
Removing “Annoying” Windows 10 Features Is a DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says - DanSmooth
https://torrentfreak.com/removing-annoying-windows-10-features-is-a-dmca-violation-microsoft-says-200611/
======
jeroenhd
The website is down, but yeah, offering customised ISO files with Windows and
some tools is clearly a breach of license. You can't just take a paid OS
distribution, add some config and plonk it onto github.

There's been people patching and customising Windows for many years, but most
of the time that was done in the form of gaining an official ISO, patching it
with a program on your computer and then using that to install. With that
model the user is the one violating the license, not the distributor, though
often these configurations used the official Windows API for OEMs so it was
legally grey enough that I've never heard of any lawsuits.

If these people just provided an exe and some patch files to turn an official
ISO into the same thing as they offered on their website, they'd likely be in
the clear.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of the project is though, loads of
pentesting tools only run well on Linux and there's plenty of Linux pentesting
kits already. Why not just run Kali in a fullscreen virtualbox and be done
with it? Or load Kali into WSL2, assuming Microsoft has fixed the hardware
access limitations in WSL1?

~~~
belorn
But that is not what the DMCA copyright claim says. It does not complain about
redistributing the files of a paid OS. The complaint is explicitly about
providing a tool to work around technical restrictions, so "just provided an
exe and some patch files" will not make microsoft happy.

A common copyright claim of someone sharing copies of proprietary files would
not make news. Using the DRM circumvention provision in DMCA is a bit more
rare.

My guess is that the technical restrictions being alluded to is the
advertisement and telemetry that is baked in.

There are comments here that speculate about the issue being the creation of a
derivative work. If the claim had said so it too would be interesting as the
line between operative system and user space is always a bit blurry and people
been arguing what is what for decades.

~~~
smolder
This is a bad move for MS. It's user hostile enough to have telemetry and ads
in the OS in the first place. If they fight against people's efforts to make
it usable again, they lose market share, developers/power users lose interest
in the platform, less software gets bought from and made for their store, and
so on. I think what they really need is a pro version of Windows that attracts
pro users by removing the bullshit to start with. That shouldn't be exclusive
to Enterprise.

~~~
Ntrails
> It's user hostile enough to have telemetry and ads in the OS in the first
> place.

I may be alone, but I think those two things are very different classes of
feature, and am very relaxed about the former as an opt out.

~~~
jeroenhd
The opt-out does not exist for Home and Pro users. Only Windows 10 Enterprise
can completely disable the telemetry engine. Unless you take extra steps
(firewall rules, network-level blocking, etc.) Microsoft will get a ping every
time a new device is plugged in and there's no way to disable that for the
common user.

I used to accept most telemetry popups from Microsoft before they became opt-
out, but in the scheme MS has currently set up, I don't think MS let their
customers make an informed choice about their data collection. For that
reason, I oppose it as much as I can.

~~~
SkyBelow
> I don't think MS let their customers make an informed choice about their
> data collection.

I think this is part of a larger problem where no single individual can given
informed consent to any corporate contract because one involves a team of
lawyers and the other involves an average person. Even if the single
individual was a lawyer it would be questionable, but for the average person
who has a limited college education and no special legal education at all,
there is far too great a power difference for informed consent to be given.

------
choeger
Interesting case. If Microsoft really demands that a user does not disable
features, I am looking forward to some taking this to court.

The thing is, software licenses are still largely uncharted territory. If I am
not allowed to modify the system as _my_ hardware executes it, will Microsoft
take liability for any damage, material or immaterieal that could be caused by
it? Think of an upgrade bricking your device (happened to a kindle of mine
once) or a security hole that gets exploited.

On the other hand, there is this whole discussion about the legality of ad
blocking. Often, publishers claim that it is a copyright infringement to
disable ads on their site. I think the cases are pretty much the same: A party
offering software to you under the condition that you execute it exactly as
they want. I wonder what the closest thing in non-software law would be to
such a stipulation.

~~~
p_l
The case is that the tool included a full copy of Windows, modified, and
apparently with activation removed.

So it got hit like any other site providing "cracked" windows.

~~~
dathinab
No activation was not removed, a license is still required.

Is still a modified version being distributed but license activation was not
circumvented.

~~~
arkades
> No activation was not removed, a license is still required.

This was even explicitly stated in the linked article, but for some reason
people keep asserting in this thread that it was a cracked version of windows.

Am I missing something, or are people just making big assumptions and not
reading the article?

~~~
lucb1e
I can't legally give you something copyrighted even if you can't use it
without a valid license code. It's still copyrighted.

But that's not what Microsoft is asserting here: the headline (which arguably
conveys the main point) says it's about the anti-circumvention clauses of
USA's DMCA law.

~~~
LorenPechtel
Yeah, because while distributing the basic .iso is illegal what are
Microsoft's damages? They distribute it for free anyway, their losses are $0
from someone else distributing it.

~~~
wvenable
If JK Rowling gave away Harry Potter ebooks because of COVID-19, you can't
just take those books and replace all instances of "Wand" with "Penis" and
distribute it because she made it available for no money. It's not all about
money but also about moral rights; The right to the integrity of the work.

~~~
dathinab
I think no one is claiming that distributing modified isos is legal, actually
even distributing the unmodified ISO files would not be legal.

The problem is that Microsoft didn't make a take down request based one them
distributing ISO files. But based on them "disabling features in windows" in
that ISO files.

------
malikNF
Microsoft being Microsoft, its such a shame so many video games still only
support MS. Over the years MS has become really user hostile (well may be not
as much as my samsung android phone I guess) with constant forced updates,
forced adverts for their products. And now a DMCA for a project trying to help
folks customize windows? Sigh!

Few days ago there was an update on Windows10 and my computer was restarted
forcefully, upon booting back up I was greeted by a massive "in your face"
type of advert for their Edge browser, couldn't quit it and had to see a big
advert from MS about their stupid Edge browser. After I managed to close it,
it decided to pin the browser to my task bar without asking me if it should.

~~~
loufe
I wish it was just the game makers needing to build for another platform which
is the problem. Unfortunately a large problem is also graphics drivers. NVidia
and AMD don't do much to help the open source community / linux with the
development of their drivers, meaning they don't harness the power of the
cards often times by significant margins comparing with Windows. There are
other technical hiccups which make a difference as well.

~~~
nvarsj
AMD has excellent open source support. They embraced the Linux community a few
years ago, and we now have a high quality AMD driver mainlined in the Linux
kernel. Games run very well on AMD/Linux, including Steam/Proton.

It's NVIDIA that is completely Linux/OSS hostile, and still follows the broken
proprietary driver approach they have been doing for years. On top of that
they actively ignore the agreed community standards and build
proprietary/inferior APIs because it's less work for them (like EGL).

I'm completely baffled by NVIDIA's approach to be honest. Especially with
scientific workloads on Linux. It seems like investing in a small team to
build high quality mainlined Linux drivers would be a net win for them for
little cost.

~~~
selectodude
Nvidia has always had super high quality Linux drivers. It’s their lack of
desire to open source pieces of them to make them work better with desktop
Linux that is the issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of Nvidia
GPUs used on Linux don’t have a screen connected to them, so supporting
wayland isn’t really a priority.

~~~
Elinvynia
It's really hard to consider these drivers "high quality" if they don't even
work with Wayland properly.

~~~
BoysenberryPi
Why would Nvidia care about supporting Wayland at this point in time? Steam
itself doesn't even work properly with Wayland. 9 of 10 people are going to be
using X right now and within the near future.

~~~
commoner
Wayland offers performance and security improvements over X, and is seeing
rapid adoption on GNOME-based distributions. Since both Intel and AMD properly
support Wayland through the GBM buffer API, Nvidia is going to be left behind
unless they start improving or replacing their EGLStreams API instead of
leaving it stagnant.

------
nickjj
I would consider things like automatically searching Bing for typing anything
into the Windows search bar a pretty annoying feature. Especially when 99% of
the reason to use such a search is to find a local program or Windows setting
to open.

Problem is with the 20.04 edition of Windows, there's no user friendly way to
do turn that feature off.

Putting all of the privacy settings to the most restrictive values doesn't
disable it, nor does turning off internet search in search in the policy
editor. You have to dig around and create manually named registry keys. IMO
that's unreasonable behavior.

But that makes you think there's likely dozens if not 100+ other things like
that. I hope Windows tool makers don't stop uncovering these things.

I wonder if anyone will call out MS for having an option in the policy editor
to disable internet search when using Windows search, while it doesn't
actually disable it. What would the legal action be there? Maybe a GDPR
violation since now the personal things I type into my computer are sent to
Bing without my consent.

~~~
unicornfinder
If memory serves the group policy setting does work but only on the Enterprise
version of Windows 10.

~~~
jedieaston
Just checked: in Windows 8.1 (and therefore, all versions of Windows 10), the
"Don't search the web or display web results in Search" Group Policy works
fine in Pro/Enterprise/Education/Business. The "Disable Microsoft Consumer
Experiences" one only works in Enterprise/Education, however.

If you are on Home, and don't have gpedit.msc, make a new DWORD in
"Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer",
call it "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions", and set it to 1. Upon reboot Bing will
no longer appear in your start menu.

~~~
nickjj
On my Windows 10 Pro 20.04 edition, that group policy has no effect. The only
way to get rid of it was to use the registry edit you've also referenced.

~~~
jedieaston
Odd. Did you run gpupdate /force afterwards? I've deployed it to Pro boxes
before with no issues.

~~~
nickjj
Nope, I enabled the setting and rebooted and still saw the search results.

Does gpupdate /force do something different than what rebooting would do?

Also did you do it on Pro boxes with the 2004 update? This behavior of the
setting not working only started with 2004.

~~~
syntheticcorp
I'm now running a 2004 updated Pro host with that Group Policy setting and
don't see any web search results. I also checked my registry and I don't have
that DWORD key.

Rebooting will refresh the group policy, so that should have worked. Maybe try
also enabling the "Do not allow Web Search" policy which is adjacent in Admin
Templates > Windows Components > Search. That seems to be all the
configuration I have to make it work.

~~~
nickjj
I have all 3 of these set to "enabled":

\- Do not allow web search

\- Don't search the web or display web results in Search

\- Don't search the web or display web results over metered connections

According to the help menu for the middle one it states: "If you enable this
policy setting, queries won't be performed on the web and web results won't be
displayed when a user performs a query in Search.".

Although Microsoft's official documentation states these only apply to
Enterprise edition based on: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-
management/g...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-
management/group-policies-for-enterprise-and-education-editions)

You can see that setting listed on the bottom of the page, but it's not super
clear because it's referencing an older version of Windows in those docs.

Maybe you have another tool blocking it, or you've blocked it at the
/etc/hosts level in the past?

------
FactolSarin
How does something like this get to the front page? Someone provides a cracked
copy of Windows and calls it "Ninjitsu OS" and then cries foul when it's taken
down because of course it was.

Is there that much of an anti-Microsoft sentiment that people upvote something
like this uncritically?

~~~
chenzhekl
I bet lots of people who upvoted the post didn't even read the main text.

~~~
user5994461
I read the text and it says nothing like it. It's all about DMCA takedown for
removing telemetry, not a single mention of distributing cracked ISO of
windows.

~~~
wvenable
Whichever legal assistant at BSA (not known for their subtly) wrote that take
down was clearly confused but it's plainly clear that was targeted because it
they distributed a modified Windows ISO.

There have always been tweaking tools for Windows unless we suddenly see a
huge crackdown on the hundreds of other products that remove telemetry, etc, I
would consider this overblown.

------
henearkr
Microsoft hasn't changed after all...

I used to like what they were doing with WSL, but now on the contrary it
starts to worry me, because it can become an avenue of evil behavior against
users/devs/open-source/...

~~~
lmilcin
Microsoft did change.

But then it looked how Apple and Google did the same thing, successfully, and
sailed away in terms of market share and now it wants to replicate the
success.

The thing is, I don't think it is going to succeed. The likely thing that is
already happening is that power users are leaving Windows and once power users
leave the platform will die.

~~~
hkt
After twenty years on Debian I just bought a Windows laptop on the strength of
WSL2 and Docker for Windows. Being able to play SimCity has been a bonus, and
I feel like I have the best of both worlds thanks to recent Windows additions.
It isn't perfect but the Linux Desktop experience isn't either. Nor is OSX, in
my experience.

My point being: I've been a very stubborn desktop Linux user for a long time
and have migrated to Windows. The traffic, I suspect, is going the opposite
way to what you seem to expect, at least for now.

~~~
smolder
And do you also appreciate them gathering lots of telemetry from your use of
your computer and taking away your ability to opt out of that?

------
spzb
Hang on. So this is the Business Software Association acting on behalf of
Microsoft issuing a takedown notice to Microsoft-owned Github? Sounds like
this could have been solved with a couple of internal emails. Or more likely
BSA are just going off on one without Microsoft's input.

~~~
tomxor
[edit] Not so blatent abuse, apparently the repo included windows iso
derivatives...

> Business Software Association acting on behalf of Microsoft.

Oh wait a sec... _Another_ BS third party Github DMCA complaint? This sounds
very similar to the "REACT" Github DMCA complaint last month also covered by
TF [0]. Where someone was (not) using Casio's software on an ARM SBC inside a
plastic Casio case.

"REACT" [1], "BSA" [2]... they are both non-profit, why are they both so
comfortable using blatant DMCA abuse as a means to silence content their
members disapprove of?

[0] [https://torrentfreak.com/hacker-mods-old-calculator-to-
acces...](https://torrentfreak.com/hacker-mods-old-calculator-to-access-the-
internet-casio-files-dmca-complaint-200523/)

[1] [https://www.react.org/about-us/](https://www.react.org/about-us/)

[2] [https://www.bsa.org/](https://www.bsa.org/)

~~~
winkeltripel
"BSA, is a trade group established by Microsoft"

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_(The_Software_Alliance)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_\(The_Software_Alliance\))

~~~
darkwater
I still remember the BSA ads against pirate software in the '90s..

~~~
n0cturne
“Don’t copy that floppy.”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Copy_That_Floppy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Copy_That_Floppy)

------
quyleanh
The title is incorrect, imo. The website offered tweaked ISO Windows 10, which
is commercial product. Why don't they offer a script, a software for all of
these tweaks?

------
close04
Ninjutsu OS appears to be a full ISO file containing a tweaked Windows
installation source. Why not release everything as a tool that applies all the
customizations on an installation from the official ISO?

The tools that are used to implement that customization ( _Win10-Initial-
Setup-Script_ and _O &O ShutUp10_) were always available. So why not just
publish the recipe? Do people still download OS and antivirus software from
random sources, like a Yandex drive?

~~~
dTal
Worth a historical note that this method of distributing more and more
invasive software _patches_ was how BSD was born.

~~~
close04
Is this the Research Unix derivative Berkley Software Distribution from 1978
or the current day descendants?

------
BLKNSLVR
Is this evidence of how Microsoft now monetises Windows?

– Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10.

– Disable many of the annoying features built into Windows.

– Unwanted Windows components removal.

– Remove/Disable many Windows programs and services.

~~~
hajile
15 years ago, a piece of software that downloaded user data and forced ads
onto them was considered evil.

The pot with the frogs is boiling quite fiercely these days. Too bad they
don't notice.

------
beervirus
This is dumb clickbait. They weren’t distributing some script to tweak a
Windows installation. They offered a download of the whole Windows package,
with their tweaks added.

Of COURSE they got a takedown notice.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
I disagree that it's clickbait. The wording of the BSA, clearly specified in
the article, makes it interesting and worthy of highlight.

Article TL;DR:

"the complaint goes on to highlight several features of Ninjutsu OS that are
claimed to be infringing. As advertised and specifically highlighted by
BSA/Microsoft they are:

– Customize Windows 10 with powerful tweak and optimize.

– Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10.

– Disable many of the annoying features built into Windows.

– Unwanted Windows components removal.

– Remove/Disable many Windows programs and services."

------
quijoteuniv
The amount of telemetry that gets block by my DNS sinkhole when running the
windows 10 maschine i have for work is insane. Even with the settings on maks
privacy. In a way i think Microsoft should be happy someone is using windows
for pentesting. Or that windows is not to o bad to use with a few tweaks.
Everytime I have an important meeting I have to make sure i am not going to
get one of those force starts that can take hours.

------
LeoNatan25
People should use NTLite to customize their own ISO files (downloaded directly
from Microsoft). You can never trust a customized ISO from the internet.

~~~
gruez
Is that still a thing? How much can you gain from customizing your ISOs using
that tool? A few hundred megabytes?

~~~
LeoNatan25
It’s not about disk size. It’s about being in control what processes and
services are running and spying on you.

------
anonymfus
> At first view, some may conclude that Ninjutsu OS amounts to a heavily
> modified yet pirated version of Windows 10. However, a video explaining how
> the software works suggests that users will actually need their own license
> for a genuine copy of Windows 10 to get the modifications up and running
> properly. Ninjutsu’s creator informs TF that’s indeed the case.

That is literally opposite of how it works. As Windows EULA does not give you
rights to distribute derivative works, sharing practically any kind of
modified Windows image is illegal, ever if you only change default desktop
background image. But circumventing activation for yourself can actualy be
legal in some specific scenarios.

------
sloshnmosh
There are several companies and even security companies that modify Windows 10
and remove unwanted programs.

A couple that come to mind are Malwarebytes "Adwcleaner" and FireEye's
"commando-vm" (found on Github).

But I do see a problem with Ninjutsu OS offering an preconfigured Windows ISO
as others have mentioned.

I think Ninjutsu OS will be allowed to continue if they just offer some tools
and scripts to modify a "normal" Windows10 iso instead like FireEye does.

Also, I hads never heard of Ninjutsu OS until now. I will be looking forward
to playing with it. (Streisand Effect)

------
romanovcode
The title is just plain wrong. Sensational and wrong. Someone took a Win10 ISO
and modified it to redistribute.

It is piracy that Microsoft has a problem with, not disabling features.

------
HissingMachine
I have no opinion about Ninjutsu OS because I'm not the target market. But I
would have never even heard about it without this DMCA complaint, and I
presume many who might be interested in it heard about it first from news
about this DMCA complaint. Just pointing this out.

------
zeepzeep
So if a modified ISO is illegal, how about a binary diff?

~~~
jrockway
Here is a take from the early 2000s:
[https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html](https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html)

Not really sure how much of this is still true. Since cloud services and
locked devices took over most of the software that people use, it doesn't come
up much anymore.

~~~
lucb1e
Interesting question and answer, thanks for the link. To save others a click /
searching for the relevant parts, these seem to be it:

> since it's not copyright infringement for you to apply a patch, it's also
> not copyright infringement for someone to give you a patch.

> For example, Galoob's Game Genie, which patches the software in Nintendo
> cartridges, does not infringe Nintendo's copyrights. ``Having paid Nintendo
> a fair return, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new
> variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative
> work.''

For the EU, merely this is said:

> The European Software Directive (adopted by the UK in 1992) gives users the
> freedom to copy, run, modify, and reverse-engineer lawfully acquired
> programs.

Given the reasoning "if it's not copyright infringement to patch, it's also
not infringement to give you a patch", which I honestly don't quite follow,
this ought to mean that the law works the same way in the EU. (The reason I
don't follow that logic is that copyright doesn't dictate what I can do with
information I already have: it's about distribution as far as I know. So _of
course_ it's okay for me to apply a patch when not considering any law other
than copyright (at least from my not-a-lawyer and European perspective), but
that doesn't mean I can make what might perhaps be argued to be a derivative
work and spread that around.)

------
scoot_718
Just admitted that their OS is subpar and they dislike customers. Good move
Microsoft.

------
alkonaut
It's not quite clear what is published here. What copyrighted material is it
that is accessed through somme kind of "circumvention" and what is the
circumvention?

~~~
dogma1138
I’ve tested this OS a few times as an alternative for Kali/BBL for
environments where Linux hosts would raise flags.

The distribution was a fully fledged ISO install of Windows 10 with the
activation feature disabled.

I don’t think the authors here have a leg to stand on.

~~~
alkonaut
Haha and the discussion here sounds like it’s ms being angry about scripts
removing ads/telemetry. HN gonna HN.

------
dancemethis
It _is_ a DMCA violation to remove what Microsoft calls "Windows features"
from its proprietary operating system.

It tells a lot about what DMCA and Windows are. It tells even more about whose
side they are on: the common people or the enterprise.

I can only hope the answer is easy enough to figure out, but I'll leave a tip
just in case: not on the side of people.

~~~
gbear605
This was not a instance of DMCA not allowing tweaks, but rather DMCA not
allowing people to distribute minorly changed isos of Windows.

~~~
hajile
What about fair use?

The transformative factor seems rather clear. People want the many altered
things and consider it different enough to go out of their way to find it
(despite it not reducing their out-of-pocket cost).

The nature of the work is that it is a tool rather than a work of fiction
which is also in favor of fair use.

The amount taken is substantial, but it has already been ruled that even 100%
taken can still be fair use. It also contributes a great many man-hours of
work though which means it wasn't just a blind copy/paste either.

The effect on the potential market is the big thing here. MS would claim they
lose money by not being able to spy on users or show them ads. However, their
licensing scheme remains untouched which seems to indicate that theft is not a
motivating factor. Considering the use of the new work, it could be argued
that ads and telemetry would be blocked by a DNS filter anyway and no actual
profit would be lost. Further, those people would have moved on to the free
alternative Linux which is already the defacto standard for a lot of pen
testing and event the license profit would be lost. Then there's the question
about if collecting that data is even legal (I don't believe it has ever been
tried in court) and how that would interact with the DMCA.

It really doesn't seem like a case MS would really want to go to court over.

~~~
gruez
This is a very charitable interpretation of fair use.

>The transformative factor seems rather clear. People want the many altered
things and consider it different enough to go out of their way to find it
(despite it not reducing their out-of-pocket cost).

Is it really that transformative? It might be from a user-privacy point of
view, but if consider all parts of the operating system, it's negligible.

>The nature of the work is that it is a tool rather than a work of fiction
which is also in favor of fair use.

This seems to be a misinterpretation of the law. That part of the test
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#2._Nature_of_the_copy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#2._Nature_of_the_copyrighted_work))
was intended to prevent copyrighting of facts. In this regard, an operating
system is probably closer to fiction than non-fiction. I'm not aware of any
exception for "tools".

>The amount taken is substantial, but it has already been ruled that even 100%
taken can still be fair use. It also contributes a great many man-hours of
work though which means it wasn't just a blind copy/paste either.

Again, if you consider the entire operating system, even weeks/months of
effort by a single person would be dwarfed by the millions (tens of? hundreds
of?) of man-hours that went into making the entire OS.

------
tenebrisalietum
The emulator community developed .ips files to allow distribution of
modifications to ROM files, without having to worry about the legal issues of
distributing modified ROM files themselves. I'm surprised there aren't tools
to use this or something similar with .ISOs.

------
blaser-waffle
All the more reason to move to linux. Here's to the year of the linux desktop!

------
ReptileMan
Question since the article doesn't make it clear - if they distribute ISO-s -
this is clear DMCA violation. But tool that modifies iso you have obtained
legally is definitely not.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It's an interesting question, what if your tool removes the DRM from the ISO
or turns Windows 10 into Windows Server.

~~~
wvenable
DCMA specifically covers the removal of DRM, etc. But a tool to remove or
modify anything else would be perfectly legal.

------
macpete
No more spyware, telemetry, ads or forced/unwanted remote software
modifications - I call it „self defense“

------
jessaustin
Meet the new M$, same as the old M$.

------
1MachineElf
We knew a day like this would come after Microsoft acquired GitHub.

Glad to see a great alternative, SourceHut, is moving forward as evidenced by
the HN submission made earlier today.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485290)

~~~
josephcsible
This isn't related to that, and the same thing would have happened no matter
where it was hosted. It was a DMCA issue, not Microsoft giving themselves
special treatment with GitHub.

------
nix23
Ahhhh, i love it when Microsoft shows unwanted his real face.

DEVELOPERSDEVELOPERS!!!

#whelovelinux ;)

------
Apofis
It's 2020, what else is new Microsoft?

------
chadlavi
Shout out to all the people who had been fooled into thinking MS was different
under current leadership.

------
7thaccount
Has anyone here used Cortana for anything? I really hate to see it using
CPU/RAM.

------
StreamBright
Thanks Microsoft for helping me to decide that I will never even going to use
Windows again.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
So much for Microsoft's professed "love" of open source. They love it only if
it works in their interests making them money. Otherwise, not so much.

I love this infringing feature they mentioned:

"– Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10."

So basically they openly admit you have to give up your privacy in order to
use their product. Neat.

~~~
p_l
The project got hit for providing an ISO with license check removed, not for
customizing windows. Over the last ~25 years I don't recall any of the windows
customization tools getting hit with DMCA... because they didn't provide a
technically illegal copy of the OS with them.

~~~
thomaslord
This is incorrect - the license check is not removed. (It's still a violation
of copyright laws because they're publishing a derivative work without
permission.)

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Mikhail_K
If somebody still wondered, why Microsoft acquired Github, this article
provides the answer. They bought the ability to control major distribution
point of non-proprietary software and shut down at will any perceived threats.

~~~
pixxel
They paid $7.5B to delete code repositories? What about all the other non
github repository hosts, not forgetting self-hosted, torrents etc.

~~~
Mikhail_K
> They paid $7.5B to delete code repositories?

As the article shows, yes.

> What about all the other non github repository hosts, not forgetting self-
> hosted, torrents etc.

They are harder to find and can be closed without difficulty, unlike a github
repo

~~~
detaro
What makes you think pre-aquisition Github wouldn't have taken this down?

