attempt to spin the case. I often feel like I'd never own my own business, because in a lot of cases, you have to make these types of risks and compromises to make it. Just look at the FedEx guy who gambled all his companies money to keep them solvent. Had he failed, he probably would have been prosecuted and jailed, but he made it, so he's praised for taking an insane risk at the cost of everyone he employed.