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View Full Version : Electronics-recycler is going to prison for trying to extend computers' lives




phill4paul
04-29-2018, 05:51 PM
One companies trash...is it's own treasure. And it's disposal is paid for by taxpayers instead of being re-purposed.



A Southern California man who built a sizable business out of recycling electronic waste is headed to federal prison for 15 months after a federal appeals court in Miami rejected his claim that the "restore discs" he made to extend computers' lives had no financial value, instead ruling that he had infringed on Microsoft Corp. to the tune of $700,000.

The appeals court upheld a federal district judge's ruling that the discs Eric Lundgren made to restore Microsoft operating systems had a value of $25 apiece, even though the software they contained could be downloaded free and the discs could only be used on computers that already had a valid Microsoft license. The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals initially granted Lundgren an emergency stay of his prison sentence, shortly before he was to surrender, but then affirmed his original 15-month sentence and $50,000 fine without hearing oral argument in a ruling issued April 11.

Lundgren, 33, has become a renowned innovator in the field of electronic waste, or e-waste, using discarded parts to do things such as construct an electric car, which in a test far outdistanced a Tesla on a single charge. He built the first "electronic hybrid recycling" facility in the United States, which turns discarded cellphones and other electronics into functional devices, slowing the stream of harmful chemicals and metals contained in those devices into landfills and the environment. His Chatsworth company, IT Asset Partners, processes more than 41 million pounds of e-waste each year and counts IBM, Motorola and Sprint among its clients.

"This is a difficult sentencing," U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley told him last year, "because I credit everything you are telling me. You are a very remarkable person."

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-microsoft-copyright-20180426-story.html

Swordsmyth
04-29-2018, 05:54 PM
He shouldn't have used fake DELL packaging, it gave them the excuse.

kpitcher
04-29-2018, 06:12 PM
The MS download site has very clear wording that the software is not to be redistributed. I think it's a crappy sentence and I know that software licensing is some of the worse things in our digital world, but he did agree to that when he downloaded. However it would seem to be more fair if it was treated as a breach of contract without a prison time.

pcosmar
04-29-2018, 09:00 PM
Another reason to dislike Micro$oft.. my chief reason.. Bad business,, unethical practice,,

Brian4Liberty
04-29-2018, 09:15 PM
Hmmm. Interesting wording of this story. It's the first time I've heard of software being referred to as "electronic waste"... Now there's a business model. Bring your hard drives and memory sticks, we'll "recycle them" (by deleting the contents and copying whatever might be valuable). Here's your device back, clean and ready to be used again.

pcosmar
04-29-2018, 09:29 PM
Hmmm. Interesting wording of this story. It's the first time I've heard of software being referred to as "electronic waste"... Now there's a business model. Bring your hard drives and memory sticks, we'll "recycle them" (by deleting the contents and copying whatever might be valuable). Here's your device back, clean and ready to be used again.

It's not the recycling..

He made a restore disc and sold it.. It was a collection of available free software,, put together on a restore disc.
let almost any idiot fix a windoze system ..

He was sued on the claim that it extended the life of computers (Mostly true)

kahless
04-29-2018, 09:37 PM
The MS download site has very clear wording that the software is not to be redistributed. I think it's a crappy sentence and I know that software licensing is some of the worse things in our digital world, but he did agree to that when he downloaded. However it would seem to be more fair if it was treated as a breach of contract without a prison time.

I agree. He could have also avoided all this by simply using any of the free open source Linux operating systems.

VIDEODROME
04-29-2018, 09:43 PM
I agree. He could have also avoided all this by simply using any of the free open source Linux operating systems.

The strange thing is I think many computers are made with a Restore partition on them already.

Otherwise, Linux works great especially if you need need a basic PC for word processing and web browsing.