today we're at iTap an electronics
recycling facility in los angeles
founded by Erik Lundgren who's made it
his business to take discard of
electronics piece them apart so that way
they can be used again this business has
also landed him into a heap of trouble
after losing his last appeal eric has
been sentenced to 15 months in federal
prison and fined $50,000 for duplicating
28,000 OAM delery store cd's eric argues
that he was just trying to keep the PCs
out of the landfill and that the
software that was on the disk was freely
available online and necessary to
prolong the life of these computers so
I'm a hybrid recycler and I coined that
phrase about Oh 10 years ago it was
based on an ideology of well let's reuse
everything for its utilitarian function
its values utilitarian value rather than
just shredding everything and destroying
all the value let's use it as a whole if
it works and then parts if the whole is
broken and then components if the parts
are broken and then let's go ahead and
recycle for commodity value i I went to
China to study eat waste because that's
where all the heat waste was going and
all of these innovative solutions were
about reusing parts and reusing
components so we were getting them all
these parts and components and one of
these brokers called us up and he said
hey we need to get this restored tool
made when we said sure and he shipped us
one and we looked at it and we went ok
this is a Dell restore tool and we
looked online and we realized it was
free to download and then we realized it
you could actually call Dell and Dell
would ship you one for free and they
would pay for the shipping these
restored disks allow you to restore your
computer to factory settings as long as
you already have a valid Windows license
according to Eric this is an incredibly
important distinction because without
the valid license these disks are
essentially worthless a restore disk
doesn't have a license that is the most
important thing that you need to get
across to people what we try to explain
to a judge that he didn't understand
basically the judge was convinced by
Microsoft that a restore CD and a full
blown new operating system with
licensing coa are the same thing
that they function the same that they're
valued the same the judge presiding over
Eric's case valued the restored discs at
the lowest price Microsoft sells their
license operating system for holding him
responsible for seven hundred thousand
dollars worth of pirated Windows
software but Eric wasn't reproducing new
software licenses just the restore disks
my name is Nathan Proctor I'm the
director of US perks rights repair
campaign US PIRG is a national network
of nonprofits of state Public Interest
research groups and we stand up and
fight for consumers whenever their
rights are threatened or our democracy
is threatened Erik reached out to us you
know kind of in between you know his
case going to appeal and then hearing
back and we started looking into it you
know kind of in the context of how this
case relates to other actions that
companies take using copyright to try
and disadvantage repair it is a curious
case because the fact that there were
criminal charges it is routine for
companies to you know use civil
litigation whenever there's a
disagreement about licenses or rights
etc we see that kind of universally
across the industry but we really
haven't seen it come to criminal
prosecution and that is not the kind of
thing we want to see we think that that
will have a chilling effect on people
innovating and thinking about how to how
to find new uses for products and to
continue products in use in a rebuttal
post on Microsoft's official blog they
say they support refurbishing or cycling
through their own programs stating we
have programs that support refurbishers
altogether these programs have more than
3,000 members recycling millions of pcs
they've even said that they've cut back
on the number and types of piracy cases
they bring saying we remain committed to
protecting our
when we see others working to deceive
them especially when they're acting
unlawfully we often pursue actions for
example against phone scammers who
masquerade as technical support to trick
into fraud customers we similarly remain
concerned when counterfeiters seek to
deceive customers even moreso when
they're seeking to profit from this
activity I mean the majority of
recyclers follow this this legal
guideline that says the license follows
the hardware in perpetuity until the
hardware's demise it's real simple real
clear if you mess with licenses you are
stealing from Microsoft if you're
providing free restore cities that
everybody can download for free online
every one of your viewers watching this
can go do exactly what I did that
shouldn't be illegal it's not illegal it
doesn't hurt anybody there's no victims
there's no damages I want to make sure
that people are empowered to be able to
determine what happens to their
rightfully owned property and if they
want to recycle it great let somebody
like me go ahead and reuse it and turn
it into good for the world and if they
don't want to recycle it even better
keep using it please as long as you
possibly can so that that way we get the
most out of the tools that we have in
our society and the most benefit comes
from them before you want to recycle
them but when you do recycle them we're
going to try to fix them we're going to
try to part them out we're gonna try to
do the best thing that we can for
society with all of this waste that
comes to us and we want none of it to go
into a landfill it's okay if Microsoft
doesn't want to do that or if any other
OEMs want to do that if they want to
sell products and focus on that that's
great but don't stop us don't don't
throw us in prison don't turn this into
an issue where if we want to do what's
best for people we're going to end up
stepping in your way and stepping in a
pile of whatever I'm dealing with today