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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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?
Interesting case. If Microsoft really demands that a user does not disable features, I am looking forward to some taking this to court.<p>The thing is, software licenses are still largely uncharted territory. If I am not allowed to modify the system as <i>my</i> 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.<p>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.
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!<p>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.
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.<p>Problem is with the 20.04 edition of Windows, there's no user friendly way to do turn that feature off.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Is there that much of an anti-Microsoft sentiment that people upvote something like this uncritically?
Microsoft hasn't changed after all...<p>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/...
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.
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?
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?<p>The tools that are used to implement that customization (<i>Win10-Initial-Setup-Script</i> and <i>O&O ShutUp10</i>) 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?
Is this evidence of how Microsoft now monetises Windows?<p>– Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10.<p>– Disable many of the annoying features built into Windows.<p>– Unwanted Windows components removal.<p>– Remove/Disable many Windows programs and services.
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.<p>Of COURSE they got a takedown notice.
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.
People should use NTLite to customize their own ISO files (downloaded directly from Microsoft). You can never trust a customized ISO from the internet.
> 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.<p>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.
There are several companies and even security companies that modify Windows 10 and remove unwanted programs.<p>A couple that come to mind are Malwarebytes "Adwcleaner" and FireEye's "commando-vm" (found on Github).<p>But I do see a problem with Ninjutsu OS offering an preconfigured Windows ISO as others have mentioned.<p>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.<p>Also, I hads never heard of Ninjutsu OS until now.
I will be looking forward to playing with it.
(Streisand Effect)
The title is just plain wrong. Sensational and wrong. Someone took a Win10 ISO and modified it to redistribute.<p>It is piracy that Microsoft has a problem with, not disabling features.
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.
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?
It <i>is</i> a DMCA violation to remove what Microsoft calls "Windows features" from its proprietary operating system.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.
We knew a day like this would come after Microsoft acquired GitHub.<p>Glad to see a great alternative, SourceHut, is moving forward as evidenced by the HN submission made earlier today. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485290" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485290</a>
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.<p>I love this infringing feature they mentioned:<p>"– Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10."<p>So basically they openly admit you have to give up your privacy in order to use their product. Neat.
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.