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Poll Results: Is stealing from Microsoft OK because they have lots of money?

Did the results surprise you? Have you performed a software audit lately?

I didn't think that many people were against piracy. The way the discussion was going, I was under the impression that popular opinion was in favor of piracy. However, the polls sing a different tune. I'm glad.

When we go in to a customer with our discovery software, we ALWAYS find all kinds of software they didn't expect to be installed on machines, even if nobody has local admin.

They have extra copies of everything from Access to Visio out there.

Normally it's because of errors in software deployment, errors in understanding the licensing, or worse IT folks just not knowing what is a site license and what isn't.

Part of the problem is MS had made their licensing pretty confusing and the rest of the problem is that virtualization and application streaming have thrown a monkey wrench into traditional licensing concepts.

Basically the entire industry needs to rethink how they license their products to make it more useful in a modern environment.

"Part of the problem is MS had made their licensing pretty confusing and the rest of the problem is that virtualization and application streaming have thrown a monkey wrench into traditional licensing concepts."

I agree. As a system builder and retailer I can't tell you how many times I've heard the confusing licensing argument, even from admins who should have known better. It's not the whole problem of course, but a simpler licensing arrangement spelled out in laymen's terms would probably make Microsoft more money. Surprised they haven't caught onto that yet.

In many cases the IT admin faces a dilemma between trying to comply with licensing terms that really are confusing or justifying buying a license for every PC in the company. The software marketing people make a big deal of explaining how inexpensive the licenses can be by citing ways to not need a license for every machine, then the IT admin has to try to explain to management that there is no workable mechanism for managing the licenses other than buying a license for every user in the company.

Add in the fact that most companies shuffle PCs around, giving low priority users a "new to me" pc when the high priority users get the latest-and-greatest new ones. Companies don't always go a good enough job of sanitizing the pc that gets shifted to another user. I've seen instances where the "user" was deleted from the PC without cleaning up anything else on the drive.

Then consider the FACT that much of the audit software does not look for a working program but only for specific files (not always the main executable) or even registry keys and you have software being "detected" on machines that have nothing more than legacy scraps left behind when a program was uninstalled.

So, yes, there is some real "piracy" going on in some companies, but there are also many instances of innocent "violations" where software is found on a pc that the user doesn't ever use the software and may not have any idea that it is even there -- and there are instances of totally false positives with some audit software.

The only way that an IT admin can be 100% certain that they have all the licenses that someone else might eventually decide are needed is to have a license for every user in the company for every program that the company uses on any pc at all.

I think that what people will answer on a poll and do in real life aren't always the same.

That's true. People will vote one way and then do the complete opposite (sometimes). Polls aren't always 100% accurate.

The vast majority of peers here understand the concept of compensating others for their work, even if they don't like the product.

Although I am inclined to think that a percentage of those that answered "yes" did so because it was expected and not because they agreed with it.

that the 8%'s id's were shipped off to Redmond.

Nope - all poll participation is strictly confidential.

,,,,, so when I worked for them I put an inter-departmental policy together without the blessing of the owner and tried to adhere to U.S. copyright laws within my control. This company is a heavy construction business. Bad culture, inside and out.

i don't think that most businesses use pirated copies of any Microsoft products since they need the write-off and plus a disgruntled employee can always bring down a company that is not in compliance with Microsoft's licensing. I think pirating is more prevalent among I.T. techs, since most are eager to test and evaluate apps before they go live to the civilian population.

the question in itself is a provocation, taking a candy from a baby is of course a crime no doubt about that. but when this 'baby' charges much too much for her candies, then the poor will rob the rich as they did with the riots that pre followed. microsoft (the baby)wants it all, your money and mind too...

MS products are accessible to the non-business user, even though I agree the prices seem high.

But why doesn't anybody talk about Adobe? I was playing around with web development and flash is the thing...but the software along is around $600. Adobe prices are very high.

equivalents that are safer and easier to use.

BTW With all the vulnerabilities turning up in Flash lately, more and more people are using Flash blockers etc, and if the web site looks crap because the flash files are blocked, they leave damn quick.

Just in case, though I have it installed from the olympics, I keep it firefox disabled unless the site I am visiting requires it.

Same goes for flash.

They get talked about plenty. When the topic is software platforms, it inevitably comes down to Microsoft and Apple.

Adobe has gotten it's due mention frequently though. They where slammed pretty steadily for Flash and the incredible price they demand for Photoshop let alone a full CS license is well known. Number one most exploited software even above and beyond IE is not a place any company wants to find themselves either. Adobe has some serious house cleaning to do within there products and html5 should effect the 600$ price tag on Flash development software.

I took a very inexpensive class ($135) at a community college and - voila - became instantly qualified to buy the Adobe Design Premium CS4 Suite for 1/3 the retail price. ($600 vs $1800) And a 4 month class qualified me for a year. I do not know if student discounts apply to OS purchases though...

check out www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/software/windows-7.aspx

Adobe is a one example of a company that goes out of its way to cheat customers.

I used to work for a company that had bought Adobe Acrobat licenses for the people who needed to creat PDF files. There were only a few of us who needed to create the PDF files and the company did not want the full version of the software on other computers because one of the major benefits of sending out information as PDF files was that it was difficult for casual users to change the files. Previously material had been sent out as Word doc files and the company had problems with people editing documents to "fix" things rather than reporting what they wanted changed.

This system worked well enough for quite a while. Those of us who created PDF files had legal licensed copies of Acrobat 4.x while everyone else had just Adobe Reader. When Acrobat 5.0 came out, we all had READER 5.x and it worked fine reading files created in 4.x so we had no problem.

Then came Acrobat 6.0 -- which Adobe designed specifically so that READER 6.0 would not run on any computer that also had any earlier version of the full Acrobat installed. Eventually we found a work around that let us continue to use our perfectly legal licensed copies of Acrobat 4.x to create PDF files and Reader 6.x to view PDFs created elsewhere.

It didn't take much longer for Adobe to figure out that there were customers who still had legal copies of older versions who were not upgrading, so Adobe again went out of their way to specifically kill the workaround so that it would be imposible to use the current version Reader and an older version of the full Acrobat program on the same computer.

Adobe is not the only company that goes out of itw way to disable earlier versions of its software (Intuit also comes to mind) but it is one of the worst offenders in terms of using this kind of tactic against corporate rather than individual customers.

Very nice of Adobe to choose a DRM scheme for CS which destroys user's boot sectors. If you have only Windows installed; no problem. If you have anything else installed; CS is going to write some data to the "hidden" boot sector area which won't interfere with the NT boot loader but destroys sectors already in use by Grub or anything fatter than the NT loader.

For making the choice to destroy customer's dual-boot systems for them; thanks Adobe.

equivalents instead of wasting money on Adobe products.

..

I'm not in love with Microsoft, but, stealing is stealing. Whether or not the victim is rich or poor it's still the same thing.
You're not Jean Val Jean stealing a loaf of bread to keep alive. You're stealing something you want and don't want to pay for it

Quite a bit of the so-called "piracy" we hear about consists of people accused of "stealing" something that they (or someone else) DID pay for.

Not only are there several companies like Adobe and Intuit who go out of their way to disable earlier versions of their software that customers have alrady paid for, we also have the Redmond elephant in the room who for years forced every PC manufacturer in the US to pay for a copy of windoze for every computer built even if that computer was shipped with a different operating system.

Even for PCs that did ship with a legal copy of windows, Microsoft often refuses to honor its own "Certificate of Authenticity" tag that is physically attached to nearly every PC being built. Try reloading windoze on a used PC that has been wiped and see if they honor the product ID code plainly printed on the tag.

We live in a capitalist economy that fosters something I like to call "competition." If someone else thinks they can offer products that are as good as MS's at a lower price, they're welcome to do so. Interesting that even the free Linux OS hasn't overtaken Windows. The price couldn't be better, yet people still plunk down money for Windows & Mac OS.

I would say that your results bring into question Micro$oft's tremendous waste of time, energy and resources of it's corporate customers with all the various permutations of Genuine Advantage if only 8% of the costumer base is abusing the software licence.

Of course , one might proselytize that Genuine DisAdvantage is the reason why it is so low.

At any rate I firmly believe the effort has hardened the feeling among some that if you'all can rip Micro$oft then it's you civic duty to do so.

I'm Jus' Sayin'

Hard not to agree with that..

With the new copy protection from Microsoft and the fact that I have a dual boot desktop [Win7/XP] and a netbook, it was cheaper [and less of a hassle] by getting a TechNet Plus subscription for $300. I have 2 Win7 Pro licenses, 1 Vista Home Premium [in a VM] and 1 XP Pro license used plus 3 ccpies of Office 2007 Pro Plus - all nice and legitimate. Licenses don't expire. Add MDOP as well. Purchasing would of come to around $3000 or so.

I wonder how the poll would have looked if you'd asked: "Is stealing from Microsoft OK because they wouldn't be the monopoly they are if millions of people hadn't pirated their software in the first place?"

One might also ask why it's so difficult to buy a machine without Windows, when you might simply want to upgrade a computer that already has it.

Ironic, isn't it?

Microsoft steals software from other companies. I have posted frequently an instance where they have done so in the past. They have been convicted of this but pay the fine using the profits from their overpriced software so essentially YOU are paying their fine. They get off scott free without paying a penny. Now if someone from Microsoft actually went to jail, I would have more sympathy, but they use YOUR money to delay, appeal and wait for the company to go bankrupt fighting them.

So go ahead and steal. They set that standard.

stealing. We're (for the mean time) in a capitalist society, and we vote with our purchases. If people are so fed up with microsoft, cast your vote elsewhere with linux or freedos. Yes MS has basically dominated the PC business, but there are alternatives, and YOU have the choice to go with the alternatives, whether or not they suck. And of course they use YOUR money, they're a business! They use revenue to pay for expenses (albeit, criminal ones), just like you use your employer's money to pay for your speeding ticket or reckless driving on the way to work (what do you know, also criminal!) I don't like MS either, but there's no way to justify stealing. We're not exactly poor and oppressed and in need of a software Robin Hood.

What about
"I bought a legitimate, licensed copy of Windows with my computer, and when the hard drive failed, my legitimate software is now disabled by Microsoft?"

So ... I paid for a legitimate copy of software for use on this specific computer. Microsoft WGA disabled it.

Who's the real thief and who's the real victim?

If MS doesn't fix it at that point, it's between you and the fence post what you do.

then you get to repeat it a several weeks later when WGA strikes again, and again, and again.

as a licensing specialist. Yes I was one of the ones you would call for reactivation.

In the case of an OEM distributed copy you are suposed to call the OEM for reactivation (part of their license agreement and this information is supposed to be in THEIR EULA to the end user)

In the case of an FPP (Fully Packaged Product) you are to call microsoft activation.

In the time I worked for them (through a company called Sitel) I never had a call last more than 10 minutes when I was doing reactivation that was caused by a hard drive issue on an FPP. OEM is another story we were suposed to kick you back to the OEM who would inverriably kick you back to us for something they were supposed to handle.

I do agree with you on the OEM front because when you change your processor or Mother Board you are inverriably breaking your OEM license agreement and cause issues with reactivating your copy so personally I see OEM as a waste of time.

hour or more to fix, I had three copies of Windows XP Pro I bought direct from Microsoft Australia on their Student discount deal with the tech college I was attending at the time. Bought one copy in one year, and the other two the next year, from different campuses - I attended at two of the campuses in the city. In each case the motherboard and cpu were unchanged, but the hard drives and graphics cards changed around a bit, as did the RAM chips.

When I moved to a rural area and ceased doing auto updates and started being very selective about my updates, due to a 33.6 kbps dial up service, I had major troubles with each one when WGA was forcibly installed before I could get updates.

Part of the delay was the phone call centre people kept insisting that Microsoft never sold any copies direct to the public, despite my having the invoices printed with Microsoft's name on them.

The other part was the activation system computer listed my licence copy as pirate because I'd activated it so many times, and always with the same motherboard and cpu - but that didn't count. The basic answer was, too many activations, MUST be a pirate, get stuffed sir. It took about half an hour to get put through to a higher level who was able to accept my explanation of changed hardware etc. THEN they check the records and note, oh, same motherboard and cpu serial number - why they couldn't do that at the start is beyond me. Then they'd note the database doesn't list a normal sales path, and we go around the 'where did you get it?' circle until they take time to check with accounting about the invoice number.

After the fourth time, I started actively looking into Linux, the next one to go WGA belly up got wiped and Linux installed. I then sold the copy of XP, telling the person the problem - in the end they bought all three of those copies. But guess what, they only needed XP licence numbers for their systems to be legal when checked, as the installed version was a gold disc pirate copy which NEVER had any troubles with WGA or updates as it did NOT have the code WGA uses to lock up your system.

I don't know if the way Microsoft call centres operate in the US is different to here in Australia, but I was never able to get through in under an hour.

I do know someone who got reactivated very quickly, that only took twenty-five minutes from start to finish.

and technically they are suposed to be running the same way.

Generally Microsoft doesn't sell directly to the end user but to the university under an Educational Subscription Agreement which then give any student the right to buy their software at a discount THROUGH the university (lots of items under this licensing agreement but that is the gist of it ) This must have been a special promo which caused the confusion and (though I no longer work for them ) I appologize for the issues that arose - The first and second line at the call centers don't have access to microsoft's Accounting as they are generally with outsourcing companies ( I know a flaw with the system).

Genrally 5 activations starts raising flags however they should have been able to see the CPU and Motherboard were still the same so I don't really know why that call center handled it that way.
The one in Dublin Ireland would have handled it differently that is somehting I CAN say for sure.

know about that, but they couldn't have done it worse. And it does sound like they may have done it a lot better.

Over a three year period I made four purchase of Microsoft software through the educational discount system. it worked this way:

promotional signs go up;
I go to the Uni book shop and place an order, paying for it upfront;
a week later the book shop has a package with my name on it;
I open package, it's the software, with an invoice from Microsoft Australia made out to me.

This indicates the sale is from Microsoft, with the bookshop acting only as an agent for taking orders. If the sale was through the bookshop, the invoice would have been by them. I didn't like the system as I could claim an invoice from the bookshop back on taxes, but not the one from Microsoft.

With the Action Packs that M$ Sells to their partners. These being VL product don't require activation or at least back in the XP days they didn't. Different story after Vista came out.

But after several WGA Updates you used to get hit with Nongenuine Product which came directly from M$.

I must be perverse but it always made me laugh.

Col

You must have missed the earlier posts telling us that Microsoft does not have any confusing licensing situations and the posts telling us that phone activation never takes over 10 minutes (and implying that phone activation is handled by someone who actually speaks English).

I would point out that WGA is an example of Microsoft choosing to break the spirit (if not the letter) of even its OEM contract in that none of the OEMs signed up to provide support for some new buggy modification of windoze created by MS to defraud people who already paid for the product.

If Microsoft would honestly honor its own Certificate of Authenticity code and make the applicable versions available there would be nearly zero need for WGA. With the possible exception of WindozeMe there has never been a version so bad that large numbers of people would want to priate a newer version (although I am sure plenty of Vista users did choose to "prirate" XP and some might now consider pirating 7 to get an operating system that works).

I frequently help people who are using second hand PC's and almost the only instances I run across of systems that are not running the operating sytem that was paid for and licensed to that computer are on ex-corporate systems that originally came with Windows2000 where people have loaded XP, not because they particularly wanted XP but far more often because it is nearly inpossible to find an Win2K install disk today. And even if you do reinstall Win2K on a machine that has the Certificate of Authenticity on it, Microsoft won't honor the code.

doesn't need to go on-line and authenticate. And there's no point in turning auto updates on as Microsoft do NOT support it properly, and doesn't supply updates worth having.