CNN.com - Report: 37 percent of worldwide software pirated - May 21, 2001
The key to this whole news story lies within the following quoted paragraph:
"In response to this threat, Microsoft's upcoming Office XP and Windows XP products will require an online "product activation" sequence that uses a combination of a software serial code and a number created by scanning the hardware of a person's computer. If the customer doesn't activate the program, it will stop working within several days."
Expect more news stories in the next several months telling us how bad software piracy is around the world... to prepare us for the strictest, most annoying copy-protection scheme ever invented. It's not enough that Microsoft makes the kind of profits to cause Donald Trump to drool; no, they want to inconvenience millions of customers just to prevent what they claim are billions of dollars lost to piracy. Note I said 'they claim'. This isn't an independent study, kids. Their claims exist to justify their intrusive and unnecessary copy-protection scheme. See, it's not the home users that Microsoft gives a shit about - it's the corporate users, and guess what? All the major corporations are already legal. It's the small companies with less than a hundred employees that are pirating software, and why? Because MS's licensing scheme is a financial kick in the ass to a small company's bottom line. So MS plans to put the squeeze on the little guys so they can extract a few more million bucks. Caught in the middle? Us.
Meanwhile, the government's pursuit of Microsoft seems to fade deeper and deeper into the mist. I wonder why that is...
The key to this whole news story lies within the following quoted paragraph:
"In response to this threat, Microsoft's upcoming Office XP and Windows XP products will require an online "product activation" sequence that uses a combination of a software serial code and a number created by scanning the hardware of a person's computer. If the customer doesn't activate the program, it will stop working within several days."
Expect more news stories in the next several months telling us how bad software piracy is around the world... to prepare us for the strictest, most annoying copy-protection scheme ever invented. It's not enough that Microsoft makes the kind of profits to cause Donald Trump to drool; no, they want to inconvenience millions of customers just to prevent what they claim are billions of dollars lost to piracy. Note I said 'they claim'. This isn't an independent study, kids. Their claims exist to justify their intrusive and unnecessary copy-protection scheme. See, it's not the home users that Microsoft gives a shit about - it's the corporate users, and guess what? All the major corporations are already legal. It's the small companies with less than a hundred employees that are pirating software, and why? Because MS's licensing scheme is a financial kick in the ass to a small company's bottom line. So MS plans to put the squeeze on the little guys so they can extract a few more million bucks. Caught in the middle? Us.
Meanwhile, the government's pursuit of Microsoft seems to fade deeper and deeper into the mist. I wonder why that is...
posted by stonedog at 11:16 AM
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