The prosecution and penalty for the transfer of an OEM license.

CountMike · 23 Aug 2018

MS's or any other company's rules are superseded by local laws. I know about Germany at least and some other European countries, soon to be in whole EU that OEM license must be transferable.

alphanumeric · 23 Aug 2018

One thing that throws a wrinkle in things is reselling your PC that has Digital Licences tied to it. My two desktop PC's and my laptop all have multiple DL's tied to them for pretty well every Edition of Windows 10. If I was to sell just the hardware with no OS installed, who ever buys it can install just about any edition of Windows 10 and have a fully activated Windows 10 with no need to enter a product code. It they install any Edition other than N or KN it will activate with a DL. Even Enterprise, My MSDN MAK keys all got a DL?
So how does one stop that? Transfer each one, one at a time to a new PC? These were are installed with Retail "My Visual Studio Enterprise" subscription (MSDN) keys.
And if I don't do that, does that I can never reuse those MSDN keys again?
Not looking for answers to those questions, just pointing out what I consider to be flaws in how this works.

jimbo45 · 23 Aug 2018

CountMike said:

MS's or any other company's rules are superseded by local laws. I know about Germany at least and some other European countries, soon to be in whole EU that OEM license must be transferable.

Hi there

@CountMike

UK ??? Brexit -- all bets are off as anything might happen there. Even the politicians in that particular piece of NW Europe haven't a clue on what EU Laws (if any) might be enforceable or not after Mar 29 2019.

Whatever outcome that causes I'm sure it won't be to the benefit of the Small consumer / Individual even if some big corporations (Indian, US, Chinese, Korean etc) gain -that's for the citizens of the UK to sort it out for themselves though -- and it doesn't seem a trivial problem to solve either looking at it from outside. !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 · 23 Aug 2018

alphanumeric said:

One thing that throws a wrinkle in things is reselling your PC that has Digital Licences tied to it. My two desktop PC's and my laptop all have multiple DL's tied to them for pretty well every Edition of Windows 10. If I was to sell just the hardware with no OS installed, who ever buys it can install just about any edition of Windows 10 and have a fully activated Windows 10 with no need to enter a product code. It they install any Edition other than N or KN it will activate with a DL. Even Enterprise, My MSDN MAK keys all got a DL?
So how does one stop that? Transfer each one, one at a time to a new PC? These were are installed with Retail "My Visual Studio Enterprise" subscription (MSDN) keys.
And if I don't do that, does that I can never reuse those MSDN keys again?
Not looking for answers to those questions, just pointing out what I consider to be flaws in how this works.

Hi there

@alphanumeric

I noticed that as well -- I have some W10 VL (multiple activation) copies of Windows -- even if I use say a different install set after having totally wiped the computer HDD's or even replaced the HDD's with new ones the computer after W10 install still says !Activated with digital licence".

I tested again using another non VL copy of W10 (same edition though X-64 pro -EN-GB) and the computer still activated with digital license so not sure how to stop this. Ms must have some hardware ID that we don't know about -- maybe MOBO serial number or whatever.

Interesting turn round for the book -- while a lot of people are discussing problems with windows activation here are at least 2 of us trying to work out how to PREVENT windows activation !!!

Always interesting problems crop up on these boards.

Cheers
jimbo

Bree · 23 Aug 2018

jimbo45 said:

.. even replaced the HDD's with new ones the computer after W10 install still says !Activated with digital licence"... Ms must have some hardware ID that we don't know about -- maybe MOBO serial number or whatever.

Motherboard is (one small) part of it, but the HDD isn't...
Specifying Hardware IDs for a Computer | Microsoft Docs

cereberus · 23 Aug 2018

CountMike said:

MS's or any other company's rules are superseded by local laws. I know about Germany at least and some other European countries, soon to be in whole EU that OEM license must be transferable.

Very few people understand the German law. It ONLY applies to OEM system builder licences i.e. you bought it - yiu have right to use it where you like.

It DOES NOT apply to OEM bios embedded preinstalled licences - they are part of the device and as in US die with the device.

As most oem licences are oem-slp, the German law has less impact than people think.

In fact, if one uses an oem system builder licence, it usually works on another pc anyway. That is why it got the knickname "poor man's retail licence"

The EU passed a directive aboubt the same but each member state has to ratify it and so far afaik, nobody else has.

alphanumeric · 23 Aug 2018

Yeah, OEM-SLP and OEM-COA activate differently. OEM-SLP activates against the BIOS SLIC table. No matching SLIC table no activation. OEM-COA activates online, same as OEM system builders.
OEM-SLP uses custom install media matched to the BIOS SLIC table. The Product Code is basically a generic OEM code thats blocked from online activation. It's not transferable even if you wanted to.
Thats changed somewhat with Windows 10, OEM installs now activate online with a DL same as Retail installs. And both get the same generic key after they get the DL. And the SLIC table is now replaced with a "unique" OEM embedded key.

bobkn · 23 Aug 2018

cereberus said:

Sure, it has the right to sue but highly unlikely as I said. Even if they did sue, they would have to win.

(snip)

I'd make a distinction between a lawsuit and criminal charges. It's not obvious why they couldn't file charges for theft of products or services, but I have never heard of it being done.

I don't understand Microsoft's business model, but they don't appear to intend to get much of their revenue from selling Windows.

Bree · 23 Aug 2018

alphanumeric said:

...OEM-SLP activates against the BIOS SLIC table....
...Thats changed somewhat with Windows 10... the SLIC table is now replaced with a "unique" OEM embedded key.

Excellent explanation, but one minor addition, that last change (the unique embedded OEM key) was introduced with Windows 8.

cereberus · 23 Aug 2018

Bree said:

Excellent explanation, but one minor addition, that last change (the unique embedded OEM key) was introduced with Windows 8.

Actually, it was first introduced as a test on some Windows 7 devices but was quite rare but the tests showed that was the way to go. Not sure if these pcs ever made commercial production.