Windows 7 activation crackers undeterred by Microsoft's muscle-flexing

You're giving way too much importance to DownloadSquad. Don't get me wrong, I read this daily, but what you're reading here is 90% Lee Mathews and 10% AOL ads.

Keep your limiting beliefs to yourself... not everyone think it's immoral and illegal, thank you very much.

Crazy Serb: I'm not surprised someone who "thinks" it's not illegal opens their comment with a command against expressing an opinion. In the West, most of us believe in open debate and free expression. We also believe, generally, that a free democracy depends on a public that abides by the social contract. That includes following the law, even if we disagree with it, because we are also free to contest it through legal channels. The fact is, piracy is illegal whether you "think" so or not. That's why there are lawyers in court working both sides of the issue.

Your comment offends common sense as well as believers in free expression. But it is wholly typical of those who openly admit they are pirates (a pirate is a criminal, after all) and crazy. Enjoy your stolen goods.

michel, get off your high horse.

for all of us "regular" citizens who don't have money and access to lawyers to put our 2 cents into this whole legal shabangabang of a copyright, piracy and whatever else falls into the same crack boat, and have to abide by the rules and laws put forth by people in power (who obviously don't have all of our interests at heart)... or for all of us who simply don't have time to deal with bureaucratic B.S. to get our point across, your moot and blind-follower statement about abiding to laws and whatnot means absolutely nothing.

I'm not saying that I'm a habitual law-breaker, defiant of all things lawful and right, but just saying that in certain, rare cases (like this one, for example), some of us might consider trying out software like this for free before buying it. Why? Because I feel like it's my right to test out the software, see if it fits my needs and if it performs up to my abilities, and if it doesn't I'll dump it and replace it with something else without any financial harm done to me. If that's not according to laws, corporate EULAs or terms of the contract companies like Microsoft would like me to abide by, too freakin' bad.

Again, when I'm a billionaire and have enough lobbying power to hire a bunch of lawyers to push my point of view into the rule books and law, I'd bother through legal channels. But guess what - some of us just don't have time to deal with that and would rather enjoy our lives in other ways, thank you very much. And no, that doesn't include shelling out a bunch of money to a corporation/company for something I might find worse than the option I had before, and without ability to get a full refund on that product either (you go and try return the copy of Windows 7 DVD for a full refund if you don't like it and tell me how that goes).

@michel

First of all, not every country has the same copyright laws as the US. So please don't assume it is illegal everywhere.

Secondly, Microsoft and other software manufacturers cultivated the piracy scene in many countries themselves in the 90's. They demanded that legitimate copies of software not be sold on the second hand market, even when the original owner no longer had the software installed. This forced many people to find other ways to get this software without paying the crippling prices that most software cost back then.

To use Microsoft as an example again, Bill Gates freely admits that software piracy helped build Microsoft up to be one of the most successful companies in the world. In a famous University of Washington speech in 1998 Gates said "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Every person that has wanted to try some software or wanted to listen to a song but is limited to a 15 day limited trial or 30 second sound bite on iTunes knows the frustration of buying software or music only to find that it is not what they expected or doesn't suit their need. Producers hide behind the "no refunds because you may have copied the software" line in a pathetic attempt to avoid annoyed consumers who may ask for a refund.

So when I want software or a song, I will download it from the torrents, and try it out. If I don't like it I will delete it from my system and if I do keep it I will purchase it or find a free alternative and get rid of the pirated copy. However in your mind I would be doing something illegal. However all I am doing is getting around the archaic rules and systems that the software industry had fostered over the last 20 years. But I am glad to see that you, as a free-speech loving person, does whatever big business tells you to do, with out every questioning why.

right. except the realease candidate is openly and legally available for testing. So there's no actual need for piracy, it's just because you want to, and you don't care about others, the law, right and wrong.

It's not a high horse for me, I make my living by my intellectual property. The issue affects me directly. It's not about my leisure hours or a desire to make others behave as I see fit. It comes out of practical concern for my livelyhood. Like everyone else, I expect to get paid for my labour, and copyright is the mechanism by which this happens.

Butters, see my reply to Crazy Serb about my vested interest in copyright. I'm not a slave to what corporations tell me, you're just assuming that because this is about Windows; from my point of view, this is about the larger picture. However, I do remember learning about right and wrong from my parents. You can take without asking from the local corner store, or take with asking from Microsoft. It's still taking without asking. And the same law protects them both.

I agree, customers have a right to know what they're purchasing. But pirates are not customers, they're shoplifters.

@michel

"It's not a high horse for me, I make my living by my intellectual property. The issue affects me directly. It's not about my leisure hours or a desire to make others behave as I see fit. It comes out of practical concern for my livelyhood. Like everyone else, I expect to get paid for my labour, and copyright is the mechanism by which this happens."

In that case you obviously don't have faith in your product. Let's hypothesize here for a second. If Oprah came to you and said that she wanted to give away your software free to every one of her viewers you should jump at that in a second, because you should believe that your software is so good that when those millions of people install it they will love it and then they will pay for updates or the next version and you will become the next Bill Gates.

So why would you hate it if those same millions of people all "pirated" your software? If you product was good then a good percentage of those "pirates" would turn around and legally purchase your software and you will sell significantly more copies than you do now.

It sounds like this hatred for pirates comes from a frustrated software programmer that is having trouble selling his product and most likely will never have any one "pirate" his software anyway.

@michel

"You can take without asking from the local corner store, or take with asking from Microsoft. It's still taking without asking. And the same law protects them both."


No it isn't, one would be considered theft and one would be considered, by people like you, as copyright infringement. The reason why there is two completely separate laws is because they are two completely separate things.

If I steal your car, you no longer have a car. But if I "pirate" your copy of windows, you still have your copy of windows, but now so do I.

I am guessing you do not have a lot of knowledge of the legal system in the US, or internationally, but as long as you keep on on telling yourself that piracy is the same as theft, maybe one day someone will listen to you.

"So there's no actual need for piracy, it's just because you want to, and you don't care about others, the law, right and wrong."

Big assumption there.

And wrong assumption at it, too.

I do care about others. And right and wrong. But law isn't about right and wrong - it's about whatever gets passed into the law and what doesn't. Don't get me started on pulling out cases of where law was "wrong" (morally, in terms of common sense, whatever) but still enforced, because hey, people like you followed it blindly without second guessing it or questioning it. I could go on about this topic for days and counter-act every single argument that you put for law and abiding by it with two of mine against it.

"It's not a high horse for me, I make my living by my intellectual property. The issue affects me directly. It's not about my leisure hours or a desire to make others behave as I see fit. It comes out of practical concern for my livelyhood. Like everyone else, I expect to get paid for my labour, and copyright is the mechanism by which this happens."

As was mentioned already - you are obviously not confident enough in your product and/or intellectual property. If you were, you'd be giving it out freely, hoping to spread the word on it, and have people talk about it, market it for you, and then have more potential customers.

I am an artist too and I produce a lot of "intellectual property" products - songs. And I sell them at dirt cheap (on digital download sites). And guess what - I give them out for free to people who will play them, promote them for me, spread the word on them and have tons of other people introduced to them that I wouldn't be able to do myself. And guess what - I get compensated for that accordingly too, and I can't complain either. I don't make a killing, but I can't complain about it as the payoff is commensurate to the quality of my work (as the history and track record has shown).

There goes your piracy argument right out the window... ;)

Lee, by enthusiastically following and writing about ways and means to circumvent copyright laws, you are encouraging it. The blog is called Download Squad, after all. Your sympathies as expressed in your writings are clearly with infringers.

"increase your car's carbon footprint, make your mattress lumpy and uncomfortable, and cause your all your toilet paper to turn really, really rough."

by mocking the manufacturer's statements and making their position seem absurd, you are encouraging others to assume their legal rights are not valid. There's a long tradition of heaping scorn on others to justify our own desires. The earliest example I know of is Plato's Symposium, where every kind of human love is denigrated as inferior and ridiculous, except pederasty, which is extolled as divine. So you're in good company.