A very high percentage of cracked software is used by individuals who have purchased it from a vendor and believe that the software is in fact legit.

If nothing else this new policy will inform the end user that they have been ripped off which when combined with an 0800-DOB-In number may have some effect.

Why is it whenever a company, in this case Microsoft tries something, all the halfwits, present its value in all or nothing, black and white terms. If this initiative costs Microsoft $50 and makes them a $150 then a profit has been turned. The bottom line goes up and investors are happy.

All this nonsense about not being the perfect all encompassing solution is just plain childish. In general real world solutions are found one step at a time.

The fact that its fucking with the user experience of someone such as the author, who is in violation of its products terms of use, would suggest that from Microsofts' perspective its having the desired effect.

So basically har har!

which is more reason people should stop getting so worked up about it.

Theoretical debates on the justification of copyright has a downside...people assume ther is a real option...to NOT have copy protection.  There is no such option. Not in this parallel universe.

We, as protectors of artistic content have an obligation to maintain currently accepted social standards of property rights...ie...copy protection.

There IS no alternative.

Sure, change the world...change the rules....move the goal posts....but unless you get a 'majority rule'...consensus...gestalt....whatever...it will not happen...

For the cognicenti...it's Friday night...so slack-cutting is needed...

"And you seem to think I would actually care if they sold my work in nice packaging? Hey, even better. That's just more choices for people and it'll just spread my work and increase its longevity."

I see this BS from people all the time, and it is so bogus. If you want things to be free, then you damned-well better be fighting for copyrights. Then, at least, you can choose what happens to your own work. The only thing protecting open source and freeware from being commercialized and crushed is the rights you are trying to dismiss.

Trying to tell people how much they can charge for their products, and trying to force them to let you use their works, is just as heinous as anything Microsoft or the RIAA has ever done. If this is really about 'rights', then stop mussing around in other people's.

You can give away anything you like. Just stop pretending that you can impose your 'free at all costs' standards on the rest of us.

Agree to disagree.

You keep insisting that it'll be bad for us, I insist that's not how it's going to turn out. We can speculate all we want, but until it happens, none of us can know for sure.

Theoretical debates on the justification of copyright has a downside...people assume ther is a real option...to NOT have copy protection. There is no such option. Not in this parallel universe.

I think that's a downside of most theoretical debates, no matter what the subject matter.

You are supposing, I am just pointing out how things were BEFORE copyrights. You are coming from the false premise that copyrights were born out of corporate greed or something. On the contrary, in its beginnings copyright was intended to protect authors from the greed of anyone who owned a printing press.

Go back and look at the history of what led us here. Yes, copyrights are abused. No, they aren't perfect. Without them, though, we'd have no ability to compete with the companies you are pretending to oppose. Book publishers, software publishers, music publishers, all of them could snatch up anything they like and market it worldwide... while you are left paying for bandwidth giving it away.

You pretend that copyrights are just about things you can download. Even then, people STILL prefer to buy their CDs and movies. There's nothing to 'agree to disagree' about. Without copyrights there would be MORE abuse against artists. You don't care, because you could get in on the abuse.

I offer economic reality and historical fact, and you offer some fuzzy plan about how other people's rights are inconvienent for you.

I mean, am I the only one that sees the irony here? You can already give your work away. How can you champion yourself as fighting for fairness, when all you want is to force other people to give THEIR work away? Or tell them how much they can charge for it?

I champion consumers?

And the rest of what you've stated is really just another rehash which is exactly why we need to agree to disagree. You claim you're the one following history, facts, etc. and that I'm not. I've claimed the same about you. Things you feel are horrible I don't see as horrible, and vice versa.

When a debate starts disintegrating into a shouting match, it's time to move on.

Unfortunately you don't offer any history or facts, and what you claim the future will look like looks nothing like it did before copyrights were imposed. I have to assume people are people, and they'll keep right on doing what they have done.

It just annoys me that you pretend to be interested in fairness and rights, when all you want to do is take people's rights away. You are twice the fascist that Microsoft is, since at least they allow me the rights to my own work. You openly admit to disliking copyright since it keeps you from taking what isn't yours.

"You claim you're the one following history, facts, etc. and that I'm not. I've claimed the same about you."

See, you're doing it exactly again as I said before.

With more ad hominems.

I've said from the start this is a zero sum game. On one side is consumers, on the other side is producers. You can't help one group without harming the other. What we're disagreeing is the side that should be helped. Since you see yourself as primarily on the producer side (or potentially as one), of course you'll feel allied with Microsoft. You only care about making money if you create/publish things, without regards to how this "right" will negatively affect consumers. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, I'm no better than Microsoft. But you're no better than me either. You just fail to see that (or refuse to admit it), but it's ok.

"I've said from the start this is a zero sum game. On one side is consumers, on the other side is producers. "

And there your point ends. The consumers are producers, too, whether they do it on their own or work for a company that relies upon profits to pay them.

"Since you see yourself as primarily on the producer side (or potentially as one), of course you'll feel allied with Microsoft. You only care about making money if you create/publish things, without regards to how this "right" will negatively affect consumers."

I'll let the people who know he here, and who have seen my arguments for years judge that point. There isn't any such thing as this 'consumer/producer' dichotomy you pretend. It's a silly made-up idea by Robin Hood wannabes who want to excuse their theft of other people's work. You aren't satisfied giving your stuff away, you want to force me to give mine away, with no regard to how I will feed my kids.

Anyway, you, by your own admission, are a 'producer'. You aren't fighting for consumers, you're just angling to use the work of other 'producers' to enhance your own.

You admit it. You can give your stuff away. You also admit that isn't good enough for you, you want OTHER people's stuff, whether they want to give it away or not. There's no question of right or wrong here for anyone who looks at it objectivly. You want what isn't yours.

Well duh, each of us is both a consumer and producer. However, we are not both a consumer and producer to the same product (we wouldn't need to trade with others if we were making everything we needed ourselves). The dichotomy does exist. It exists in every trade, by its very definition.

But that's still not the point, despite all the glossy rhetoric you try to put behind it.

The people you call "Robin Hood wannabes" are being consistent when they try to level it all and make it all free for everyone (not including the value-added convenience and other processing other companies may add to free products for sale, which is more about selling a service anyway). And since we're speaking hypothetically anyway, you can go join a company that sells these services if you're so concerned that you couldn't do any other type of work to feed your kids with. So maybe I'm talking about the collapse of an industry. It wouldn't be the first industry that's collapsed, nor would it be the last. While we may all be producers, we are also all consumers. Just because you may be part of two things doesn't mean you can't favor one side or the other. I know you know this, but you're just being stubborn about it now for the sake of your argument. Unless of course, you can truthfully insist you've never been part of two different groups that's had some sort of conflict with each other.

"And since we're speaking hypothetically anyway, you can go join a company that sells these services if you're so concerned that you couldn't do any other type of work to feed your kids with. So maybe I'm talking about the collapse of an industry. It wouldn't be the first industry that's collapsed, nor would it be the last."

What industry? How many industries? Just musicians? Or musicians and software developers? Or maybe just the entertainment industry? Writers? Just fiction writers or technology writers, non-fiction?

What about the people who work for the publishers that publish these works? What about advertising? If everything is free, not point in that, huh? What about the people who work in the factories that make the paper that the liner notes of CDs are printed on. Have you bothered to consider how many lives would be effected by stealing the benefit of these industries?

No, I don't think you've given it much thought at all. What are we all going to do after we make all these industries 'freebies'? I guess we'll just build a lot more McDonald's for all these people to work in, so that they can spend the rest of their time donating their artistry and talent to humanity for free.

How many great works would we not have now? How many people could raise a few million dollars to make a movie with no hope for profit? You think people will get together in the evenings and make their equipment out of coconuts, only to rush back to McDonalds the next morning? How many movies of any quality would get made that way?

In the end, you want not only to give your stuff away, but you also want to take what other people aren't willing to give, and which you have no claim on. That makes you a thief, regardless of all your Robin Hood excuses. There's nothing moral about feeling that people owe you their work for nothing.