Counterfeiting Microsoft Windows Restore CDs Landed Me in Prison for a Year

47 years in prison is what they wanted 8.3 seven million dollars worth of fines and fees is what they wanted and a felony they want they want to brand me a felon I mean I got in the way of the 20th largest company in the world and this giant stepped on me and I felt it Microsoft has accused Eric Lundgren of creating a thousands of illegal copies of its software he argues he was only using it to extend the lifespan of old PCs Microsoft took the stand and said we think that Eric Lundgren infringed our IP and cost us millions of dollars what we're doing today our blind consumerism is not sustainable we need to stop we need to really understand how things are built and understand how we're supposed to fix them I hope that people ask me why did you go to prison why are you a felon because I'd love to tell them [Music] hey bro passive a little trekking through your list of cancelling your accounts no canceling mine accounts good we also got the time in states between 12:00 and 1:00 so if you can go before 12:00 don't I think you're allowed to go early to prison mom just not late I think that's all I know is I need you to come in with me I need you to take my fedora on the way out and protect it with your life mr. fedora preserve the fedora and when I and when I get out I want you to be there to handle me and I can put it back on and get back to work that's my goal okay okay it all started in China I started a company called source captain we sourced all the parts and components that people needed to repair their proprietary things in America think of the automobile you know your automobile break somebody takes it to a junkyard and takes all the working parts and builds new automobiles or fixes old automobiles with those parts we don't do that with electronics they're all proprietary so we're just promoted and trained that it's all garbage one little piece breaks 1% and that 99% of value we throw away with it so by aggregating all of this waste the company that I founded in Los Angeles recycles 43 million pounds worth of e-waste every year the United States is the largest contributor to electronic waste which is the fastest growing waste stream in the world to put it in perspective 126 Empire State building's worth of e-waste are actually created every single year and all of that waste do you think it would be recycled somewhere when we throw it in the trash no no 15 percent recycle and then 85 percent is either exported or put in a landfill leaching harmful chemicals in our water table like lead and Mercury bromine cadmium these harmful chemicals are affecting us in a negative way now the majority that gets exported goes to third world countries they're burning this waste just to try to find little scraps of metal that they can salvage and when you burn waste there's all of these harmful cancerous carcinogens that are released into the air look at these kids this is so unhealthy and you're sitting over at burning it and when you ingest these harmful carcinogens I personally when visiting developed a lung infection it was very harmful and I was there for a short period of time imagine the kids that work there day in and day out that's the reason why I do what I do because I can put a face and suffering behind these wasteful practices that we have the biggest problem that we face in making this difference is when we get in the way of the corporate agenda when I save something that's taking away from their market share I mean I got in the way of the 20th largest company in the world and this giant stepped on me and I felt it when you really boil it down I'm going to prison for giving you the free repair tool to fix what you legally own people get confused about what a Dell restorer said he is okay this is something that you can download for free from the internet burn to a CD and it comes with your computer it only has one ability if you put it in your computer and it can reset your computer back to factory settings it basically if you have bloatware and viruses if you have missing dll files it doesn't matter whatever your problem is with your computer this is going to reset it back to when you first bought it the problem is where's your down restore CD most people buy the computer take the CDs put them in a drawer lose them and when they need them they don't have them I wanted to make sure that everybody that got a secondhand computer had a CD with it Bob bill thank you I had one unit and I walked into a computer shop and watch Han Bay and they were willing to just duplicate him right there the mirror image copy nothing changed and I said okay good it was as easy as ordering a pizza it's literally as deep as you can possibly imagine of just restore CDs and I was out there telling refurbishers you don't need to pay Microsoft for this you have illegally you'll do of illegal operating system on there you have a legal license you're good here's the restore CD go ahead and sell it I get back to America don't think anything of it two years in the United States and all of a sudden my house is rated guys guns you know masks door busted down Microsoft has accused Erik Lundgren of creating a thousands of illegal copies of its software he argues he was only using it to extend the lifespan of old PCs you know faces up to 15 months in prison and a possible $50,000 fine I mean there were 21 federal indictments so at the end of the day they just threw enough spaghetti at the wall and something was bound to stick and they just said you know well what are you willing to plead guilty to and I said I'm willing to plead guilty to Dell restore cities without licenses that's what I'm willing to plead guilty to and after five years of arguing with our government they said okay sure plead guilty to that I said thank God this makes perfect sense now the judge is gonna understand that this is freeware and you know there's for good then Microsoft came into the courtroom and convinced the judge that a dell restore CD that's free the thing that you get literally called Dell they'll ship you one for free functions the same and is valued the same as a microsoft operating system with a license the judge said that i infringed Microsoft by seven hundred thousand dollars because that's what they sold a license the operating system for there's one thing that I should have done differently we would have saved me years of my life not just the year in prison or the three years of probation or the five years of torment before that the one thing that would have saved me is if I would have typed the word Dell and Microsoft in a different font at the end of the day that was my infringement right there is the fact that I used their logo sorry from all read I was outside talking with my grandfather and he's really old and I'm worried that I won't to see him again I'll see him in 15 months play swimming in prison prove enough however we still need clothes to wear especially when we go see Microsoft tomorrow so I'll bring the dry-cleaning some people might think that it's pointless to go to Microsoft right now some people might think that's just a waste of time that they don't care and that by taking this to them they're just gonna tell you to go away but at the end of the day I think it's a good idea to try I mean you don't try you already fail the well-publicized case of Eric Lundgren who's going to prison for distributing free to download software is not the only qualms we have with Microsoft we at US PIRG have been working with Eric Lundgren because we're really concerned about what his case means for the way that companies have really gone out of their way to make it difficult to fix our stuff we need to empower everybody to fix things because even though he waste is a small part of our waste stream by volume it's 70% of the toxic waste going into landfills right now I have eleven thousand four hundred and sixty-four letters that are gonna go to Microsoft these letters are from people who want to stand up for repair and don't believe that it's right to imprison recyclers for trying to help the world fix our waste epidemics the fact that 11,000 people would stand up and take the time out of their day to write to Microsoft about my case is just touching my fate sealed I'm going to prison in 24 hours but this right here needed to be done all of the letters that everybody is made we needed to walk them in here and and hand them to Microsoft to make sure that they got them we want to make sure that they understand the purpose that we're trying to serve here I mean it's clear that Eric you know probably colored outside the lines here you didn't play this by the book he didn't have a right to certainly put the Dell logo on those discs you know it was their free tool it's not unreasonable that someone will make copies cuz they thought it was free Microsoft is gonna try to act in Microsoft's best entry and we as a society put limits on that and that's democracy and I think it's time that we started to use that the power of democracy to push companies to do better when it comes to you know eco design and sustainability when it comes to electronic waste [Applause] shel Lancaster there so you can take these yeah I will make sure that they get to the appropriate books that Microsoft all right thank you so much Michelle what were the appropriate folks who are they gonna go to all right I would love to see if they could get to Sakai is there a way to get them to him that is not my decision okay all right well I'll keep trying then thank you thank you so much next up the headquarters if I can help nudge a giant corporation like Microsoft to support efficient solutions then it's worth it you know but if I just go to prison and nothing changes I think that's a waste of time [Music] okay you have a card then that's my business card can I help you yeah tell me all right but what we want this one it's it there's zero chance that anyone would be that that would that you want to get your message so there's zero chance that I'm gonna yes be able to meet anybody here today yes appreciate appreciated alright have a great day I guess I view me as a threat I'm glad I came out here no regrets I think I think that this is a good use of my last day full circle man coming to talk to the company that is putting me where I'm going to be tomorrow and for the next 15 months we just woke up I got about three hours leave today is the day I go to prison family's here and my uncle here and my brother here and my mother here and we all watched Shawshank Redemption which I thought was like a great choice except for I forgot some of the scenes in the movie so it's like mom don't just don't watch now thoughts it's okay I gotta figure out how to get down there and meet up with the people that are gonna be taking pictures [Applause] [Music] hey let's go to prison [Music] I'm thinking of it as a forced government vacation where I'll be able to just hey this might be the universe's way of telling me to just stop to slow down to to look within and really gain perspective it is gonna be hard for me because it's exact opposite of Who I am I love to control my surroundings and you don't control this but it's an honor to be able to to live for something I [Music] don't really know why I'm here I mean I I know why but at the same time I don't to this day know who I hurt or who to say sorry to for my actions this is real this is really happening so thank you all for all the support that you've shown me thank you for caring you know thank you for just eleven thousand four hundred people wrote letters in support of me and he went to the the and you went to trump and you said pardon this guy and you went to the White House and you signed petitions and and the media you know just that they spread the word so that people understood what happened here and I I am I am really really touched it's it's good to know that you're not alone and that people care so thank you all and I'll see you in 15 months and we'll continue this fight [Music] you miss a small thing so you miss like your cousin or your dog or avocados all avocados as you can see my house was under construction when I left and there's an old saying when the cat's away the mice will take all the money and run basically all my contractors didn't finish the work I was supposed to come home to a done house I don't know what I was supposed to learn by going to prison I just made the most of my time while I was there the next time you see this house is gonna be beautiful I just need to find the time to finish it and right now I'm all about work so in fact we're late I want to get to the office because I wanna get to work is that all right they tried to break you in prison that's basically prison is set up to do since the last time that we interviewed my grandparents both past I would say my time in prison definitely emboldened me further towards my goal which is to make sure that all the e-waste in the country in the world isn't thrown away but is recycled do I regret my actions no no I don't I think that history will find that Microsoft are on the wrong side of humanity when it comes to recycling my mistake was thinking too small I thought if I could just help a hundred thousand people repair their computers and make them last a couple years longer that that would make a big difference now I'm trying to find the solution to e-waste as a whole for everybody in the country this whole facility we built within the last 60 days of me being out I mean we conceptualized it while I was in through like letters and pencil and paper and a lot of mail and this is just one of the many companies that were brainchild while I was in and now I get to get out and actually get things done again welcome to one of my companies what you're looking at is all of the electric vehicle batteries in the country that we're going to Demanufacture extract the cells KTX test the cells figure out the life cycle left on the cells and then reintegrate those cells and modules into new applications we're gonna save 47 million pounds of batteries from landfills this year just by what we're doing here it's gonna save billions of dollars in commodity value alone and it's going to take away 70% of the toxicity in our landfills but we're thinking a lot bigger these days to provide a real solution to the fastest-growing waste stream in the country and the world and the most toxic waste stream in the world that we're currently just throwing away we're dumping it in landfills and I'm I'm pretty sure that we're going to be able to solve that problem within the next 12 months [Music] [Music]

Channel: VICE

Views: 3,645,585

Rating: 4.8938484 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, motherboard, science, technology, microsoft, counterfeit software, pirating, repair, state of repair, right to repair, custom computer build, e-waste, recycling, prison, jailed for piracy, eric lundren, federal prison, computer refurbishing, satya nadella, microsoft windows, windows xp

Id: Uv_zBYlZJR8

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 06 2019

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[u/ImroyKun]

Why didn't he use Linux?