Microsoft acknowledged today its investigation into the illegal use of an activation key generator for enterprise software including Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft Readies for Software Bootleg Binge
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The key generator was no leaked. It was given by MS to pirates because piracy is good to generate the need of MS products (to addict people on MS technologies) and, thus, to maintain people far from free software (linux & others)
The only way out to people who want not pay the expensive prices is changing to free software when it was possible..
Piracy has been great to MS. Even though they don’t get the money from it, they get the lock in familiarity. MS could crack down on campuses around the world and really hurt piracy, but then people would have to look elsewhere and that would risk them losing that familiarity.
When those people who pirated the software when they were younger get into a business, they have to buy it.
No, Microsoft did not give keygen. It is very much stupid statement, which is commonly heard from people of countries that have high piracy rates (like Russia) and underdeveloped local software industry.
Like thief excuses himself by saying he takes from the rich only, so do these people.
If these people were honest to themselves, they would execute their choice and switch to Linux. Instead, they would rather get PC without OS or with Linux preinstalled, wipe it out and install pirated copy of Windows.
I have no respect for these people, and see no substance in their excuses. Live with free Linux or pay for Windows.
When those people who pirated the software when they were younger get into a business, they have to buy it.
Agreed, which is why I sometimes thing that college (and other) students who are pirating high-dollar software for the sake of learning should be left alone until they get out and start making money on their own. I mean, even with student pricing on software, if you’re working part time on top of going to school full time (or whatever) and still having to live off Ramen Noodles just to get by, then what do you want?
However, IMHO … people who are excessively pirating $40 games (especially on consoles) really need to quit.
This is old news anyway. There has been a keygenerator for Windows Server 2003 on the net since April last year. Microsoft software will always be cracked because there is a big demand for it.
I realise that most of the comments are referring to piracy of MS products, by Business people, Students, and well everyone at one point.
I would have to argue that piracy is the only medium for students, or everyone to learn about a product. I recall when I was working for a government institution as a systems administrator, that I was getting free products from MS. These free products were not the full deal, but a time limited version of the product. Most products were active for 160 Days or so, and can be bought for 2.99$ USD, or Free in magazines.
= To Stop Piracy =
I think it would be a good idea for MS to develop a system, more professional then the activation / Serial combination they have now. I am thinking that with the realease of longhorn a few years from today, You will prolly see eventually where the serial key that is used, will be particular to that machine, and when you hit MS update, or Run Internet Explorer for the first time, it will LOCK that key. I’m not understating that there won’t be a way around it, I’m just saying there are 101 ways to make things very effective. They just have to keep realeasing and Trying. After all, no one know what the final product of Longhorn will be like, but my guess with the increased security they are including, I’m almost sure there are going to be more them two or three anti-piracy mechanisms in there to stop, or slow down people.
— Enjoy
Being a Linux guy that makes a living fixing Windows machines I get so agro when people just expect me to “give” them software. Doing a clean re-install for someone and they expect me to supply then MS Office for the OpenOffice price.
The customer is only right when they are NOT trying to make me do something illegal.
Would someone get these guys to stop bickering! This is OS news – not some low rent warez forum.
Sigh… Well anyway MS already put a lot of effort into updating their algorithms for W2K03 – so if anything this simply demonstrates that nothing a man can make can’t be cracked. I don’t believe in paying for software (or in charging for it) but before I discovered Linux I admit I did indulge a fair bit in this apparently illegal practice. I never tried to justify it though – I knew it was theft, but I simply did not have that much of a concience over it. At the end of the day, 95% of the stuff I had then I would never have bought anyway – I was just addicted to learning how things worked. So how companies can loose money from things I would never buy is something of a mystery.
Oh and BTW – I wish you guys would stop calling this a leak – it appears this was a work of genuine genius (an evil genius admittedly) where some kid working in his bedroom resolved to try to reverse engineer MS’ protection scheme. A leak is when a piece of code comes directly from MS, which this didn’t.
No matter what this persons motivations – they deserve some cudos for their efforts. It’s just a pity that real talent like this is so often misdirected.
Where is the link to the download section? 😉
Just kidding. I hope I made someone smile.
Microsoft gives free downloads to anyone in CS anything from XP Professional, to Visio, to .Net Studio. Not to mention various betas of Office software. With all this free stuff who needs to pirate? If there is anything we need they told us to contact our M$ student representative and he’d see about arranging for us to get what we need delivered to us. Now, just for a better learning experience and because I can’t afford good ardware for a spare box to run a MS DB (ie a p100 w/ 64 RAM) I perfer Linux, but it is available to me.
if someone sells a product but you obtain and use the product without buying it…then that’s stealing. Pretty simple really. I hate Microsoft’s licensing scheme, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pirate the OS for myself. Back in college I did get Win2k for about 5 bucks from a State University bookstore. The copy of XP Pro I use for gaming was purchased from Newegg for the academic rate which was considerably more but a much better price than retail.
The question about if piracy indirectly benefits Microsoft or not…I believe it was answered in a question and answer sessions Warren Buffet and Bill Gates gave to a college crowd a while back (saw it on CSPAN). Gates basically said, even in China when almost every copy of American software is obtained illegally, “I want to make sure it’s our products they’re using!”
I suppose you could take that several ways but, as far as I can tell, Gates maybe hoping that when the Chinese laws and enforcement catch up to the West, the population will be dependant on Microsoft products. Makes good business sense since as of right now intellectual property rights are completely unenforcable in most of Africa and Asia. My .02
regards
foo
from my own experience in the name of testing of course..
It is certainly being done on purpose. These are facts being an Indian and from IT sector I can certainly say the way microsoft dominates is that it will first leak bootleg copies of Windows and let people be dependent on the software and all of sudden the Marketing guys will come and try to negotiate the number of licences that a company has to pay for. And people who say this is baseless I’d say WAKEUP, ask people in 3rd world countries about piracy and dont’ pass judgements yourself