If you don't like their product or policies, don't use it. If you use it then you should pay for it. Use Linux, a BSD Unix, or a Mac. People who pirate Microsoft products don't really hurt Microsoft, they hurt the rest of the competition.
Don't get me wrong, Microsoft isn't helping themselves with this, but @melling has it on the head.
In the current climate, it's this kind of blog post that undoes a lot of the good work people are doing around protesting SOPA/PIPA. For those with a very simple view of copyright, saying you're going to 'steal Microsoft's IP' because you've been inconvenienced is just evidence that Something Must Be Done and the proposed law is a Good Thing.
Certain applications that professionals need are only available on Windows. Most games are as well. Even for software with Mac/*nix versions, a person may have quite a bit of money tied up in Windows-only licenses.
I'm not commenting on whether pirating Windows is ethical. I'm just pointing out that sometimes you'll have to ditch a lot of software to ditch Windows.
You're just reinforcing their argument. By not using the competition, you're ensuring the market for those products on the competition's OS doesn't exist. It's actively strengthening Microsoft's hold on the markets you frequent.
OK. The primary application that I need Windows for is Quickbooks Enterprise. I also still use my Windows Photoshop license since it was expensive, and not transferrable to OS X. My primary operating system is already OS X, and I only use Debian Stable on servers. I run Windows in a VM when I need those application, and only when I need those applications. How would you suggest replacing Quickbooks Enterprise? Do I just stop keeping accounting records? What about the 13 years of records that are already in the accounting system? Should I throw those out? What about inventory and accountant's copies? Will you train my customer's accounting firm to use some other package? What about the inventory database?
Microsoft has 90% desktop market share. Software developers won't support other operating systems until they have more market share, and people won't switch to other OS'es until there's more software.
If the software you need only runs on Windows then you should pay for Windows. Those that can move to Mac, Linux, etc and get away with using Wine or other alternatives should. The markets for alternative OS'es will grow then more people will be able to move.
Sounds like you are stuck on the Windows environment. You should stay and pay for Windows. There's nothing wrong with that.
You've got a point. That why Microsoft turns a blind eye on piracy in developing countries. Piracy is the only way they can get os market share they want. That's the reason why their copyright technical protections are so lousy.
I always use the competition to the extent that it's available. My main point is that sometimes, there simply are no good non-Windows substitutes.
Secondly, I'm pointing out that a lot of people have spent money on licenses for Windows software that has a Mac/*nix equivalent. (I haven't personally, but this applies to a lot of people.) If you have hundreds or thousands of dollars invested in those licenses, switching away might not be financially viable.
If either of these situations applies to you, I sympathize with your complaints about Windows and its licensing system.
His point is that there are no good non-Windows substitutes precisely because the non-Windows market for that software is too small and that by using the Windows version you are removing yourself from the already-too-small market that you should have been part of, which continues the cycle. Your points are definitely valid, but they only reinforce the argument that pirating Windows only harms the competition. Put another way, if you were completely unwilling to either pay for or pirate Windows, the market for the hypothetical non-Windows substitute for a program you need would is guaranteed to be one person larger than it currently is, whereas with the willingness to pirate Windows, that market may be one person smaller.
Correct. I use OS X 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, I'm running Windows-only software. I'd much rather be able to run that stuff on my Mac.
I faced that problem (I had some money in Windows-only licenses). I still cut the cord and moved to the Mac.
If I find it necessary to move from the Mac to something else, as much as I hate it I will cut the cord and not worry about the software investments that I have made.
If you have an application that only works on Windows, then you need to either (a) deal with the Microsoft Tax and all that implies or (b) yell at your software vendor and tell them you want alternative platform support.
Quite a lot windows-only software works with Wine, .net stuff runs on Mono and there is still ReactOS -- open source OS written from scratch, binary compatible with Windows.
If you don't like their product or policies, don't use it. If you use it then you should pay for it.
This strikes me as a valid ethical position, though I happen to think things are more complicated than that.
People who pirate Microsoft products don't really hurt Microsoft, they hurt the rest of the competition.
This, on the other hand, doesn't make sense. You seem to be assuming that the invariant is that the user will not be paying Microsoft. And that might be true for you. If you're not going to be sending any money to MS no matter what, then yes, using MS products helps them somewhat.
For the author of the article, however, the invariant is that he will be using MS products. Since he's going to be using their products in any case, when he is fed up with their policies and decides to pirate instead of purchase until they get fixed, of course this hurts them.
If you want to argue that nothing is invariant, and that the best way to hurt MS is to both stop purchasing and stop using, well, of course that's true, but it's not relevant. What the author is talking about is simply stopping paying for something until it gets fixed; whether he still uses it or not is of very minor importance to MS next to whether or not he pays for it. His goal isn't to destroy MS or make them irrelevant; on the contrary, he just wants a better customer experience.
> whether he still uses it or not is of very minor importance to MS next to whether or not he pays for it.
What's more important than whether he pays for it is whether everybody else will still pay for it.
If everyone around you use Windows, you probably have to still use Windows in order to be able to collaborate with them. And you don't even have to think about open standard.
The more people around you use other OS, the more you are likely to think about using platform-independent technology. Then the more likely you are to be able to move to other platform since there are less and less fraction of people holding you on Windows.
The author using Windows gives everyone around him the inertia of moving to other platform. He is part of the reason why most people knows how to use only Windows.
And then when big company wants to buy a platform they will chose Windows because most people use it. And big company will pay. And big company will buy more expensive software and extra support.
Microsoft has tried their damndest to ensure that you must buy their OS in order to use a computer. They've done this directly using the Windows Tax, and indirectly with over two decades of anti-competitive business practices, some merely shady and others outright illegal.
"If you don't like it, then don't use it" is pretty useless advice in this situation.
And the amazing thing is that they managed to do it again for Android. Except this time Apple is in a better spot than they were with PC operating systems.
I don't agree. This is only a possibility for some people. I gave up on Windows about five years ago and have been a happy Linux user since. I don't have any pirated software at all on my system.
But most people aren't ready or capable of learning a whole new operating system they have to install and manage themselves (unless Linux comes preinstalled on the computer). And most importantly, almost everyone uses certain software for which there is no equivalent on other OSes.
Now consider a certain user who is completely fed up with the way Microsoft has been (mis)treating their paying customers and doesn't want to support this behaviour with his money anymore. If you're not opposed to piracy "on principle", which is fine but ends all discussion before it can even start, then pirating Windows seems like a possible (yet illegal) solution.
My family got by for a long time on a legal XP + MS Works. They then had to pirate the real MS Office because teachers at school only accept PPT files, and OpenOffice's export was too broken.
I buy all my software but I still can't really blame them.
Office 2010 Home And Student is $119 and it gets you Powerpoint, Word, Excel, and OneNote.
If that's too much, though, I'd recommend just using either http://office.live.com or http://docs.google.com. They're easier to use, the files don't get lost, they have all the features students will need, the documents auto-save, they're available on any computer with an internet connection, it's easy to share the documents (read-only or read-write) online, and the services are free. I've set my daughter up to write all her papers online, and it works great.
If you haven't tried http://office.live.com, you should check it out. It's really a slick.
I believe in copyright and commercial software and everything, but teachers should not press my family into buying software when free alternatives exist. They can just accept PDF slides which OOo can produce, since when are slide animations critical?
I think the "more right" reaction would be to complain about this, at increasing levels of hierarchy, rather than support a monopoly that will push the $119 bill on other families who might be worse off. Either way, I don't blame them for not wasting too much time on it.
It's the same with Photoshop. If Photoshop had perfect DRM (or if users would selflessly follow EULAs), then I am sure we wouldn't be stuck with Adobe's terrible monopoly and insulting usability.
I see why it won't happen: Many pirates can't wait until a 99% feature-compatible competitor emerges. People who don't want to buy Windows or Photoshop can also not just throw money in a Kickstarter pot instead (imagine how much $$$ that would be?!) - I can't see a good competitor emerging without iterative market forces.
A tragedy - I would love to work full-time on a killer product pitted against either of them, but I just can't see how it fits into the scheme of the market. :(
> A tragedy - I would love to work full-time on a killer product pitted against either of them, but I just can't see how it fits into the scheme of the market. :(
Gimp would be a good competitor to Photoshop if it could just get a ton of focus on usability. If you want to "fight" Photoshop, that would be a good place to help out.
And who will employ me to work on it full time? I know of no example where occasional hobbyist contributions have led to good usability, except for Terminal-based text editors (and only in the eyes of some).
I think the GIMP stinks and I would still honestly dedicate myself to it for a small salary. I would madly dedicate myself to it if I were to sell it commercially and with perfect copyright in place, because then my "salary" would depend on my merits. But I won't, because I know everybody is used to warezing Photoshop by now. (FWIW, I spent a long time being the target of laughter and facepalms by not warezing Photoshop but supporting cheaper alternatives instead. There's even a social push to do it now.)
Maybe this will work again once we have perfect DRM in the disguise of SaaS, but that's a day I fear for different reasons.
I believe this is the main reason Microsoft never really went about pirates in China. Just imagine if they were fighting it so hard, that most Chinese would use Linux now, which could've caused other users in other countries to use it, too. That would pretty much mean Windows would have only 50% market share, perhaps less. I mean, I'm sure a big chunk of that 90% market share they have now is with pirated licenses.
What if their product came preinstalled on a laptop and yet every few weeks it would say that I am a victim of a counterfeit software, demand that I would re-download some validation app, refuse to install it, demand a reboot and then calm down for another few weeks.
Can I pirate a copy, because it is getting damn ridiculous. What do you say?
These are great points and a good portion of piraters do so for these exact reasons. There are always going to be people who steal content/apps instead of paying for them but I am sure more than a few people pirate purely because it is a better user experience than what is currently offered.
TV shows are a great example. I cut my cable about a year ago and haven't looked back since. I refuse to pay a premium for channels packaged together that I never watch.
Currently, I use a combination of Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Zune Marketplace to fill my content needs. They provide a great user experience but the pricing structure/availability is lacking. Most shows available on Prime, Apple Tv, Zune are only available for purchase. What if I don't want to purchase them? Why can't I rent TV shows just like I rent movies? I have never been one to purchase and own content since I usually don't watch things more than once. I pay to rent movies all the time from Apple TV and Zune via Xbox.
Hulu Plus is great, but they have a fraction of the content I would like to watch. Basically, there's not a perfect solution yet but I refuse to go back to cable. Here's what I would like to see:
1. Charge me per view, don't sell me the content to own.
2. If the margin is too thin for the rental model, throw an ad in there...I won't mind. (Hulu plus does this)
3. Let the content producers sell their content directly to me to increase margin. This can be done by the content producers creating apps for Xbox, Roku, etc.
4. Make all previous seasons of shows available to me for rental to increase revenue.
5. Use these awesome new technologies to create deeper experiences/interactions with the content, which will open up new revenue streams.
You cant be blind to this, Piracy is different from stealing, but it is analogous and so the meme.
When you physically steal something from a store, the store faces a loss of value and that is why it is illegal.
Information is not valued in the same way as other goods and sometimes the value is lost when a copy is made even though the original is not damaged in any way. Its like the secret treasure map which has the value of the treasure if its a secret and has zero value once its made public and the treasure is long gone.
> sometimes the value is lost when a copy is made even though the original is not damaged in any way.
The one and only time this is true is when something is pirated pre-release, thereby causing an actual financial impact to the rightful owner. You'll also find that there are court cases backing this line of reasoning up.
That's another good example of language engineering.
If a crook fools a bank into giving them money, the bank is the victim of the theft. It should be one of the banks primary responsibilities to authenticate the parties to whom they give out money. But if the crook is good enough, it's fair to say the bank is the victim.
But instead they say "you are a victim of identity theft" in order to make you the victim.
It's not like you lose your identity as a person though. And i think that that intellectual "property" belongs to the issuing authorities (government, banks etc) not you per se
The correct word for "identity theft" is "fraud", which is what it was called for centuries. Person A pretending to be person B isn't new, and has always been nothing more than a class of fraud, but at some point somebody decided an ancient crime needed a trendy new name.
When I was a kid I got caught sneaking on the subway. I was charged with theft of services. It makes sense to me - what I literally did was evade paying my $1 before stepping on the platform, and I was attempting to ride a train that wasn't full, so my being there or not wouldn't affect the operation of the train or the other riders. But gaining access to something against the wishes of the provider jeopardizes the provider's ability (or incentive, or willingness, whatever) to provide the service. That's why it's called theft.
This is all kind of off-topic to the OP, and doesn't address why people should or should not pay for their software, music, and movies, but I think theft or fraud is an accurate term to use.
Hmm...interesting. I see the difference you are trying to illustrate but to me, obtaining something illegally that was intended to be purchased is stealing. We're talking about the same thing though:)
If they were the same thing, then that would mean downloading a copy of Star Wars is equivalent to pocketing the Star Wars DVD in your entertainment center.
When does the act of stealing occur? If I download a torrent and then delete it without watching/playing/listening, did I steal it? If so, then does that mean repeatedly copying the file to and from an external hard drive is repeated theft?
Does it become stealing only if I make use of the material? If I buy the movie and show it to ten house guests for free, are they thieves? They didn't pay to watch and the author would have preferred it if they did. If they aren't thieves, why would they become thieves if I uploaded ten copies to each friend instead of showing it to them in my living room? Of course, I would be infringing on the author's legal copyright, but I don't see where any stealing can be definitively identified.
It's equivalent in an ethical sense, not equivalent in the legal sense. I think it's perfectly fine to call it stealing, since it embodies the core meaning "steal" is meant to convey. You're depriving another of something that is rightfully theirs, control over their creative content. Let's not get pedantic here, lest we devolve into discussing what "to steal the spotlight" means.
In terms of quantifiable impact, I think there is a clear ethical distinction between flipping bits on a disk and taking possession of material property.
You're depriving another of something that is rightfully theirs, control over their creative content.
Yes, but "control over creative content" is a nebulous concept that bares only a thin resemblance to things that we can determine are absolutely present (or not present, as in the case of theft)
Let's not get pedantic here, lest we devolve into discussing what "to steal the spotlight" means.
This is exactly my point. I don't think the difference between "to steal the spotlight" and "to steal a spotlight" is a pedantic distinction.
"Stealing" generally connotes taking something away from someone else. With piracy, a potential sale is lost: the pirate might have bought the item were it not available illegally for free. With theft, there is both potential sale loss and property loss: if you steal a car from Toyota, they lose the ability to sell the car to you, and they also lose access to the car itself (which prevents them from selling it to anyone else). So Toyota loses twice, whereas the RIAA loses only once.
Of course, the ethical difference is probably larger than simply double. To use an old saying, let us assume that:
potential sale = a bird in the bush
and,
access to physical product = a bird in the hand
As we know from the ancient algorithm,
a bird in the hand = 2 * (a bird in the bush)
Piracy loses a potential sale, and theft loses a potential sale and access to a physical product. Therefore, given the following equation:
a bird in the bush = x * (a bird in the hand + a bird in the bush)
We should be able to solve for x, where x is the amount that piracy is as morally reprehensible as theft.
a bird in the bush = x * (2 * a bird in the bush + a bird in the bush)
a bird in the bush = x * (3 * a bird in the bush)
a bird in the bush / 3 = x * a bird in the bush
1/3 = x
As you can see, piracy is clearly 1/3rd as bad as theft. But, I have a feeling that the above algorithm still doesn't sufficiently illustrate the ethical difference between piracy and theft. Let's try again:
With piracy, the RIAA has lost the potential sale to the individual pirate. However, they still can sell the same DRMed AAC file to someone else. With our theft example, not only has Toyota lost the ability to sell to the thief: they've also lost the ability to sell that car to anyone else in the world. Therefore, if
X = likelihood of sale to one individual
and we assume that reduced likelihood of a potential future sale (which is the RIAA's claim of loss) is equivalent to some loss of income, Toyota's lost income is:
X * world population * price
And the RIAA has lost:
X * 1 * price
Meaning that piracy, at the time of writing, is approximately 7 billion times better than theft, and increases in its relative virtue at every moment.
I'm not sure if you're joking or not by trying to define a quantitative relationship between piracy and stealing, but here goes anyways:
First of all, relatively pricing should not matter. By your logic, if Toyota's price was suddenly 0.5 * price, then stealing just got two times better! What's wrong is wrong.
Second, your equation does not do justice to math. If your definition of X is the same as mine (i.e. average likelihood an individual will buy this item, independent of the world population) then you're saying Toyota's lost income can potentially be GREATER than the price of the car.
In clearer terms, if
dX / d(world population) = 0
then
lost income = X * world population * price
does not have an upper bound! With the explosive nature of the world population, it would seem that theft gets exponentially worse as the years go by.
Where does the logic break down? Well it seems you've modeled the world's purchases of A SINGLE CAR as independent of each other. (In other words, you've modeled the lost income if Toyota had a car stolen by every human in the world.) What you really want, for n people, is
So now the comparison is between (1 - (1-X)^N) and X. In the case of software like Windows 7 where relatively few people will go for a free alternative, X is pretty damn high. I won't argue that it's greater than (1 - (1-X)^N), but it's nowhere near your estimate of 7 billion.
In all seriousness, I definitely agree that the "relative virtue" of digital theft is better than other forms. But, as you acknowledge, there is indeed a loss of value.
Would you mind if I copied your comment (with attribution and link) verbatim on my blog? I've never seen this line of reasoning before, complete with math :)
No. Adulthood has nothing to do with the fact that everyone is using a word that doesn't accurately describe the action taken.
Just because it's not stealing doesn't mean it's not illegal. You can't call anything that's illegal "stealing". It's piracy, which is illegal, but a different act than stealing.
People who started calling piracy stealing are the same people that cannot accurately understand what is actually happening, and people who benefit from calling it stealing instead of correctly portraiting it as it's own crime.
The desensitized image of piracy that people have is somewhat close to the way some people have a desensitized image of credit card fraud. The image that you're hurting a faceless corporation, and not an actual person. Introducing the moral part in an action that doesn't accurately portray a victim is the hard part. When stealing it's easy because you can relate and imagine the victim of an action.
I love that you have a problem with people calling copyright infringement "stealing", but no qualms at all about calling it "piracy" instead, which is an entirely different affair.
Certainly the last time I downloaded a TV program I did using BitTorrent, rather than boarding the content producer's boat and taking it with force.
>I love that you have a problem with people calling copyright infringement "stealing", but no qualms at all about calling it "piracy" instead, which is an entirely different affair.
Pirate, verb, sense 3:
The unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work - to pirate software
Steal, from the dictionary, first and only sense as a verb:
Take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it: "thieves stole her bicycle".
I was thinking the same thing ! I would actually go one step further. How can anyone OWN information (music,movies,software,etc) which is really binary which is really one big ass number (in base 2).
How can you OWN a number ? It doesnt make any sense to me, and I'm a software developer that makes products.
Its like saying, "I own the file represented by 23445353568893534534565767525454546422223346445646" and you have to pay me use that number. Sounds pretty dumb when you really break down this entire intellectual property issue
Think of that number as though it were a house, instead of breaking in and stealing its content, you download the whole house, does that make it less significant?
No you didnt if you made up the bits, wrote them, and didnt copy off from a star wars DVD, and in real world once you have written the bits there is no way to know whether you copied it or wrote it by yourself so we compare it with the original and if there is an overbearing similarity then it is considered as piracy or stealing.
The crux of the matter is that "steal" implies you've deprived the owner of something. (Actually, the us supreme court ruled on this a long while ago and clearly delineated the two..)
The only reason for the tap on the shoulder is the effort by the industry groups to get people to conflate the two things. I hate seeing people be tricked, especially by such an odious organization :)
Could you link to that decision or do you perhaps know the name of the case so I could search for it? The deprivation idea doesn't seem to be intuitive to most people I've talked with and it would be great to know the actual case law.
Sure, the case you're looking for is Dowling v. United States. I'd give you a Wiki link, but..
The general gist of the case is that a man made a business out of pressing and selling Elvis records without distribution rights. Because of this, he was indicted for (among other things) distribution of stolen property and conspiracy of the same.
The supreme court struck down all of the stealing charges, with an opinion that (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here): "Copyright implies a more complex set of property interests than simple theft".
The phonorecords in question were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" for purposes of [section] 2314. The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
Although Karunamon already replied, I think you were responding to me. I'm not sure I understand the question - I'm not arguing that it is not an intuitive aspect of theft, I am stating that it has not been intuitive to people I have discussed this with. It is a fact, not an argument - are you trying to ask if I'm arguing that it should be an intuitive aspect of theft? If so then I really don't have an opinion - I think intuition is completely subjective and that there is no "should" about it.
Nono.. Quite the opposite, deprivation is key to what "theft" entails. If I haven't deprived you of an object, I haven't stolen anything. I might have copied it, used it without your permission, or infringed your copyright, or pirated, but I haven't stolen it.
>> The crux of the matter is that "steal" implies you've deprived the owner of something.
Yes, earnings. When you grow up you will need to work and earn money and pay bills and balance a checkbook and without "piracy" (meaning stealing) controls, your Internet usage will be even higher than mine as you grow older.
Yes, let us ignore the conclusions of the individuals that thought long and hard about the issue, and just go with what "common sense" (aka "the gut") tells us.
Allowing "theft" be defined as depriving someone of something turns pretty much every crime in existence into "theft". Maybe we should just have 1 commandment - thou shalt not steal?
If you steal an apple from someone, you are depriving the owner of that apple. If you, say, download a film, you are not depriving the copyright owner of anything at all – it is a copy of information. Whether or not you should have paid for the download is not relevant to the distinction. The action you took does not involve deprivation, therefore you didn't steal. Therein lies the difference.
No it isn't. Stealing is taking something from the owner. Like if I steal your bike, you no longer have a bike. If I copy your bike (were it possible), you still have a bike.
Copyright infringement isn't stealing just like it also isn't rape or murder. That doesn't make it right, but it definitely make it different from theft.
This is really interesting for me. I've infringed a bit of copyright in my time. Cassettes when I was young, VHS from TV (I cut the ads out - does that count?) my high school physics teacher gave us photocopied exercises with clear copyright notices in the footer, IRC, Napster, torrents.
I remember before it was called stealing, because we were doing it without mass attention on a young internet. I've learnt to gloss over stealing and theft when reading about piracy because I've always seen it as hyperbole because I knew the net before was labeled that. I put it in the same basket as hacker vs. cracker, as much as I wanted everyone to know the difference - they don't care and its a boring argument.
It seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that people have been exposed to copyright infringement == stealing from so much media for so long that it is accepted by default. It didn't used to be this way.
Well seeing as we have different degrees of murder maybe we should have a sliding scale for stealing. While stealing physical content deprives the seller and the creator digital theft only impacts one party. Also since the majority of an items physical value comes from inflation from middle men the "value" of a digital item is probably considerably less as well.
"Copy". I can't speak for the previous poster, but to me "steal" implies denying the owner of a possession. A copyright isn't a possession, it's a grant of exclusive rights.
Are you new to this argument, or are you deliberately being ignorant? I have trouble believing that someone in the tech industry has not come across this before.
I think the OP meant that there should be a 'buy' option with no commercials and unlimited viewings, and a rent option possibly with commercials and a limited number of viewings.
Correct. At first it annoyed me that I was paying Hulu Plus for content and then they also layered in advertising but after speaking with a friend who works there, the margin just wasn't great enough to make it work without ads. Content is expensive.
But look at the price point. Originally $1.99 per episode to just rent it. Even $0.99 sounds a lot to me.
That's almost $50 for an entire series. What's the average amount of time someone would spend watching TV series per night? An episode of this, an episode of that, 3 or 4 times a week. Suddenly you're spending vastly more than cable.
That's more than a modern box set will cost you, e.g. Boardwalk Empire, just released is selling for $40 on Amazon.
Yet they spent $5million per episode, that's a lot of views to just break even, plus the server hosting costs and vendor marketplace cut to make.
The whole thing is overly complex, per item rental is too complicated, a fractured marketplace makes subscriptions poor, the time drip model that studios and channels used to use is dying, but they won't let it go.
I think it'll be 5 to 10 years before we finally see a decent resolution to this where actually paying is less hassle than piracy.
I agree that shows are generally overpriced but you've selected some bad examples - Boardwalk empire had 12 episodes so even at $3 an episode (premium content or HD) that's still less than the $40 you'd pay on Amazon.
$1.99 just to rent? It's $1.99/$2.99 to buy them currently, are you sure about those prices? I can't remember the rental price so you could be right, but it doesn't seem likely since they charge the same amount for purchasing now.
Yes, I do remember when they shuttered TV show rentals. The only reason they gave is that users preferred to buy TV shows. I find that hard to believe although I could be wrong. Charging people $1.99/$2.99 to purchase an episode of a show means $20-$30 for a season (sometimes more). It makes more sense to just pay for cable at those prices, which I refuse to do.
Apple has been pushing for less DRM, not more, and would rather people bought into their platform without being held hostage.
It is not an easy thing to convince publishers that no DRM is the way to go, yet the music companies reluctantly agreed. Considering Apple is the number one retailer of music, ahead of Wal-Mart, this seems to have worked out quite well.
Rentals are hard to market because in the digital domain you have the same media file as you would if you had "purchased it", only the licensing is different. Charging hotel-room prices for movie rentals will not translate to many sales. Netflix has the right idea for rentals. Low-quality streaming, flat rate pricing.
Amazon was an important pioneer in selling DRM free MP3 files, but they couldn't break the back of the whole industry like Apple managed to.
As for the App Store DRM, I'm not sure how that's any different than Steam, which everyone seems to agree is a great model for both customers and developers.
Apple's App Store and Steam both allow you to install the same application on multiple devices.
I'm not sure if you can point to a better model that's been successful in the past. Some indie developers have done alright with DRM free games, but they depend on community goodwill to keep themselves profitable, something a large corporation has a much harder time doing.
At the low end 40$ a month * 12 month/ 40$ a show / year = 12 shows. I don't know about you, but I don't think many people watch that much TV excluding reruns. But, I do know plenty of people that pay 100$ a month for cable.
Surely one reason for Netflix, Hulu, etc is to aim to provide a single point of access. Without this, you'd have to sign up to an account at HBO, Fox, Universal, Everylabeloutthere, then download each of their apps to get at the content.
That is, until Mr Entrepreneur creates a service that scrapes, aggregates, links to, or otherwise makes it easier to access all these content producers from a single site. The content producers might even decide that hosting, billing, and all that coding takes too much, and outsources it to Mr Entrepreneur. That hosting, billing, and coding costs Mr Entrepreneur, so he'll want a cut to cover costs, and some more to provide a profit incentive. Still, as a single point of access, tempting the producers with the promise of its big user base, the service can negotiate bulk licences…
And so, we're back to where we are now, where you access content through an intermediary, and pay for the convenience.
Capitalism comes in for a lot of criticism, but arbitrage and innovation is one of the things it does well (as long as there is balanced competition and regulation.)
That said, just because that's the way things are done now, that doesn't mean it's right. There is always scope for things to be done better, and for some of us, that ease is provided by torrents and such.
I share the pain this guy experiences. I had Age of Empires 3 which would not run on my machine, period, because it didn't recognize the CD Rom driver and, as Microsoft explained, it might be a 'virtual' CD ROM and that would violate the terms of service. And even though it wasn't and didn't I could never run their software on that machine.
Thus the who piracy economic argument is broken in three ways:
1) Folks who pirate software won't pay full price, sometimes they won't pay any price. So the economic 'loss' from piracy is either '0' or the area under the curve described by units pirated vs actual purchase price.
The loss is 0 if you use the reasoning that if there were perfect piracy prevention, none of these people would have paid for the retail version.
2) The cost of protection adds additional production costs (printing unique product code stickers and adding them) adding additional steps to boxing/shipping, adding additional activation software and its testing.
3) The additional cost of support when legitimate users like this guy call support to have a human you're paying anywhere between 10 and 25/hr to 'solve' this persons install/operation problems.
Folks who have done the math, with real numbers (and Lotus comes to mind), determine that they earn more money by not including DRM on the product. When Lotus first announced they were removing DRM from their 1-2-3 product they mentioned that nothing they had done had ever slowed down the availability of pirated versions but had added additional support burdens every time.
Just had a thought on seeing your point 1): Part of the value some people buy is exclusivity. If others can get it for free, it reduces this aspect of its value.
How does exclusivity add any value to a piece of software? The utility and productivity that I get out of a piece of software is in no way influenced by how anyone else obtained it. Sure, I might be bitter that I didn't also break the law and obtain an illegal free copy of my software, but that's really just sour grapes.
And in business if the value I'm able to produce with software is governed more by my exclusive ownership than my skill with it and other professional skills, then it's probably a good idea to find another line of work.
Windows activation is shockingly easy. Enter your key and when you go online it verifies it. If you're not connected to the internet make a 5 minute phone call. If you don't want to do that, no problem - there is no need to activate for up to 180 days. Really don't want to activate? No problem - it'll just turn your screen black and announce it's unlicensed software.
It seems the author's only significant complaint is that they don't provide him with updated slipstreams to download. It's true - he'd have to make them himself with the free tools they provide. Maybe they should provide public updated slipstreams, but this hardly seems like a valid reason to refuse to pay for the software.
No it is not, at least not for every version. I didn't have to use windows for a very long time, and about a month ago I installed a windows XP SP3 in a virtual machine. The grace period ended a few days ago:
- the automatic activation failed
- my product key is said to have been pirated
- the phone support for registration is now fully automated, and just rejects my phone activation.
- the machine won't load whole subsystems of windows until is activated (you can monkey your way around from the IE instance you can launch from the activation dialog, but your system is not fully functionnal)
- I am searching for how to get a human to deal with the situation
I might be failing somewhere and this situation is all due to my lack of experience, but I am with a CD of windows in one hand and a hosed install on the other, and nowhere to go from there.
This is just one of the worse software experience I ever have in a few years.
Windows XP launched more than 10 years ago. What I said was true for Vista (5 years old) and 7 (2 years old) and is true for Windows 8 afaik. I'm not sure what your point would be - that you'd pirate Windows 8 because you didn't approve of the ease of use of an activation system they deprecated 5 years ago?
Why should he/she approve of the system that makes his legally licensed software not work just because it's 5 years old? If it didn't have the license activation anti-feature, it would work just as well now as it did 5 years ago.
Because the blog was titled "I'm pirating the Next Version of Windows" (because I feel it will be too difficult to activate) and not "I'm pirating Windows XP"
It sounds like the problem stems from the 2 things:
1.) the media you installed from was not legit
2.) Windows gives you notices that it needs to be activated, which you ignored.
You won't be able to fix that without reinstalling or using a crack. The phone activation will work but you need to change product key. There is an article of Microsoft support site on how to do that actaully.
However, it's a problem with your XP Media... are you 100% sure that is a legit copy of windows? Where did you get it from?
I currently have this problem with a Windows 7 machine I bought from eBay. I can't activate it and I have a black desktop (sorta annoying) and two or three different things that pop up periodically to yell at me (incredibly annoyingly, especially the one that makes an obnoxious error noise). This situation is definitely my fault - there are a few possibilities for where I went wrong:
1) maybe the guy I bought it from was not legit - I asked him lots of questions before going through with the purchase but that's about as much as I could (or would be willing to) do,
2) Using what I believed to be the correct, legal process, I created an install disk and looked up the key for my existing OEM install, which I used to reinstall a fresh instance without any of the HP nonsense the machine came with,
3) For a couple days I had an install using the same key on a VM to test something with IE9.
Any one of those things could be the problem and they were decisions I made, Microsoft didn't force or manipulate me. But here's the thing, at the end of the day what I have is a really obnoxious machine and if I had just bought a Mac (off of eBay even!) or installed Linux instead, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this. You're right that the Microsoft experience isn't so bad, if you follow the rules you're probably going to have a bare minimum of hassle, but it is still so much worse than the competition on this front.
> You won't be able to fix that without reinstalling or using a crack.
This is the point that gets under my skin. You can't ask a commpany to actively maintain staff to support a 10 years old OS. But then, it shouldn't put DRM or activation processes that have fail cases needing active help for products that have long life spans (I know, planned obsolescence and etc.., but still).
This is a problem I don't have with other OSes, and it just looks bad in comparison.
To answer your points,
1) the license I am trying to use was acquired a long long time ago in a previous iteration of my company. It seems it would be a big hassle to retrieve who/how it was bought... That's bad resource management.
But now I can't imagine it was stolen or frauded in any way.
2) Windows XP on a virtual machine was a choice among others (say win 7 with a separate physical machine for e.g.), and I needed time to try the install, knowing that activating an install that would be trashed afterwards would not be good. Now, this situation might be an answer, but otherwise it was a quite usable environment.
Online activation works only a certain number of times, and then you'll have to make a call. In my experience, this call took more than 5 minutes, and they asked a few none-of-their-business questions that made me think that I'm asking for their permission to please let me reinstall Windows once again. This was a few years ago with Windows XP, in Russia.
Many other Microsoft products will not install on a copy of Windows that hasn't been activated. This includes all the Live apps and I think Office. I think it also restricts access to Software Update to only critical patches (been a while since I tried without activation).
Yes, and also Windows Security Essentials. A family member has a legit retail copy which failed to activate, and just lives with the degraded experience. Quite a contrast with other OS's.
While I'm entirely sympathetic to the author's DRM plight, buying the software and getting the pirate's cleaner experience are not mutually exclusive. If you want the best experience and a clean conscience (I'm assuming here you think piracy is wrong, since you've bought so many other copies of MS software), buy the software, then install a pirated a copy.
I usually do this with new PCs that have Windows pre-installed, so I don't have to deal with crapware.
I think that misses the point. The author wants MS to change and is attempting to get their attention via this post. Whether or not the author will actually pirate the software is moot.
Ah, that's a fair point. The post is, in the end, imploring MS to change. And I suppose part of that point is the economic one that MS is losing sales because of this. Adding the premise that you want to send an economic message to MS as well, and assuming that the author needs Windows, it doesn't seem like there's a good way to satisfy all of the requirements. Still seems like the closest thing would be to buy a copy, install a pirated version, write a blog post like this one, and threaten not to upgrade or to switch to a competitor.
This. This is exactly the point. It is a really safe bet that in a few years I'll be sitting at the telephone activation screen after paying for another version of Windows and upgrading a motherboard, cursing as I enter the sixth block of digits into the IVR for the forth time. And that is bullshit.
Would this still be legal though?
You are still using an unlicensed copy regardless of whether or not you happen to additionally own another copy.
For all they know you might install your licensed copy on another computer later and not remove your unlicensed one.
Whether strictly legal or not it's very unlikely to cause any complaints. For instance this would pass a BSA audit with flying colors as all they'll be interested in is installed_copies < licensed_copies.
Though it's very likely to be a very bad idea anyway. As has been pointed out elsewhere a large majority of such activation disabled software is loaded with rootkits and other malware.
If you've bought a Windows 7 kit and your DVD got damaged, you could copy a friend's disc or use one downloaded from work off technet / software assurance / msdn.
The point is that it's OK from a legal point of view, as long as you use your original serial number for the same windows edition.
I 'swapped' discs back when Windows 7 SP1 came out. I got the update off SA and the updated ISOs as well.
Should you have to prove you actually bought a license of that OS, you should have
a) the invoice & warranty papers of the computer it came preinstalled on and being used on - if preinstalled; possibly the restore disc as well if there is one
b) the invoice, the original (damaged or not) disc and the box of the original windows kit - if bought separately as a windows install kit
Those are required to prove that you're the rightful owner of that Windows kit. I don't know if you can resell a PC with Windows on it.
Microsoft is very silly to make people jump through so many hoops. Especially when the pirates enjoy a better service.
Also, they should offer downloads to people who got the OS preinstalled on their machines. Apple is giving people this serice under the form of network restore since 10.7.
IANAL, so talk to one if this information is of more than theoretical interest to you, but the Psystar case makes me believe it would not be legal. Courts seem to take a copy-centric view of things, so an illegal copy can only make more legal copies and a legal copy can only come from a legal copy.
So the pirate version would always be pirated in the judge's eyes, even if you had paid for a license for a legit copy as well. They won't let you use the legal license you acquired to cover a pirate copy. Or something like that, anyhow. There are always lots of funny little details that can make a big difference when dealing with law.
I'm not sure how applicable Psystar would be to an individual making a copy from an illegal one. Psystar was making copies of Mac OSX and then selling them. Even if it was buying licenses, it was making and selling copies. If this was one person doing it on their own PC, I'm not sure how different that is in the eyes of the law.
I have no idea whether it's technically legal, actually. But I'm working off two premises: 1. The author doesn't care about legality, since he's finally resorting to piracy anyway. 2. The author would like to compensate MS for the use of a Windows license. If those are true, then buying a copy but actually using a pirate copy does what the author wants.
Eh, the author wants to pay MS money for the product, but also to be able to use the product without jumping through a bunch of stupid pointless frustrating hoops.
MS insists these hoops are needed.
The author, after years of giving MS money and jumping through hoops decides to stop giving them money, and stop jumping through the hoops.
The author is trying to tell MS, in the post and with the lost sale, that the anti-piracy measures are totally counter-productive, and have pushed a paying customer into a pirate.
in the US? almost certainly not, just like how ripping your own dvd's is technically illegal under the dmca.
also, based on my own experience, you can activate windows 7 on multiple computers with the same key just fine (got 1 key through msdnaa, wanted to get another to replace my academic home premium because i needed/wanted the backup functionality and xp mode. but when it took my schools msdnaa admin more than a week to respond, i just used the key i already had. at some point i'm sure i'll switch over to the new key that i eventually i got, but i don't see a reason to do that until windows starts hassling me).
"Buy the software, then install a pirated a copy."
Unethical, probably, but sometimes that solution is easier than dealing with MSFT's support. A friend of mine purchased a copy of MSFT Office 2011, but it wouldn't work. He called the support several times and they couldn't offer him a solution so he finally gave up and decided to just pirate it. Ten minutes later he had a working copy of office 2011 on his machine.
I own an XP Pro license and bought the upgrade edition of 7 Ultimate. Reformatting would require installing XP, upgrading to the latest service pack, then "upgrading" to 7. Giant PITA.
OS X is actually my primary operating system. There is some software I still need Windows for though, like Photoshop and Quickbooks Enterprise. I guess I could upgrade that software, but I am not paying thousands for new features I won't use. I had to reactivate because Bootcamp is a pain in the ass, so I removed the partition, installed VirtualBox, and installed on that. It activated fine, and has deactivated itself twice now, necessitating phone calls each time. I have probably been through this process 20 times now, with family computers, Windows XP reinstalls, and the like.
In an effort to expedite your transition away from Windows entirely, may I suggest Pixelmator (http://www.pixelmator.com/) as a Photoshop alternative? It is a pleasure to use and has all of the core features of PS (compositing layers, tools etc).
I have Pixelmator, and I think it's a good 60% solution, but it's no Photoshop. For example, the other day I fired it up to make constrained rectangular marquee selections, and it can't do that. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but I wanted to select at a specific aspect ratio because I needed an image to fit in a specific box. There are lots of little things like that. Not to mention I've been using Photoshop since the 90s, so I'm very proficient with it, it does every single thing I need, and I already paid a lot for it.
There really is not a good substitute for Quickbooks Enterprise. And I forgot Regex Buddy. I downloaded Patterns off the App Store, but it's a poor substitute. Regexes aren't pretty, but if you are hacking on something a quick regex can do a lot for a little.
EDIT: I just re-read this, and thought it sounded a little too negative toward Pixelmator. I think being a good 60% solution in relation to Photoshop is a huge accomplishment, and that Pixelmator is great software. It is absolutely worth the money. It is a very competent intermediate image editor, and would be $30 well spent for anyone. The criticism is mainly directed toward the lack of some esoteric advanced features, and my curmudgeonly desire to have it work exactly like Photoshop, since that is how I have edited images for the last dozen years.
I love Pixelmator but I can't find any way to do nearest-neighbour resizing. Which I figured was the simplest thing to implement. Even MS Paint can do that.
At least for Parallels, if you read the instructions, it says the first time you start up Windows Boot Camp in the VM, do not activate until it has fully installed Parallel Tools and it's drivers. Something in those drivers, which I presume is legal, prevents the infinite activation loop.
Unless he took a physical copy off of a shelf somewhere, he didn't steal anything. Pirated, ripped, copied, used without paying for, there are about 20 possible verbs to describe the act of using software without purchasing a license.
Stealing is not one of them.
I know I'm beating this horse fairly hard, but it's something that people need to be aware of.
Meh. When I create software and someone "takes away" my ability to earn income from it, it feels like stealing.
The "IP infringement is not stealing" line is just what people say when they want something for nothing and they don't want to feel bad about inflicting financial damage upon the original author.
> The "IP infringement is not stealing" line is just what people say when they want something for nothing and they don't want to feel bad about inflicting financial damage upon the original author.
That doesn't make any sense. I don't think anybody is seriously arguing in this thread that copyright infringement is correct or ethical - what we're instead arguing is that, despite the best efforts of the *AA groups, "stealing" is a different crime than "copying without permission". The fact that there's a supreme court case backing this line of reasoning up (in plain language, no less) makes this conflation of terms even less forgivable.
Call the crime what it is.
>When I create software and someone "takes away" my ability to earn income from it..
Except if I copy something of yours without permission, I haven't taken away your ability to do anything. And I challenge you to prove otherwise.
Since your audience includes people who hope to be paid from their creative efforts, your argument that not paying for said creative efforts is perfectly fine may meet with disapproval.
TL:DR; it doesn't matter what semantic games you try to pull, if you're a cheap bastard you're still an ass.
Seems like a pirated .iso would be a great place to deliver malicious code to Ring 0, hiding itself from the kernel and becoming essentially impossible to detect from the infected OS itself. I'm sure botnet creators are already well aware of this.
An original .iso would be a great place to deliver keylogging software and backdoors for law enforcement and international espionage purposes. I'm sure law enforcement agencies are already well aware of this.
Not trolling: incentives and processes are basically the same for any entity distributing precompiled binaries, from MS to Symantec to Skype to Apple to Canonical. They don't do it because of the potential for huge reputation hits... exactly like most people in "the scene".
This is ingenious, or else I am just really dense; I had never thought of this. I'm assuming that it wouldn't be trivial to write such a hack, but if you were able to, it would be a self-distributing botnet hack. You wouldn't be able to get the same reach the botnets that use exploits do, but you would remain pretty much indetectable. Thanks for sharing.
A pirated .iso already modifies the data from the official release because it has to break the activation code somehow. Thus, you can't check it against any official hash. From there, the best you can hope for is to find a "canonical" hacked version and check against that, but since most people aren't really capable of breaking protections, they'll trust whatever shows up on the pirate bay.
Most pirated ISOs I've seen aren't activation-cracked. I've had to download a few legitimately for systems that only came with a 'recovery partition', and whose hard drive failed or needed upgrading. I try to only download 'legit' ISOs (OEM or regular), or at least ISOs that look legit. It would be nice if I had some way of verifying them against each other to see if they've been modified.
Then it is your decision whether to buy a license or download an activator (which you can download after installing all the antivirus programs in the world)
Not always. The most common and reliable piracy channel for Windows 7 right now is by updating your BIOS with a SLIC signature, and then installing Windows as a valid OEM copy. The installation ISOs can be SHA1 and MD5 hash checked against the same versions given out on Microsoft's TechNet site, because it's the same disk required to install any version of Windows 7.
Granted, flashing your BIOS with random binaries floating around the internets is just as bad, if not worse, than installing random pirated binaries, but it's a lot easier* to check whether or not a 512KB dump is exactly the same as the version given out by the manufacturer's site with the exception of a section of non-executable address space than it is to check to see if the only modifications to a 4.2GB ISO are on activation-related components.
This is what I marvel at when I read such (poorly justified) piracy screeds.
Are people insane?
I might not have ultimate faith in Microsoft, but comparatively I have zero faith (and a lot of suspicion) of what are essentially bands of thieves among piracy groups.
I engaged in casual piracy when I was a teen out of necessity, though I never felt the need to invent justifications. In my adult life, though...pirating executables is the domain of the naive or the ridiculously trustworthy.
If anything, the scene is demonstration that a completely open, self-regulated market can function in at least some sense. Maybe one group doesn't have any strong disincentive to posting a corrupted release, but other groups have a strong incentive to discredit them, and reputation is valuable (as much as anything can be in a free economy). There is a fairly effective web of trust.
You can't be sure, of course, but then I can't be sure that my "legal" software won't install a rootkit behind my back either-- or if I am, it's because I'm going on the word of criminals who are trying to redistribute it.
I've got a lot more faith in a torrent uploaded by a person with lots of other torrents (who has no motive but reputation and altruism), with lots of seeders than I do in a corporation who has a clear and present motive to make me miserable.
And somehow, I've never been infected by this. It's my conclusion that, much like the *AA groups nonsense comparisons of piracy to theft, the security threats are overstated by companies in an attempt to scare people straight.
Probably because I'd find the appropriated information used somewhere.
It's been at least 5 years with not a hint of fraudulent use of my ID or payment info.
I have, however, been victimized multiple times by corporations being negligent with my data in the same time period. Sony and whatnot.
Kind of interesting that it's safer to download random untrusted OS code from the internet than to give my information to a "safe" corporation...
In any case, it's an interesting thought experiment but it gets absurd quickly when realized. How do you know you're not infected right now by a "really good rootkit"? Unless you wrote the compiler by hand, compiled every bit of the OS by yourself, wrote the firmware for your hardware using the same compiler, etc etc etc, you can't be 100% sure.
You can be reasonably sure, of course. 99% with a few juicy trailing 9's for good measure, but not 100%.
It's the same way you can't objectively prove you're not dreaming right now.
Haha! Believe it or not, I had that story in mind when writing the previous comment. Really the only way to be 100% sure is to manually "bit bash" the compiler together without using ANOTHER compiler (like you would do if you're building a toolset for an entirely new architecture).
In many cases, like downloading movies, I agree. But with Windows, I couldn't disagree more. I used to pirate every version of Windows I owned, back in the days of Windows 98 and up to Windows XP it was a breeze. Starting around Windows XP SP3, it got a bit more difficult. It was easy to pirate, but after a few weeks/months of use, you get the Genuine Advantage warning. With Windows 7, it is even worse. So I decided to purchase my first legitimate copy of Windows. I haven't looked back. It is so much easier and I don't waste my time re-cracking my Windows installation every month. It is well worth the price. Since then I have also acquired a legitimate version of Office 2010, even though I got it heavily discounted for students, back in the Windows XP days, I would have laughed at the thought of buying $100+ software.
And anytime I upgrade hardware or even want to move my install to another computer, the activation is so fast and easy. I don't see how anyone could make the claim that pirating Windows is easier than installing a legitimate copy.
For the majority of people, windows activation and windows genuine "advantage" works exactly as advertised.
However, when you get on the wrong side of it, it is a pain in the ass of Lovecraftian proportions. I don't know if it's my luck, choice in hardware, or what, but I've had perfectly valid (retail!) keys start throwing WGA errors after working fine for a few months. After spending literally hours on the phone with someone who speaks broken english, I took my crippled XP install (this was back in the pre service-pack 2 days where failing activation meant you got locked out after a few minutes), went to a torrent site, and downloaded an activator.
2 hours (spent on the phone in a fruitless endeavor with the best of Indian tech support) and 5 minutes (spent downloading and running a crack) later, I finally was able to use my bought and paid for software.
After that, I pulled down an ISO with the service packs and cracks and other goodies slipstreamed in (XP Ultimate Edition by Johnny, still exists out there somewhere), burned it to a disc, and haven't used "legitimate" channels since.
Microsoft does not have my permission to use my CPU cycles and power to inflate their antipiracy metrics.
Nope, in windows 7 activating via pirate methods is still easier than activating via normal methods. The pirate, illegal method of activating involves downloading a program, 1 double click (to open said program) and 1 click (to run the activation).
I wont say which program is it because I do not condone piracy, but it is widespread in the internet.
I agree that Microsoft should remove all anti-piracy stuff in their products. It only makes their products more expensive.
Huh, seriously? I purchased a laptop with a genuine Windows 7 version because of this particular issue. I'll spend weeks to find a relatively good Windows copy.
The average seeded copy of Windows on the pirate bay or the likes is crappy. Cracks sometimes doesn't work. Sometimes the copy comes with a load of crappy software. Sometimes the cracker changes the Windows theme (not sure why he is doing so). And sometimes everything goes smooth until some day I get a problem because my version is not genuine.
I don't install my OS on a daily basis. My average Windows OS install keep up with me for 3-5 years. I wouldn't be bothered to spend some time activating the software. So far, the activations for my MS products was easy, fast and simple.
I recently purchased a laptop with Windows 7 at a national chain, and there is no CD. If I set up a dual boot, which I normally do, I'll be forced to get a pirated version. There is supposedly a way to reinstall from a hidden drive or partition, but that would take over the entire drive. I always wanted to be legit, but I'm not going to pay again for something that I legally already have.
True. There comes a point where the time investment is more expensive than just buying a legal copy and installing it. And activating it.
I've never had as hard a time activating stuff at the OP, though. When I buy a new machine I always order the restore disks (why do Mfg's think it's ok to not include these and charge customers for obtaining them?), and I've yet to run into restore disks that automatically install the crapware that came on the hard disk.
I, too, am getting really tired of this. It's not just Microsoft though. It's a lot of different companies.
Right now, I'm in the middle of an epic battle with Adobe to get a refund. I bought an educational version of the CS3 master collection back in 2007 when I was in college. I tried to upgrade it because a chat representative said I could, but they were wrong.
After calling their support line 10 times, spending 2-3 hours of my life either on hold or talking to them, being told twice they would call me in X hours and them not calling, they have still refused to honor the deal. It has been the worst customer service experience of my life.
At this point, it's up to some committee at Adobe to decide whether I should get my refund. Like, really? It's that hard of a decision? You told me X when X wasn't true. Give me my money back! Quit being tools.
Anyways, I'm hoping I get it. It's a lost opportunity for them though. They could have said, "Hey, we screwed up. Here are three licenses. We value your business and hope you'll stay a loyal customer." Then, they could have kept my money, and kept me as a customer. But that's not what they did.
Going forward, I really don't think I'll be buying Adobe products anymore. Not because their products are bad. It's that they're over-priced and their customer service sucks.
If you already have a windows license but lost your installation media, you can download it without resorting to piracy. The link below has the URLs for the retail ISOs hosted by Amazon.
Microsoft Store officially tells you that your download time has expired after you purchase a Windows license, and wish to re-download / re-install more than 3 months after your purchase.
The official solution is to buy an additional copy of the Windows license which will provide you with a new download URL.
I knows this because I complained to the @microsoftstore twitter account: after purchasing 2 copies of Windows (the crapware-loaded OEM version, the clean one from MS store) I had no intention of purchasing a third.
For some reason they simply couldn't allow me a second download, and sent me a physical disc, which arrived about 6 weeks later, by which time a pirated Windows 7 was working fine.
I've never had any problems with the copy of windows 7 I bought from the microsoft online store. I've had to redownload it two or three times now, and it's always been there (although the page is near impossible to find). I had a screenshot of the page, but imgur is down today so I can't link it.
Actually, apparently it's 12 months until you can no longer download the OS again:
"Be kindly informed that the availability of the software download, purchased at the Microsoft Store, is limited to one year.
Please understand that as you placed your order more than one year ago, Microsoft Store does not have access to your order and cannot reset the download link."
The result has been the same for as long as Windows has had serial keys: Pirates find a way around them, they share keys, they disable activation, they patch files, they block hostnames in their hosts files. Regular users jump through hoops, have activation issues, lose their discs, need to phone in, etc.
I'm anti-piracy in general, but whenever I install Windows 7 I always bypass the activation because I've had too many problems going legit.
Likewise with Photoshop. At a previous company, we had a license that would let us install on up to five machines. At some point, we hit that limit and couldn't activate it. The confusing thing was that we only had three machines running it (the main user's desktop, her laptop, and another coworker's laptop). What we realized was that we'd reinstalled her laptop and the coworker's laptop recently, and both of those machines were still activated.
When we called Adobe, they pointed us to a KB article on how to de-activate a Photoshop install, but that requires that it still be installed and working. Adobe said that they couldn't actually de-activate those machines. After some arguing back and forth, they agreed to add another machine to our account (so now we have six machines registered, four with it installed, and two using it concurrently). Now, every time we reformat a machine, we have to call them again because no one remembers to de-register Photoshop before they reformat a user's machine.
iTunes lets you register five computers, and if you hit the limit, de-register them all to start over again. How hard is that?
I don't use pirated versions of Windows so I don't know the answer to this but I would assume it's a bad idea because:
Your trusting a .ISO image from a random website, how do you know there is not time bombed malware pre-installed?
Do you still have access to Windows update? If so for how long, I assume it can't be difficult for Microsoft to figure out who is using it illegitimately since some versions must be using either the same keys or keys that have never been issued to a copy of Windows that they have sold?
> Do you still have access to Windows update? If so for how long, I assume it can't be difficult for Microsoft to figure out who is using it illegitimately since some versions must be using either the same keys or keys that have never been issued to a copy of Windows that they have sold?
Nope, there's a workaround built into Windows because the OEMs strongarmed MS into adding it. You can get a piece of software called the Windows Loader that will activate Windows using this workaround with just one click and a reboot: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/24901-Windows-Loade...
Ok, so you can activate it but what happens if MS decides at some point to block your updates or track you.
I assume they keep a record everytime they issue a license either to an OEM or wholesaler etc and if your using a keygen they could simply check their database and find that such a key was never issued.
If you use a key that was already registered to someone else then surely they know because your computer name/username or a hash of your hardware config (I assume this info is sent to windows update) will be different.
> "Ok, so you can activate it but what happens if MS decides at some point to block your updates or track you."
You run the same risk anyone who used the old FCKGW key ran. I'm not suggesting it's a good idea, I'm just pointing out that many, many people were willing to do just that. And they won't blink at the similar risks in this new workaround.
No, not really. They can check the hashes against those of official ISOs from M$, thus making sure they don't come with extra "features".
As for updates, they can get those too. However, MS might be reading their mail and all they type if they use a "cracked" version of windows without an original serial number.
However, his point is 100% valid. The need for serials / activations is giving people enough reasons to skip buying Windows and pirate it or simply install Linux.
If Windows would've costed 50 USD everywhere and had a milder "security" system, they'd be selling at least 5-10 times more copies.
Some countries have all sorts of big and small taxes which drive the prices of the windows licenses up by 10-40% and some shops also add their own profit margins. Having them be so expensive in the first place doesn't help at all.
One of the greatest features of the Mac App Store is the ability to download the latest version of OS X Lion and then make a bootable image of it.
I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion the day it came out but then had to do a clean install a couple of months later.
Instead of using my out-of-date installer I downloaded the latest version of Lion and did a clean install. No waiting hours fro system updates because my install medium was old.
With newer machines (2011 MBA, Mini, maybe the iMac too?) you can even start the OS install straight from the boot loader. It basically net boots the Lion Recovery image and then proceeds with downloading/installing the OS. Pretty slick.
I'm actually pirating the version of windows i am using to write this. I bought this laptop which came with a super bloated version of windows 7 64 home edition. no media was provided. you can create your own but it includes the bloatware that comes with it originally installed which defeats the puprose. therefore i went to my favorite torrent site and download windows 7 64 bit home edition and installed it.
i know its not exactly microsoft's fault their os gets so much bloat.. but the experience i was getting from new machine was nowhere near the one i am getting after the clean install.
I disagree totally with the logic the article is following. If you do not like Microsoft's products and services (I don't) that is totally acceptable, and i might add understandable, deal with other software vendors ! I do not understand the logic saying "I hate your service and so i will just steal the product".
If you want to make your point just go ahead and complain, send a written letter move to another vendor (I Have). Stealing, And i will call it that because it is stealing, is not a legitimate nor a logical reaction to crappy service.
The entire internet philosophy, IMO, was build on trust and a certain code of honor if i may say (at the risk of sounding corny) breaking that breaks the internet. Imagine people just screwing up Wikipedia because they think Jimmy Wales did something wrong in their opinion or because an article of their got removed or whatever.
Piracy has always been, and will always be, a thing of the internet. think of it as a wicked charm. I will not encourage eradicating it. To be honest i have used pirated software to evaluate when vendors wont offer evaluation options. But then i would go and buy the damn license, because:
1 - it is the right thing to do, regardless.
2 - If i like something, paying for it will support the vendor to continue on making the stuff i like.
I personally do not like the way Microsoft does business, i dont like their products and i think they are arrogant pricks but if i need to use windows (god forbid) i will still pay for the damn license.
Although I don't find MS to be the worst of all suppliers, it is yet an other prime example how companies fail to grasp that the only way they will ever compete with pirated content (be it right or wrong) is by service and by service only. The pirated price is already unbeatable and shamefully, its service is arguably better.
A bit of a rant, but I am getting a bit tired that, still as we enter 2012, what does the paying customer get for his troubles? You don't live in country xx? You can't see/listen/buy online content yy. Although definitely in music and games there has been progress, I could still add hundreds of more examples.
And what currently is the envisioned answer to this flawed business model? A set of laws that will inevitably alter some of our more dear democratic principles. Not to mention the economic fallout.
On a side note, I can't help wondering my thoughts to the teen-sex debates in the US, where some people hopelessly cling to abstinence measures which in theory, work fine. Whereas in practice, there seems to be quiet some empirical evidence that young people, well, just do it.
I've got several legitimate Windows licenses. I tried to install it on my dad's computer but I had to leave before the installation completed. I returned a few days later to activate it but somehow a virus managed to infect it. I removed the virus, but Windows just refused to activate with a LEGAL KEY. I tried activating by phone and I received an activation key but it didn't work either (permissions error or something). So I just did the sensible thing and installed a version that I found on TPB.
Seriously Microsoft, drop the activation scheme. It's not necessary and causes nothing but frustration for your end users.
I dont know why they do this for their client OS but for server OS you can get a free evaluation download of any server product and activate it with a purchased key, no muss no fuss. Also using the provided download manager I have never seen speed issues with these downloads. As far as phone activation, which we have to do for several sites without internet access, the process is a bit long but not nearly as tedious as described. I am admittedly against DRM but if anyone comes close to doing it right its Microsoft on their OS software.
I wouldn't recommend you try this at your startup. Some day, a potential investor or partner is going to audit your licenses and it'll be pretty embarrassing if you're way out of compliance.
Might seem like I just hate MS, but honestly I would be just as upset as a potential investor or partner that they were running Windows in the first place. Licensed or not. Unless of course your startup was focused somehow on Windows development, users, etc. where it would obviously be necessary.
Startups are hard enough as it is, no need to make them harder.
Hmm, if you have an investor that dismisses a platform summarily because of his own biases, then the company is better off without that investor.
The investor should ask "and why are you using that platform?" and then make an evaluation based on the answer. Anything less and you have a pretty bad investor. Best to keep away from such people.
Microsoft Bizspark (http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/) gives startups that are less than 3 years old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue free MSDN Ultimate access.
That means free access to all of MS software. It's actually a really amazing program.
The BizSpark program has limitations (although still a fantastic deal!).
* AFAIK you are licenced to use the software for development and testing purposes ONLY. Not internal use (see the BizSpark FAQ, even though other BizSpark materials seem to imply otherwise).
* Except you do get a production 2 proc SQL Server licence, and Windows Server licences... However you may not be able to use the licences with some hosting providers (due to their licences with Microsoft, or just unfamiliarity or complexity overhead).
* The BizSpark websites are a time-wasting labyrinth whenever you must update anything (might have improved?).
* There are so many catch-alls to prevent "misuse" of the licence, that it looks as though you can't legally use any of the software... although in spirit you can use it and Microsoft isn't going to chase you... (at least that was how I read the licences last time I looked but IANAL YMMV).
I think the author is missing the point. Microsoft doesn't really care about the license fee. Your lifetime value to them as a consumer of Windows specific services, digital media, and software is much more valuable than the license fees you'll pay.
On a related note why bother to use Windows if you don't plan on purchasing other Windows-only software? Is the author also planning to pirate Visual Studio and the like as well? If no Microsoft software is being used why not try Linux or Mac?
If your family members are destroying the OS, the best solution is to either run in a VM which is set to not persist changes (via VMWare or the free options), or to boot from a VHD file for your other members (keep a clean and activated copy that you can revert to).
There are many options to solve this issue (ex: the native VHD boot, VirtualPC, HyperV).
Telling Microsoft to remove activation is a knee-jerk reaction that helps no one.
You can even run Linux as the Host OS.
I write and sell software, and activation is absolutely critical and responsible for at least half my revenue.
That sounds like an heck of a lot of extra work just to deal with Microsoft's anti-piracy activation system. IMHO, your "answer" just reinforces the original author's point. Why should legitimate paying customers have to deal with all of these workaround and annoyances? Why should legitimate customers have to endure being treated like potential criminals? Especially when these activation systems aren't stopping the pirates!!!!!!!
Having to re-install the OS because of virus issues, etc. is NOT usual and shouldn't be punished by forcing the user to go through some stupid activation system.
Having to re-activate because of hardware upgrades (new motherboard, etc) is also not unusual. Again, I don't see why a PAYING customer should be be punished by forcing the user to go through some stupid activation system, when pirates don't have to deal with the activation system.
Just because the activation system hasn't negatively affected you doesn't mean it hasn't negatively affected many, many paying customers. Why should I get treated like shit for being a paying customer, when I could get a better user experience by pirating Windows?
Go down about half way. It's actually 54 digits, not 100. But the IVR isn't 100 percent accurate, and I have found I usually have to enter at least a few of the sets multiple times. And the voice system is one of those unskippable ones, so you can't just start entering numbers again right away after it detects a mis-enter. You have to listen to a 30 second message about re-entering the key first.
Never once had the same problem as you. Actually this is the first I hear of anyone using the offline activation methods. Yeah 54 digit codes suck. But 54 digits ain't 100 digits. And it would not justify, for me, going pirate. Unless you're sitting there installing stuff all day long every day.
Same here. I've installed Windows a bajillion times over the past 15ish years and never run into this kind of problem. I don't reinstall Windows, since (for me) apps cleanly uninstall post-Vista due to virtualizing filesystem and registry writes that used to gunk up /Windows and /Program Files in XP.
Same for me. I whined about crapware that came with PCs just as everyone else, but with Vista and Win7, I noticed can just uninstall these programs as soon as I fire up the machine for the first time and no harm done.
I hit the activation limit on my family pack (3 copies) and was never given any instructions on what to do. My system would go black and eventually become unusable. Instead of telling me how to reactivate the copies I bought, Microsoft puts up a message on how to purchase another new copy of Windows.
I'm done with this company now. I bought a Mac, and I'm not coming back.
FWIW, I hit the activation limit in WinXP, and the activation dialog had a phone number and some numbers I had to read to the person on the line. A few minutes later everything was fine.
(I'm a MS employee but I was doing this at home with my "I'm a customer" hat on)
The Windows 7 genuine advantage warnings are hostile, they accuse the user of stealing the software and as I remember the prompt was only to go ahead and pay for another new license of Windows 7.
In any case, it's not a problem for me anymore, as I now only run a pirated copy of Windows 7 in a virtual machine on my Macbook for testing on.
This is why i will always save a copy of my windows xp enterprise edition cd. It's xp, which is still decent enough, and it doesn't require any activation, as opposed to the home/pro-editions.
In case apocalypse happens (ehum, my ISP goes down for 24h) i know i can still get a computer up and running without problem if i have to.
Is that legal? One of the reasons MPAA/RIAA are pissing everyone off and have lost all credibility is that they have helped write and pass many copyright related laws that make even the most natural things to do illegal. They are so out of touch with reality.
This was the case for music for a long time (still is, but to a lesser extent) before iTunes came along. Downloading music through Napster, Limewire or BitTorrent was simply easier and more effortless. Even though people were willing to pay, they didn't because that would have required more effort to do so.
>"Why can't I just enter my product key and download an updated ISO with slipstreamed service packs? "
This is why i still use the MSDN account from many employers ago...
YOU CAN DO THIS with MSDN -- Why not make the MSDN model the way everyone receives their copy. Also, stop selling me CDs or DVDs - put them on USB sticks.
This is another example of companies pushing away would-be paying customers. This dumb logic has been the music industries policy for a while now; every person brought to trail for piracy was a potential customer or fan of the artist whose music they were pirating.
Plain and simple, the existence of piracy is not due to the lack of legislation but due to market failure. I find that many people are more than happy to pay for good service and good products -- even if there are cheaper/free alternatives.
You don't have to use Windows. The best way to protest is by using another product.
Claiming that you have the moral authority to pirate it is just wrong, doing so re-enforces the need for MSFT to have even stricter anti-piracy measures.
I am buying my next copy of Windows. You can get a copy really cheap now if you look hard enough (less than $100) through MSDNAA or through another student organization. For me, peace of mind is worth the price.
The discount is a nice thing for students, but there are plenty of non-students in the US and especially other parts of the world where dropping a few hundred dollars on software that makes their computer work is a major burden.
Given the large distribution of the Windows OS (this isn't boutique software with a small customer base), it really doesn't make much sense that it's so expensive. If the price was lowered significantly ($50 maybe?), I think MS would see piracy numbers go down and sales go up more than enough for them to remain profitable.
Bought windows 7 online. Had to download it through windows special download manager which took ages, then gave me some exec that I couldn't burn on a CD... I had to pirate it.
These are all valid points, aligned with many of the views being upvoted today. However, I'd just like to point something out.
According to this article and many others, we all "pirate stuff" because it's "easier than the paid model"... well, the same goes for driving a car.
I would much rather just walk into my underground parking lot, hotwire a car, and ditch it once I got to my destination. But, I have morals.
I am not likening stealing a car to copyright infringement, only pointing out the reasoning that "I pirate because it's easier to do so" isn't really a moral/valid point.
It's easier for me to kill you instantly with my gun than it is for me to reason with you about a topic I don't care to reason about, too.
This is not how to show them, nor is it a way to justify piracy.
Unless you really can't live without the next version of Windows, don't use it at all. Keep with the current version for as long as you can (I'm still on XP on the only Windows machine I have) or switch to an alternative (this may be the route I take when I next rebuild).
I'll be rebuilding that desktop machine at some point this year and what-ever OS goes on the new build I hope will not need reinstalling for a few years (so I'll have to upgrade from XP as it drops out of security update support early in 2014). I'm trying to decide to go for Windows 7, or just go completely Linux - currently the Linux option is winning in my mind.
Pretty much the only reason I still run Windows on this home desktop is games. I use OpenOffice for my own documents, and when I need access to MS Office, Visual Studio, and so forth from here I simply VPN+RDC into my machine at the office these days. The rub is that lately I've not been playing that much (I've not had time) and there aren't any games in the near future that I could name as being something I'm waiting for (I'm done waiting for HL?EP3 - if they release it before I leave Windows-land then I'll pre-order, if not then they'll only get a sale out of me if it runs on Linux fine), with PC gaming apparently going in the "beg and jump through hoops or we won't let you play" direction (http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/01/17/1838237/ubisoft-has...) I can see myself simply refusing to buy any new games from the major publishers even if I do keep Windows, and most of the games I have played much of recently could probably be implemented in browsers soon enough (if not already) at which point the choice of underlying OS becomes irrelevant.
So my position is: if I buy Windows 7 in the next six months it may well be the last Windows license I personally purchase. If I don't, then XP will have been (unless you count the Windows 7 Starter license that came with my netbook but currently remains unused). Either way I won't pirate it: it is a buy or don't decision. Heck, if I decide to not keep up-to-date games wise (and decide that I'm not likely to be bothered by losing access to the games I've bought previously) then I'll not only save £80 for the Windows license but I could save a chunk getting a less flashy GFX card too (I'm only upgrading that in this build to get a card with 3 or more outputs that can be used concurrently).
Pirating will just tells them that you want their platform but don't want to pay, using something else tells them that you can live without them and if they want you not to live without them then there are things they need to change.
He is protesting against the overly difficult DRM in an otherwise desirable product. It's easy to skip all the annoying parts, with so few if any downsides.
It's the Windows version of the DVD flow diagram[1] that explains why a pirated movie file is much better than the DVD. I rip all DVDs I come into contact with, and borrow friends DVDs just to rip them. Even if I had time to watch them without ripping I wouldn't want to.
The problem is that it will never be enough. Even if Microsoft gave you everything to you exact specification and only charged $20/license, there would still be a group of people trying to defend piracy.
Just look at the Android/Iphone app market. 99 cent apps are still not convenient or cheap enough for many users, so they pirate it.
This is why I feel that all of these excuses are bullshit.
> there would still be a group of people trying to defend piracy.
Of course, just as you'll always find DRM apologists who find Ubisoft's insanity still isn't enough. That's not really a segment of the population worth discussing with though, since they won't buy either way (either because they don't want to, or because they just don't have the money, I was once that impoverished student).
What you can rely on are numbers and the results of those who thought convenience was a major reason[0] for piracy and tried to fix it. And what do you find out? That Steam and iTunes turn out to make money. Who'd have thought?
> This is why I feel that all of these excuses are bullshit.
Oh, bad apples are sufficient to dismiss out of hand anything that comes even remotely close to something they could say?
Well I guess you can trivially be dismissed as well, then.
[0] preempting your strawman, I did not write "the only reason".
Eh, it will never be enough for 100% of the users, sure -- there will always be some percentage of pure leeches. But this guy seems pretty reasonable. Enough for him seems like a good threshold for generating revenue from your userbase.
This is laughable! User gets pissed by activation system. User does the exact thing that causes the activation to not only exist but become more infuriating as time goes on.
How about you either deal with it or not use Windows. If its that much of a pain then there's no reason to use it. Come on. How do we not see the blatant excuse to pirate something here?
What's more laughable is that a minority decide to pirate a piece of software, and everyone gets punished. No, actually, in large part only the people who chose not to pirate get punished. How far does it have to go before people realize the whole strategy is absurd?
