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

Michel, it's the internet, we are all bad asses on the internet, (in regards to being defensive and offensive...)

Aside from that point, what bad has piracy done the world? Piracy has advanced networking strategies, piracy has made bands such as Dispatch internationally famous...

I can see if it was a life and death struggle from the copyright holder for food and shelter money, however, you are talking about ripping off a multi-billion dollar company off a little more than $100. If 20,000 people do it, yes, it is a lot of money to you and me, however, to a company such as Microsoft as a whole, it is maybe what... a weeks worth of actual sales?

If 5,000 people rip off a song from, say, an artist such as Michael Jackson, who is now deceased, who does it hurt? If 5,000 people rip of a song from a currently living artist, is what they get after the Label and Industry fees rape from their profits really that much less in the long run?

Piracy has advanced the internet, different artists, and different companies way more than it has hurt them, and you cannot deny that.

I hear what you're saying, but technically, your last sentence contradicts itself. Hehe.

What an astute point! I'm actually triple booting Vista, XP, and OSX 10.5.8... testing Win 7 on a spare hard drive.. and the only thing I've ever paid for was my computer's hardware =)

Look I'd like to address everyone who like michel who assumes that getting something for nothing (and that's not even the case if you really examine it) is stealing: it's not. It's copying, duplicating. That is in fact the exact opposite of stealing; rather than removing one something, we are creating one something from another existing something. Thanks to the miracle of technology. The same technology that enables the product to exist in the first place. And besides that what we are copying is intellectual property at that. Which I fully believe is complete and utter bullshit in this context (bought and sold vs. stolen vs. obtained for free). When you use an OS you are subject to a license EULA, a legally enforcable document in which THEY stipulate all the terms and you simply nod your head and agree (and bend over and pay out the ass). This is not how legal contracts work though- when one party has all the control and the other party has absolutely no recourse. Hell that's not even how purchasing retail goods works.

The stealing argument is also used to predict and assess huge losses for companies based on flawed logic. (IE: the RIAA suing one user for $12,000 per track for sharing a Madonna album through p2p -- the punchline here is twofold: 1) The whole album sells for what like $17.99 retail and 2) The only way to prove the files were being shared was to connect and download from the accused...in effect breaking the very law that they were suing to uphold!!) Logistically, you can't say oh well it sells for $100 retail and there were 20000 cracks/bypasses so we lost 20000*100-- that's not realistic. The fact of the matter is that it did not cost them anywhere near $100 to produce- added to that fact is that many retailers offer discounts, bonuses, and upgrades (ie: buy a new dell and we'll put Windows 7 on it for you for free!) so it wouldn't sell for that price anyway, and on top of all that, if it's that really good a product, people will indeed buy it, other will get it without paying. It's a simple matter and you're not making a leap in asserting that this kind of shit is great advertising!! And M$ knows their software will be pirated... it's obvious that they are keeping that in mind when setting the final retail price of the product so high. It's so expensive because #1- Greed and implied value, and #2, they have an excuse in claming to try and recoop some of their potential "losses"-- quitely passing the buck onto robot consumers. If this is not the case, and they did not market their product with this knowledge but in that way but the way described earlier (20000*100) then it stands that they would simply never make a profit off a new product. There would be too much loss income.
We all know this is obviously not the case as we are talking about a megaconglomorate that obviously knows how to make money. I would contend that like Artists and Actors, M$ and its employees are actually benefiting from copyright infringment. Case in point- 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 speech addressing University of Washington students 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."
I would say they've already figured it out.. build a decent product and eventually people will buy it. Think about it, it's really basic: if you get a torrent of a new band and you like, you'll probably tell someone yeah? Share it with a friend and they do the same and word of mouth makes them suddenly very popular. Same goes for movies- whether you see it in the theater or bootleg if it's good enough you'll recommend it to friends, buy a legit copy later, etc.... so let's stop this whole bash the end user and just be glad they're using your product at all, I mean c'mon michel it's not like we're taking the food off of your plate. Hell you've obviously got the time and money you post on multiple threads the same kind of unenlightened dribble, bashing us power users as pirates and thieves... I wouldn't label myself either. I'm just a resourceful guy in a digital age. And so whether I download a torrent or purchase a software suite it shouldn't make a damn bit of difference. You're still getting paid motherfucker.