German Company Will Take Windows Off Your Hands

Felix writes: "The German computer magazine c't writes that the German PC manufacturer Waibel now buys your used Windows licenses for around $30-$40 to sell the them bundled with their PCs. The highest German court, the BGH, declared this as being legal in its "OEM decision," so Microsoft can do nothing about it...." I obtained a reasonable translation using the Systrans translation engine over at dictionary.com. Imagine -- a market where the end-user hasn't duly accepted a shrink-wrap license which robs him of all further transfer rights. Sounds like a more robust market to me.

Well, they tried.

from The Register:

1. Disconnect from any network.
2. Start the install, but don't use dynamic update (which wants to connect, right?)
3. After installation and on first boot, don't set up your Internet connection when it asks. Click next or skip - the wizard will crash when you click next. ;)
4. Click Start/Run and type:
regsrv32.exe -u regwizc.dll
Close the confirmation window that appears.
5. Start/run: regedit
6. Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Cu rrentVersion change RegDone value to 1
7. Open up Internet Explorer. Open the Tools/Internet Properties and change your home page to something that isn't Microsoft or MSN.
8. Reboot and before windows starts up, plug your network connection back in.

---

some background

The story has an interesting background. c't [heise.de] did an anonymous buy test where Waibel [waibel.de] sold an apparently illegal Windows license to the test buyer. Now it seems to be the case that M$ refuses to sell any legal licenses to Waibel (at least they have some serious disagreements), so Waibel is looking for ways to get some Win-Licenses to sell together with there computers.

But this company has an incredible ability to interprete every bad report about them or every law/license infringement with which they get caught as an private little war of c't-magazine against the company.

Its quite ridicoulous.

Will not help free software

That's one reason less to use something different than Windows. It might decrease Microsoft's income a bit, but how about Waibel offering all kinds of operating systems with their system? Microsoft certainly doesn't like Waibel too much for that move, so are there any obstacles in offerings various other operating systems with their hardware?

Great !!!

Because my new Dell laptop came with a Windows 2000 CD. As I planned on using another OS on it I wanted to give it away to a friend.

Turned out :
- the CD won't run on a compter manufactered by someone else than Dell (I think it checks something in the BIOS)
- the licence number is a sticker... stuck on the underside of the laptop itself !

So I just paid for a legal Windows 2000 copy, yet I can't even use it on the computer I want. I wonder how Dell customers who buy desktop computers will like it when they change their motherboards (and therefor, the BIOS in it won't be Dell branded anymore). If this isn't a blatant attempt to rip off customers, then what is it ?

M$ behaves as if they are selling, not licencing

An interesting German ruling, and the consequent market response.

M$ has insisted long and hard in US Courts that it is _licencing_ it's products thru shrinkwraps hidden inside. For OEMs and big corps, it sure does get signed licence agreements. But at retail, it behaves as if it were simply selling copyrighted works (books, music, videos).

M$ doesn't do even simple practical things like have purchasers call for a key, insist on registration, or tear-off registration to protect their licencing status. Apparently their marketing department has vetoed these things as expensive or frightening to customers.

So why should the Courts grant them licencing status when M$ has not done what they could for that status?

This makes sense

Doesn't the license bascially determine who can use the software? So I don't see why it would be illegal to change ownership of software anymore than selling your old books in a garage sale.

I guess the Microsoft worry is that you sell the license without deleting the software on your computer. But I still think its criminal to lock an operating system to a specific PC which is what Microsoft plans to do so that there is no option to delete and install on someone elses computer.

Re:Great !!!

Technically, your laptop came with a disk-image restoration CD, not a Windows CD. And no, the restoration image isn't going to help anyone else.

Check out my earlier comment [slashdot.org] about M$ possible motivation for this kind of behaviour (like with everything else they do, it's about long-term control, not short-term profit).


question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes

Re:Their motivation:

Actually, I admin a network with 40 Windows 95 clients, among others, and they have no trouble on the hand-built white boxes I use: old and brand new, Intel and AMD. And lack of USB isn't much of a concern for a larger company, as much as I love it at home. Win95 still has its niche.

question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes

Their motivation:

From the article (paraphrased [altavista.com] by the fish [altavista.com]): the company had a spat [Babelfish link] [altavista.com] with M$ a few months ago about a supposed illegal Windows 98 license. M$ seems to have suspended sale of OEM licenses to them, so they needed to find another way to sell PCs loaded with Windows.

Necessity being the mother of invention and all, I like the idea. What they're really talking about is continuously recycling Windows licenses. Rather than everyone pitching their Windows license when they pitch their old PC, the license could now be sold to someone else.

Of course, this is bad news for M$. Windows 95 is still a pretty decent consumer-level OS: unless you're going up to Win2k there's no real reason to upgrade beyond service packs (e.g. 98 & ME suck ass, NT sucks at multimedia). So this means that Germans could protest M$ snail's pace "innovation" by re-buying license for their old OS. Beautiful.


question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes

Re:Great !!!

Does that matter?

A license has to go with the CD you get with the PC. (Otherwise people would be buying a CD which they don't have the right to use - i.e. warez).

So here is the solution. They turn over the CD and the license which comes with it. The recipient of the license destroys the CD, makes a copy of a "normal" windows CD and uses it with the license they obtained.

Would that be legal? If you have a Windows license, then wouldn't the duplicated CD be legal since it has a license? Note: Big companies often get one copy of media, a bunch of licenses, and duplicate the media or load it multiple times over a network, and it is legal (and standard, sanctioned practice by the vendors and the corporate customers). It works out if there are sufficient licenses.

The question is, does a license from Windows off a restoration CD allow you to make and use a copy of Windows from a "normal" Windows CD? Microsoft will say no, but what is the law? If ti is not legal, then essentially Microsoft has to aruge, and the courts have to accept and declare, that the copy of Windows with a "restoration" CD is different than off a "normal" CD. I.E. it is not real Windows.

That could have a marketing impact and even be seen as abuse of monopoly status. I.E. we won't even give you a proper copy of the OS we forced down your throat. If your system doesn't work with all the other junk on the CD, or your system dies, you are hosed. Buy a new PC from an MS friendly OEM, or go pay the (outrageous) $200 for a full Windows 98 CD, which is well above what the OEMs are charged for it, as long as they play that stupid "restore CD" game with the consumers to protect MS at the expense of the computer purchasers.

Re:I couldn't disagree more

You've fallen for the classic Big Company tactic: they do something, and you assume the law is on their side.

You have a legal right (under most circumstances) to resell Windows. Microsoft doesn't want you to, and eBay prevents you from doing so because eBay is Microsoft's bitch.

Even if you receive a letter from Bill Gates himself, signed by his Army of Lawyers, saying "You cannot resell Windows", it's still won't be true.


My mom is not a Karma whore!

Re:Good news?

We might start seeing more "system restore" type distributions with new PC's to make it harder to resell

Does it matter? They aren't buying the disks, they are buying the licenses. If they already have the disks, what does it matter?

Good news?

While this is all well and good, MS probably won't like it too much (duh). We might start seeing more "system restore" type distributions with new PC's to make it harder to resell, and the whole Whistler copy protection might make this a moot point (although the German court might then rule that MS has to reenable copy-protected installs, and then they might refuse -- ugh).

I wonder if I can sell all my old MSDN copies of Windows now? I must have at least 20 :) Imagine that: subscribe to MSDN and _make_ money by reselling all those CD's. Probably won't happen.

Re:Great !!! Not even same machine under VMware

I bought an HP, and installed Linux and VMware. I then tried to install Win98 that came with the machine under the Linux/VMware, and it wouldn't let me because it couldn't detect it was that HP machine.

So now I am forced to go buy an off-the-shelf copy and leave the one that came with my machine unused. I'd like to sell the HP-only copy to recoup some of that cost.

Actually, if I "borrowed" a friend's media to install, would I be legal since I do have a license, just not one that will install properly? Would this not be the same as borrowing a friend's copy because my CD was scratched?

Beautiful!

How ironic! How karmic! How fitting!

If half a million Windows OSes are out there now, then during the next upgrade cycle, and if there are manufacturers that wan't to beat the system, all they have to do is buy back the OSes from their customers and sell it again with the next cycle of systems created.

M$ may argue that there are unlicensed systems, but then there is always the argument that people are running Linux, BSD, Be, or Darwin!

Even better, it means M$ has to out-innovate itself to force people to buy the newer OS at the same or similar price to the older OS; if they charge too much, people will generally opt for the older OS, and if they don't charge enough, the M$ loses out on profits!

Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

Hope the moderators find this "Informative" . . .

Virtually EVERY software company does this. As usual, most of the comments on Slashdot read as though M$ is the only one engaging in a given (negative) practise.

In fact, your beloved Sun Microsystems, without whom your precious "M$" anti-trust lawsuit would not be funded, engages in the very same practise.

I'm not condoning the policy. I'm just tired of hearing about how evil "M$" is and how wonderful all other companies are.

However, I'm sure my voice will fall upon deaf ears and closed minds.

Don't read everything you believe . . .

Re:Good news?

If they ( German company ) have the full OEM cd verion then anyone can use the license. Try it yourself if you have one. Use any valid " Product Key " and load it on any hard drive you have. The CDs from Dell, NEC/PB, and others were not the full winX CDs but were/are the manufactures own version of that CD. Full OEM version doesn't check for Bios information as to make of computer.That's one reason m$ wants to cripple Whistler and make it have to register with then before it is usable.