Windows Movie Maker for Sale?

Over the weekend I was sorting out a few files and found a few “WLMP”, Windows Live Movie Maker Files. I opened one using VS Code and it very nicely listed all of the “assets” used in the project.

So I could rebuild the video using another application or download Movie Maker, now I knew Microsoft killed Movie Maker back in January, but I hoped I would find a download.  I did not, and what was amazing to me, was that Microsoft had managed to get it off the web.

I did find one site, so I downloaded it, and then sent the file up to virus total and it came back clean. Great, so I installed it and when I opened it, I was presented with the following windows dialog.

Odd. So I played around with it and of cause it wouldn’t allow me to publish to YouTube or export to the project to a MP4 without buying it.  So I decided to take a look at the icon properties.

Now looking at the properties and I noticed the exe is called “WinMovieMaker.exe”, so I took a little look in the folder and found the following.

If I run “MovieMaker.exe” it works with no problem!

How is this site allowed to get away with this, I feel sorry for all the people who must be paying to “unlock” this.  This is a valid reason why Microsoft should allow Movie Maker to be opened sourced like Live Writer was.