Could you please link to a time code or mention which time to seek to? The video is 2 hours long.

While I'm here, here are the popular discussions about this story from the last week:

“Microsoft attempts to spin its role in counterfeiting case” - 195 points - 2 days ago - 144 comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946478

“Microsoft Convinces Judges to Jail Man for Copying Software It Gives Out Free” - 71 points - 3 days ago - 22 comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16940722

“ ‘E-waste’ activist gets 15 months in prison for selling Windows restore disks” - 86 points - 4 days ago - 11 comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16924587

“E-waste recycler loses appeal on computer restore disks, must serve prison term” - 388 points - 5 days ago - 257 comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16921634

> Microsoft did claim they were worth $20, according to Gov. Exhibit 17. Most of your argument is thus false.

Microsoft thinks that the OEM license disappears if the original install media (CD or recovery partition) are lost. Your options at that point are to either (a) get a new OEM CD from the manufacturer, in which case the original license becomes valid again, or (b) buy a new license, for $20. I don't know enough about how Windows is licensed to say whether that's legally correct, but it's Microsoft's position.

Assuming that's correct, his customers thought they had a compliant license, because they thought they'd bought (a). They actually didn't, because the CD--even though it was bit-for-bit identical to the authentic one--had the wrong provenance. If his fake OEM CDs didn't exist, and the real OEM CDs weren't available either (which is apparently the case), then the customer's next best option would have been to buy a new license. Microsoft is claiming not that each of his disks was worth $20, but that each disk cost Microsoft $20 in revenue, because everyone who bought his fake OEM disk would have bought a real $20 license instead.

I still think the sentence is disproportionate and stupid, and the convoluted legal situation of Microsoft's own making seems to me like a good reason to depart from the sentencing guidelines (which already seem high to me). I'm not sure the $20 is as wrong as the article makes out.

Exhibit 17 does not contain any claim by Microsoft that the recovery discs were worth $20. I just re-checked it to see. They said, as is the case, that the closest item they sell is the software with the license. The court determined the license to be irrelevant (they are wrong about that of course but that changes nothing about what Microsoft claimed).

Also, no, it does not invalidate any other statement as the other statements were not about Microsofts claims about the value of the discs. Even if I was completely and totally wrong on that point, it would not have the slightest relevance to any other claim or point not based on that point. That's just not how argument works. A person can say a wrong thing and then a right thing and the wrong one doesn't invalidate the other.

Lundgren has no intention to continue the appeals process. He claims that his counsel tells him that it wouldn't be fruitful. I personally think he could win an appeal insofar as his sentencing goes, but it would not change his sentencing much at all. He certainly wouldn't be walking free after having engaged in conspiracy and trafficking in counterfeit goods. The sentence he received was already below the recommended guideline the court follows derived from the value of the counterfeited goods.