And for that you believe he should be put in prison for 15 months?
At most this should be a civil issue between 2 private parties where monetary damages are awarded, not a criminal case where a person faces prison times.
At most this should be a civil issue between 2 private parties where monetary damages are awarded, not a criminal case where a person faces prison times.
I personally find it abhorrent when people use the justification of "well it is well established law" as if the law is written in stone, unchangeable, the word of a god and we just have to accept it.
No the law is wrong, the law should be changed, and this is an example if why it should be changed.
Copyright law need to be massively reformed and curbed. Intellectual Privilege is no longer with in its constitutional remit, i.e to Promote useful Arts and Sciences, and instead used to destroy those very things
---Edit: thanks for the downvotes I love how every day HN becomes more and more of a echo Chamber where anyone that disagrees with the popular (generally Pro Large Tech Company) narrative gets downvotes and has their voice suppressed since once a post get negative votes the "You are posting to fast" throttle kicks in and prevents the person from responding
In response, yes laws change. It was once well established that separate but equal was equal; and blacks could have their own bathrooms and drinking fountains. It was once legal to employee 13 year old boys as factory workers.
Disney's big items are well past their trademark expiration dates. Mickey Mouse should be public domain soon, but Disney is large enough they keep lobbying for laws that extend their IP well beyond what it should be.
We do need copyright reform, especially in cases like this where the physical disks aren't even made anymore.
Can we have this kind of law for privacy infringement too, please?
This includes making commercial copyright violation a criminal, rather than civil, offence. It also includes things like making circumvention of technical protection measure illegal.
It's wide ranging, it removes freedoms, it causes economic harm.
> It's wide ranging, it removes freedoms, it causes economic harm.
And how exactly is that? The government didn't go after him because he was distributing pirated media or software to his friends but he set up a manufacturing unit, deceived customs to profit off the operations. Not to "recycle and reduce waste", not to help you or me.
You want to back-up DVD or bluray discs? Might be illegal where you are.
You want to format shift CD to MP3? Might be illegal where you are.
You bought thousands of CDs, and want to pay a service to format shift them to MP3? Probably illegal.
etc etc etc.
You never see someone getting locked up or fined for copying discs for personal use. All of the cases that I'm aware of involved distribution and profiting.
The measures were intended to deter those profiting off the work of others like in this case. Although, I agree that the legal approach sets a bad precedent and unfortunate collateral damage to people who genuinely buy something and face the same deterrence when they really don't have any malicious intent.
Because in most places there's a distinction between copyright infringement done as part of trade and copyright infringement for personal use - which is what I said in parent post.
Counterfeiting is an act that is similar to theft, apparent from the fact that this guy has succeeded in making money from what Microsoft gave birth to, and therefore owned [1]. The relation between the guy and Microsoft is clearly a parasitic one.
Microsoft would be compensated justly if they were simply just awarding the monetary damage back by the damaging parties, here Eric Lundgren and his co-defendants. However, it would not be just against the community* (which includes Microsoft, but also everyone else) to let the damaging parties go away without deterring them from doing such actions further. Otherwise, the damaging parties may continue living off their lives through damaging, simply because it is almost certain that there will be cases where they will make profit without being detected and required to award the damages back.
Another way to explain the situation is this: If they are not made to pay more than the damage they have caused, their worst-case (for them, not us/community) profit is 0, and for all the other cases they will be making profit. Should this really be the justice cast upon the individuals causing monetary damage?
[1]: Declaring creators as the (copyright) owners benefits the community, hence we do. The relevant example Windows is a product of Microsoft that benefits the community, evident from the fact that it has a userbase. Microsoft would not create and offer Windows to the public, if the law allowed everyone to freely redistribute their products, and compete with Microsoft using their creation, as it would render their novel efforts meaningless against the much simpler effort of copying products created by the others.
[*]: Edited from "robbery".
Counterfeiting never was and never will be similar to robbery. Robbery results in someone being deprived of their property. No one has been deprived of their property. In fact, as information, the victim in this case couldn't deprive Microsoft and OEMs of their property unless he deleted every single copy of the software.
Furthermore, the "counterfeit" software is an exact replica of what is provided by OEMs. There was no harm done to society.
I agree with others here: Any prison time is too long, let alone 15 months. Our society needs to take a long hard look at our laws because frankly, we're well on our way within the realm of the absurd.
On the contrary, money is a means to property, and Microsoft loses $3.5 (minus the production cost) for each copy Eric sells to his buyers, since otherwise Microsoft would be the one earning that money. The crime of theft, however, predates even this buying & selling.
Software is a non-depleting product. It is like the fruits that immediately regrow when plucked off of its tree. Now, just because Microsoft doesn't lose any fruits when somebody plucks a fruit from their tree without permission, shouldn't make this person not guilty of their theft. Eric, I would say, has committed this crime of theft at the point of copying the software. Microsoft may not have been deprived of their property, but that is merely due to the fact that their miraculous tree was capable of immediate replenishment, not because a fruit from it was not stolen.
Eric later benefited from his crime by selling it, which damaged Microsoft by saturating the demand for their product as a side-effect.
In the end, it really is hard not to think counterfeiting as a form of stealing, when any form of counterfeiting most definitely devaluates the properties owned by the genuine owners. I am not an expert on law, economics, or business, but I would say counterfeiting in any form would most likely indirectly equal to stealing, and doesn't look like it at the first sight because the translation is too convoluted.
Considering that Microsoft wasn't selling those disks before he came around, and isn't selling them now, how can they be losing money on the disks?
If I managed to find someone to pay to get a copy of your post, would that mean you'd lose money?
Indeed, I would be losing a non-negative amount (call it X) of money that I could have earned, if you were to commit that crime. You should rather ask me for my permission. I will then have my options to lend you my copyright either for free (X = 0), for $y (X = $y), or not allow you to do so at all. If you do it anyway, then my losses would be at least the amount you sell it for; I might have been planning to sell it for more when the demand rises.
I am not sure if I am immediately granted such a copyright for my comments here, though.
PS: You are granted copyright over your comments, as per the Berne convention.
So you believe Microsoft does not create any software that is allowed to be Freely redistributed and Open Source software does not exist at all, anywhere in the world.
>>Counterfeiting is an act that is similar to robbery
No it is not an act or even remotely similar to robbery. Further creating a Restore CD is not an act of Counterfeiting.
>apparent from the fact that this guy has succeeded in making money from what Microsoft gave birth to, and therefore owned
That is not the definition of counterfeiting, thus the fact the guy "succeeded in making money from what Microsoft gave birth to" does not establish counterfeiting. Hell if that was the definition every person that ever made money supporting, installing, etc the windows operating system would be "counterfeiting" it given they "succeeded in making money from what Microsoft gave birth to"
>Microsoft would be compensated justly if they were simply just awarding the monetary damage back by the damaging parties, here Eric Lundgren and his co-defendants.
Microsoft was justly compensated when they sold the orginal licence for the orgianal computer on which the Restore CD's where designed to Restore.
Microsoft now however wants to Double Dip and charge refurbishers for a 2nd license on for the same hardware, that is not just compensation that IMO should be considered fraud, and be illegal.
When Dell, HP, Lenovo ect sell a windows computer, they buy and resell a license to use that version of windows for the lifetime of the product/computer. A person restoring that system back to its OEM state should not have to rebuy that license from MS to preform that restoration. MS wants these recyclers to pay them $25 for a license the OEM already paid MS for.
This part i missed... is this true? do Microsoft actually charge refurbisher? Aren't licensed supposed to be for machines not people. They seem intent on stamping the damn thing on the side of all machines.
You could say the same about anyone trying to repair or extend the life of products... Does that mean that it should be punishable? Should the law really be protecting Microsoft's bottom line at all cost?
It is clear to anyone not distracted by pedantic legal interpretations and who can actually comprehend the difference between information and material goods, that the accusation of "counterfeiting" is a tenuous and misleading one.
Take a moment to go beyond the premise of "counterfeit == damages" and find out what that really means in this context, it doesn't take much effort: these are recovery discs, any real monetary "damage" done to Microsoft's bottom line would be the same as if every one of Microsoft's customers were ensured their right to restore the software to their computer when it failed, disregarding misplacing or never receiving or it being relegated to a long since corrupted partition (yes people can download it but most people are not technically competent and it's not in Microsoft's interest to spell it out to them)... this was already paid for by the license, they have every right to that disc and the disc alone does not give anyone the ability to install without a license.
These are the only substantial monetary damages, and this flimsy verdict is damning because it could potentially be interpreted as a precedent to attack anyone helping people to repair computers... but ya know... how dare you hurt M$ bottom line.
And before anyone brings up the straw man of "he profited"... on 25c per disc? really? after flying to china and back and putting all the work in to get them mass produced? I doubt he would have ever broke even, at best he might have made a meagre living, it's not exactly counterfeiting Rolex. I don't claim to know the intent of this guy but it can only be one of two: He was trying to help extend the life of countless computers needlessly thrown away every year, OR he was an idiot with delusions of grandeur, because there is no money in this (but don't confuse that with the ability to harm M$ bottom line, a cardinal sin). Don't get me wrong, I think what he did was pretty stupid, but what Microsoft is doing right here is sending a message of "If you hurt our bottom line, we will hurt you personally", regardless of their legal or moral right to do so.
Sorry, I could not find any resource where it says that he was profiting 25c per disc. I have found some others stating that he would be covering his expenses if he were to sell them for 25c each, and then the blog post from Microsoft states that he was selling them for $3.5 each. It really makes more sense that each disc costs 25c when mass-duplicated in China, than $3.25.
You already have already shunned this argument with your "straw man" talk. Would be a shame to step back just because you've laid that trap-threat to whoever replies. Here it goes: From what I've found, I'd say he profits $3.25 per disc and not 25c. The blog post from Microsoft also states that he made a revenue of $92,000 from this counterfeiting business. Here comes your straw man: $92,000 * ($3.25 / $3.50), approximately $85.500 is what he profited.
I don't know how much an average HN user is gaining, but that is a lot of money for me.
The argument on him being a selfless recycler is impossible to believe in, as the evidence shows that he labelled those discs to look like original Dell recovery discs. This leaves us either nothing but him being an "idiot with delusions of grandeur" as you've said, or he really was simply just making money out of this.
In the article the only reference to making more than 25c per disc is:
> Records, however, show that Lundgren had sold several thousand to one buyer for $3-4 each
But "several thousand" * ~$3 doesn't sound much like 92k.
> I don't know how much an average HN user is gaining, but that is a lot of money for me.
Me too, but note that the term revenue is often used ambiguously and does not necessarily refer to net income, often people abuse this to inflate or deflate the number to help their narrative. _If_ that is the case here then 90k gross for a sole proprietor could be quite a low income depending on the margin... then again if this figure is really all about the discs, then ~90k - (flights + manufacturing run + shipping) could be quite profitable.
I can't find the real figures, happy if someone can enlighten us.
To be honest I don't have much empathy with this guy i'm just playing devils advocate now... My main argument was against your implication that hurting a business's revenue is automatically illegal, which is very close to saying capitalism is law. Perhaps you didn't realize you were implying that. The fact that this guy may or may not have profited from this is separate from the legality of the impact of restoring bought and paid for software against microsoft's profits, it's an important distinction.
Again just to be clear: Microsoft's loss should have no bearing on this case (because they are legal), the case is about someone potentially making money off something they shouldn't, much like selling GNU software (I know that comparison seems rediculous but I'm trying to highlight the separation of illegal profit from legal losses).