In the latest salvo of its ongoing war against software piracy, Microsoft late Monday announced the filing of 21 lawsuits in federal court in 14 states against resellers who it claims have been illegally distributing its software. Sharon Cates, an antipiracy attorney at Microsoft, says many of the resellers targeted have been using a tactic known as hard disk loading, which involves taking a single piece of software and loading on multiple PCs, and then selling those PCs to unwitting customers. In this scenario, not only do customers run the legal risks involved with using unlicensed software, they also lose out on upgrade rights, access to technical support, and key security protections, Cates said. Hard disk loading also leads to Microsoft's honest channel partners being undercut by unscrupulous resellers, she added. "A lot of people don't know what kind of media they are supposed to get when they buy a PC, and that makes it easier for the software pirate to fool customers," Cates said.
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Good for Microsoft, if only the RIAA/MPAA could take a leaf and go after the same kinds of people (the bootleggers) rather than the regular people who don't try to profit from it.
Good for Microsoft, if only the RIAA/MPAA could take a leaf and go after the same kinds of people (the bootleggers) rather than the regular people who don't try to profit from it.
I'm with you on this one.
1 download = 1 lost sale.
That's why piracy in any form is illegal.
See, math is easy.
1 download = 1 lost sale.
That's why piracy in any form is illegal.
See, math is easy.
1 download does not equal 1 lost sale.
If I download something I was never going to buy anyways, who lost a sale?
If anyone should be fighting piracy, it's Linux advocates and competitors to the leading products, because pirates are Microsoft and Adobe's best friends.
See, math is easy.
No it's not. Just because someone downloads something doesn't mean that they would've purchased it.
Now, there are people who would download things when they would've paid (I'm sure we've all met someone like this), but just because there are 100,000 downloads does NOT mean there would be 100,000 sales.
You can't look at everything at face-value.
It will reduce the number of Microsoft whiners whining about Vista that are PIRATED.
ONOES! MY COMPUTER WONT START!!!
first of all, a law? c'mon, what is the penalty, jail time? fine? for loading software?
Not to mention those little black & white geek squad bugs would have a feild day because they will make $$$$ installing an OS on someones new computer...
"Yes, I would like to return this computer, it doesn't start"
"Did you Install the OS?"
"OS?"
"Operating System?"
"Operating huh?"
hahaha, I would love to actually see a customer service line at best buy just for that!
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