Piracy Pop Ups
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I'm not sure I like this policy and I hope it isn't implemented. Or at least not too vocally. And especially not on servers. I hope this doesn't come to SQL Server ever.
It's good that they're disclosing that they're not going to track down users, and I hope that stays true. I agree with the author that Microsoft has a right to protect their intellectual property and pursuing those that pirate software. But they also have a responsibility to help the industry move forward.
Slipping something like this into a patch will discourage people from patching their machines. No one wants the way their tool works to change when they get it repaired, which is what a patch essentially boils down to. Would you want a sign on your dash after a car repair that states the last oil change wasn't official? Or that the alternator someone installed last year was not an official part, maybe part of a "copyright violation" by some company illegally manufacturing parts?
When you develop a product, software or otherwise, as a society we have decided you have the right to profit from that and control it's manufacture and distribution. Right or wrong, that's the way we run the world. And you should be able to prosecute those that pirate the idea. But you also have to make some judgement calls.
Many people pirate software. Part of it is a disagreement with Microsoft licensing, such as the family that installs their copy of XP on 3 machines at home rather than buying 3 upgrades. Part of it is a profit motive such as those that copy the packaging, burn CDs, and then sell "discount" software.
Microsoft needs to recognize the social impacts of their policies and work with people to set better licensing deals for home users and other groups that makes more sense in a social atmosphere. And do that for all their products as well. There's more to this than strict profits and some of it is growing your business model into society and adapting it.
The other thing is not to expand this. I've had issues already and so have friends where you need to install a server to get work done, but you put in the wrong license key. And you can't find the other one or keep track of which key goes on which server. It's just not simple and as we upgrade complements and change hardware in a business setting, this is a problem.
Especially if pop ups appear on my servers.
Steve Jones
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Steve,
I'm with you all the way on this one. I have 3 copies of Office XP here at my home with three computers. However, I'm still not sure that, in all of the shuffling around of disks, I have a distinct copy of the product on each computer. And that is just one example...
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I agree Microsoft should restructure there licensing for home users with multiple PCs. That being said, however, the ONLY ethical and legal thing you can do is purchase a copy for each PC. If I don't think a company is doing something morally ethical or doesn't offer a good value on their product or service, I don't do business with them period. I don't illegally copy their product. Don't justify your actions to meet your desires. Microsoft has every legal right to price their products as they see fit....and conversely we have every right to resist this pricing by complaining to Microsoft or by purchasing other software....not by stealing. People who steal (yes I mean steal) should be prosecuted to full extent of the law.
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Good link and editorial Steve.
I, and many I know, still refuse to purchase anything remotely connected with the Sony Corporation because of the violation of trust they perpetrated against us all with their root kits.
I like Microsoft and their products a lot - for years I have earned my daily bread adding value to corporate America by implementing their products. But (to me, at least) this seems a little too close to a one-off root kit - in principle if not in practice - and I do not like it.
Microsoft employs lots of smart people. Is there some other, less big-brother-some, way to accomplish this?
Just my $0.012 (after taxes),
:{> Andy
Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics
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Yeah, keeping track of software licensing is a pain in the $$$. We have 14 servers and 200+ desktops at our company and are mostly an MS shop. I use volume licensing as much as possible, but you still have to keep track. Also we have small software packages from different and it is difficult to keep track of them all.
Home software is hard for most people as they are not computer geeks and don't really care about it. I support several small businesses and home users and they don't even know what licenses they have. Most think it's okay to install software on multiple computers because it's in their house.
If MS and others offered a home license for all your computers that might be a boon for them and a great relief for homeowners.
Having irritating pop-ups about software licensing would be really sad, and piss people off!
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I agree this will simply stop people from doing updates just out of fear that this may get activated which will help spread windows viruses. One co-worker flat out refuses to patch his computer after a bad experience with XP sp2 going badly wrong.
Even if a person has a legitimate installation, after reinstalls, fixes by computer techs (using who knows what disks), hardware swaps and other issues, we can't be sure that there is not some flag somewhere which will trigger this detector. Perhaps it's not worth the risk to get your installation messed up with this stupid thing.
I find their numbers very questionable, claiming it to be 'opt in' when it's simply something buried in the license terms and users are not clearly told what could happen. Not a whole lot different from the grey area spyware vendors.
[There's another issue too: Many manufacturers of home machines (like my Compaq) do NOT supply a proper OS install disk, they only give you an option to do an image for a blanket reinstall--to cheap to give you the CDs apparently). For someone looking to repair their OS without wiping everything, a borrowed XP disk may be the only answer--- what will this do to this flag?]
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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I agree this is sneaky and underhanded, but on the surface, I like the idea. It's a case of "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about." I think the point about screwing up a license key is valid, and users should not be prosecuted in that case, but maybe it's cool to notify them of the screw-up. I read the comments so far, and nobody has mentioned a case where a legitimate user would be flagged, unless they screwed something up. I admit things can get confusing, but that is no excuse for screwing up your installations. If it's the patch itself, and not the user, that is the problem, then obviously that is a different story, but that doesn't sound like the case here.
I authored a game back in the 80s, and put many months of work into it, but never recieved a cent for my efforts, even though many people played the game. This means that everyone who had it, had an illegal copy. You have no idea how much that pissed me off! I think it's cool for Microsoft to do things like this. With computer software so easy to copy, MS has to go to lengths like this in order to protect their investment. They have no choice. If they weren't serious about software piracy, they would be in my situation, where someone buys one copy of something, and suddenly the whole world has it. MS plans their R&D and development budgets for a new version of Windows based on selling millions of copies. If they don't make that sales goal, they lose money, and people like you and me lose jobs! MS has an obligation to stay one step ahead of the rip-off artists, without annoying legitimate users, and I think this is a step in the right direction, if it works correctly.
I suppose, if the messages annoy a person, or make them feel guilty about their rip-off version of Windows, then they can apply the hack, which I'm sure somebody is working on right now. "One step ahead."
Jasmine
PS: I weenie-whistled the phone when I was a teenager, and I rationalised it just like all the phreakers did, by saying that this tiny little loss can't possibly hurt Money-Loaded Mega-Corp, but as an adult, I know better. Microsoft is huge and wealthy, and as a result of that size, they stand to lose the most as a result of piracy. They can't afford to "write this off"
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Having worked in a number of places, large and small, for years, it's easy to screw up installation keys. They're hard to remember, and its difficult to keep track of them for each server. Plus you don't always purchase the software with the machine. Especially as you get to larger companies. Usually you blanket license or buy in bulk.
It's a fine line here and I'm not sure how to handle it. I agree Microsoft should be paid for their software, but they also have to be responsible for that software, which means patching it when they haven't done a good job. This isn't a patch, and it will annoy many legitimate users. It's one thing if you have 3 PCs at home. Another to have 1000 servers to deal with.
Granted, it's an annoyance. The software doesn't stop working, at least that's not listed as a consequence, which I would very much be against. I don't like it, and I hope it doesn't stop people from patching, which is the worst outcome.
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I also think that Microsoft has the right to charge for their software. But their prices are a little on the high side (as is all software really) and if they continue on this tack, then they are going to slowly lose a chunk of their market.
I, personally, am going to be moving most of my workstations at home over to kubuntu with an XP partition just to play the occasional game. I will maintain my single Windows 2k3 server so I can continue to develop ASP/ASP.net stuff, but the rest of my servers are going to be linux.
My mother brought a HP Pavilion a few years ago. 2 years ago the hard drive that came with it died rather dramatically and took out the hard drive image of the OS. She had an extended warranty from the store and they sent it to their techs to fix. We got back the computer sans OS and because it was previously installed on the HDD, we had no disks. We also got told bad luck there, we dont warranty the software.
I talked to HP and ended up bullying them into supplying the CD's (they wanted us to buy another licence to go with the CD's). But to get my mothers computer going again quickly, I had to install a friends copy of XP.
MS would possibly jump up and down about this, but I think in the end that it was the fault of HP for not supplying the original CD's with the computer. I ended up having to get a copy that is in the grey area because of the OEM and the store.
I read an article the other day where Steve Ballmer says that the reason why their software costs so much is because of piracy. I seem to remember paying about $100.00AUD for a copy of Dos 6.22 when it first came out (and I think about $180.00AUD for windows 3.11). MS has always been expensive as far as I am concerned and putting the blame for their greed on piracy is a bit of a joke really.
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I think Microsoft have the right approach with their Genuine Advantage scheme. If you have a legitimate purchased copy of the software for your machine, you can download maintenance fixes and enhanced functionality for it, if you have a ripped-off copy, you can get security updates but nothing more.
Perhaps Microsoft will follow the business model of the internet gaming software sites for all their software. You can use the basic functionality of the site for free as many times and from as many machines as you want. but if you want the full power of the application, you have to pay a small monthly fee. You can download Visual Studio Express for free and use it, but if you want to develop seriously with it then you need to shell out for a full copy.
And yes licence keys are a pain. We usually image the installation CD onto an installations directory on the machine and install from that, otherwise you are forever hunting round the office for the original CD.
David
If it ain't broke, don't fix it...
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I'm not a big fan of piracy or copyright infringement. But at the same time, Microsoft bleating about pirated software is too close to record companies whining about music downloading. I fully agree that the creators of intellectual property have a right to be compensated for the use of their material, but in the case of the music industry, the numbers just don't tell the story that the record companies are trying to spin. There is no statistical correlation between mp3 downloads and CD or online music sales, and the practice is actually not hurting the industry nearly as much as the precipitous decline in both quality and diversity of popular music. I happily buy about 50 CDs a year, but only when I can find something worth listening to, which has been harder and harder to do as ClearChannel and the record industry combines to churn out bland regurgitated rubbish.
But that's a side track.
In the case of Microsoft, I'm totally unconvinced that their prices are justifiable. I like a lot of their products (although they still have no clue what they're doing when it comes to gaming
), but to put some reference numbers in the discussion, lets look at the prices of software in South Africa (where I'm living at the moment). WinXP home edition retails here for just over $300 in US currency. But for my uses (and, in all likelihood, most of the readers of this forum), the Home edition lacks the functionality I need. So I have to get XP Pro, which will set me back about USD $450. And Office2003 is another USD $550.Now, maybe it's just me, but I think that those prices are a little bit steep, especially when you consider that their business model is based on bulk sales to a massive customer base, rather than a small, exclusive, expensive product (like Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photshop, CorelDRAW, Pastel, etc, which all retail in a similar price range to XP Pro).
The argument of, "if you think it's overpriced, just don't buy it" doesn't really hold, either. In this case, if you don't want to use the product, your only option is to revert to the 19th century. It's extremely difficult to operate a PC without Windows, and the majority of other commercial software is designed around the Windows environment. You have little choice other than to run it, and I feel that Microsoft use their monopoly to extort unreasonable fees for their software licences.
So when I was a student, and bought my first PC in 1999 (for about USD $500, including monitor and all the peripherals), it was totally out of my budget to pay those sort of prices for software. I used a friend's (genuine) version of Win98, and a pirated version of Office98.
At my work, with a corporate budget for licensing, all of our software is genuine, and I wouldn't even think of using anything else. But if I was a student, I'm sure I'd do the same thing again.
I'd just have to download one extra crack this time.
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C8H10N4O2
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Newbie: Now, maybe it's just me, but I think that those prices are a little bit steep, especially when you consider that their business model is based on bulk sales to a massive customer base, rather than a small, exclusive, expensive product (like Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photshop, CorelDRAW, Pastel, etc, which all retail in a similar price range to XP Pro).
It is well known that HP, Dell etc don't pay anything near that amount either for their copies, MS pricing procedure clobbers individuals simply because they can (fleet buyers of cars may pay a bit less than the average user, but certainly not the incredible disparity that is evident here). If nothing else, this may encourage people to strike back at the feeling of being abused.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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