While this is technically an accurate statement, it sounds like he was selling counterfeit Windows CDs (that Microsoft sold). In fact, he sold bit-for-bit copies of Windows restore CDs that you can get from Microsoft or Dell for free online -- Microsoft claim in the blog you posted that they sold it for $25 but that is not true (they sold CDs with Windows licenses for that much, and you needed a Windows license to use the restore CD -- so you can arithmetically conclude they are worth $0). The court and court of appeal disagree with that point for two reasons:
1. Microsoft's expert witness claimed that you could use most of Windows with the restore CD image. This ignores the fact that you can download a trial image of Windows for free, or install Windows on many machines without a licence key and have it mostly work in the same way. It also ignores that such a system mostly working is entirely the fault of Microsoft, by their own admission, because they wrote earlier versions of Windows to only nag you for a licence -- and the 30-day free trial was actually perpetual (like WinZip, funnily enough).
2. It is difficult to believe that the defendants would spend tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture disks that are worthless -- though this is said as an aside. This ignores the fact they sold them because they knew there was a need for them, and so the value of the disks was the market value and not any intrinsic value that Microsoft claims they had. I don't buy his "just wanted to help people find the discs" comments, but I don't agree that he made them because he believed they had an objective worth of at least $25. Because he downloaded the images for free.
Obviously I disagree with their views, but more importantly the court claims their worth entirely on Microsoft's expert testimony. It's quite clear they wanted to
Microsoft claims that the software is counterfeit in their blog post you linked, which is not physically possible since it's a bit-for-bit copy. Not to mention that the court decision says that they distributed unauthorized copies of copyrighted software, which is not the same as what Microsoft said (the court effectively found that the disks were identical copies).
The key issue IMHO was that the CDs he sold had the Microsoft logo screen-printed on it in an attempt to make his customers' customers not think that the CDs were counterfeit (even though the software was not counterfeit -- it was an unauthorized copy). Obviously this was a stupid (and as the court case proved, illegal) thing to do, because it is obvious proof of him trying to to deceive people. That was obviously illegal and unethical, not to mention selling unauthorized copies of copyrighted software.
> Not a guy who fixes laptops for a living.
Bit of an odd stance from someone who is just posting links to Microsoft's view on the case, which is obviously going to be in favour of the decision (and as above possibly incorrect).
Louis has his biases, sure, but in his interview with the guy it was quite clear (to me at least) that he had an issue with the key point of the case -- that he actually sold discs with a Microsoft logo on them that were not made by Microsoft, and claimed they were genuine. He also admitted his initial video about the topic was not accurate because he wasn't aware of all the facts, and instead focused entirely on the valuation argument in the case.