“These sales of counterfeit operating systems,” Microsoft lawyer Bonnie MacNaughton wrote to the judge, “displaced Microsoft’s potential sales of genuine operating systems.” But Lundgren’s disks had no licenses and were intended for computers that already had licenses."
But this isn't a ghost shift Louis Vuitton bag, it's literally exactly the same. Using Microsoft's trademark isn't misrepresenting the product.
But I cannot phantom how they cannot see how this will backfire quite badly, making them look both greedy and environmentally disconnected.
"Diet coach Daisy, sent to jail as McDonalds loses customers"
"CPU designer Claire, sent to jail as its optimized caching algorithm lowers demand for RAM sales"
"Louis Pasteur, unearthed from the grave, incarcerated as milk sales fall due to longer shelf-life"
But these examples are not good because the value for software is in the license really. Microsoft distributes the binaries of win10 for free, it is the license they make people buy. So it is rather a weak case for Microsoft.
It’s like selling your own burgers with less calories and calling them Big Macs and selling them next door from McDonald’s store. You can’t do that according to law
It's not like he was giving people keygens and cracks. He was just giving them the disc, burned from an ISO available for free on Microsoft's website, for the price of the blank medium used - and then giving people the information they needed to use their existing license rather than purchase a new one.
His crime appears to have been limiting Microsoft's ability to get people to pay for excessive licenses.
Also, a 15 month prison sentence for this fictitious price per CD? Really?
The end.
Rule of law. You go to jail for breaking the law, not for being unethical or immoral. Societies which forget this distinction fall fast. (Legislation, turning morals and ethics into laws, is the intermediating process your complaint more properly addresses.)
The problem is we criminally charge commercial infringement. The defendant put others' logos on disks he sold. This shouldn't result in jail time, but that's what the law says. The problem isn't the court, it's the law.
>The judge said he disregarded Weadock’s testimony. “I don’t think anybody in that courtroom understood what a restore disk was,” Lundgren said.
Oh, I think there was a problem with the court.
That testimony seems irrelevant to the charge which resulted in the jail time. Theoretically valueless or not, the discs were sold with an infringing logo. That combination--infringement and commercial intent--is a crime under our laws.
That's one of the sad truths about life. Those that break the law, or do things seen as unsavory, take pains to hide their actions, motivations, and responsibility. Those attempting to do good that inadvertently break the law don't take those steps because they didn't think they were doing anything wrong, or that if people thought they were they could of course explain away the misunderstanding.
What you're left with is this, where the majority of corporate malfeasance goes unpunished or severely under-punished, but the accidental minor criminal gets jail time. It's definitely a failure of the legal system, but how do you address the fact that those that worry about being caught up in the legal system will be more prepared for if they eventually are?
The court ignored expert witness testimony that the disks were useless without a valid license and came up with a ludicrous amount.
The defendants belief was that many customers weren't knowledgeable enough to download restore images from the internet. He was selling them to used computer shops so they could provide them to their customers as a courtesy.
He charged $0.25 per disc, and had 28,000. So his total would have been $7k? He eventually sold them for less than $5k. Not any kind of windfall profit.
Given you can download those restore images for free, what exactly was the copy right infringement?
I agree that the US system is fucked up when it imprisons people who haven't committed violent crime.
Do we know why? Courts don't throw out testimony for no reason.
In any case, from what I understand the calculation of value principally factors into the fine. The jail time results from the defendant selling disks with others' logos on them.
Another commentor dug up more detailed information, which intimated that the defendant wouldn't have made $80,000 worth of discs that had no value.
To be fair, arguing that someone you sold has no value is a bit hare-brained.
All that said, this is a side show. The criminal sentencing resulted, principally, from his using others' logos without permission on a product he sold. The combination of infringement and commerce is apparently something our laws are paranoid about.
It protects you from shoddy fakes that do stuff like install malware (which other counterfeiters might have tried if the law were more lax on counterfeits) or stuff not following safety guidelines (like fake chargers that burn your house down).
Well enforced trademark law means that you as a buyer can investigate a seller and know what you're getting based on their reputation. And well enforced trademark law means that you as a seller are incentivized to protect your brand by making good/safe products.
EDIT: you can argue copyright or patents are bad, but fundamentally I cannot see the world be a better place without trademark laws in some form.
Without a licence which he was not providing they are useless.
As a CEO, you can ignore obvious security flaws leading to 100 million social security numbers getting leaked without getting into jail.
As a CEO, you can sexually harass your employees without getting into jail.
Try and save the world by repurpose old computers, causing one of the biggest companies in the world to maybe lose 0.0000001% of their revenue and you're fucked.
Shame on you, Microsoft.